Online user reviews have come to play an important role in deciding which products to buy, which TV to watch, and which games to play.
However, after the initial frenzy, many platforms objected. Netflix’s star ratings and written user reviews are a distant memory, and even YouTube no longer shows how many “dislikes” a video has received.
Negativity is especially prohibited. Instagram and Facebook let you like posts, but if you don’t like them, they don’t want to know. Steam, the world’s largest distributor of PC games, has also suffered from negative reviews, particularly a systematic negative campaign known as “review bombing.”
However, a recent study published in The Internet and Higher Education published video games for community review. After thousands of players and hundreds of reviews, we’ve found that well-managed user feedback leads to significant improvements.
bombing review
One of the reasons for the decline in popularity of community reviews is the rise of “review bombing.” This is an organized practice of leaving a large number of negative user his reviews in order to lower the overall review score of a game or product.
It seems like most of the review bombings aren’t just about not enjoying the game. They can be caused by an ideological disagreement with the content of the game, or a dislike of the developer’s actions.
Bots can also automate this activity in order to suppress the media or send alerts to businesses. To give one example, a game review YouTube channel called Gamer’s Nexus recently reported that one of its fraud-exposing videos came under a coordinated “hate” attack.
Is deleting the review the solution?
When community reviews work, consumers get real information from users of your product.
For example, on YouTube, removing downvotes makes it difficult to quickly rate the quality of a video. This is especially important information for DIY and craft videos.
Removing dislikes also increases the chances of viewers falling for clickbait or being tricked into watching videos that don’t host the promised content.
when the system works
Our new study shows the benefits of community review. It shows that treating feedback from the community carefully and objectively can go a long way in developing the game.
We created an educational game called The King’s Request for use in medical and health science programs. The aim was to crowdsource more feedback than I could get from the students in my class. That’s why we released the game for free on Steam.
Out of 16,000 players, 150 have written reviews. We have analyzed this feedback which often gives us ideas and ways to improve the game.
This is an example of how feedback from the gaming community, though often arbitrary, can truly help the development process and benefit all stakeholders involved. This is especially important as ‘real’ or educational games are growing as a component of modern curricula.
Censoring community reviews, even if the purpose is to prevent misinformation, helps developers and instructional designers receive feedback, viewers receive quicker information, and paying customers get opinions. makes it difficult to state
What is the future of community reviews?
We tend to remove negative community ratings. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki defended the removal of low ratings earlier this year, but Netflix seems uninterested in reviving her five-star rating system.
However, not all stores follow this trend. TikTok is testing the downvote button on written posts to help the community filter out unhelpful posts.
TikTok claims it will encourage genuine engagement in the comments section once it’s released.
And Steam competitor Epic Games Store recently implemented a system of random user surveys to keep community feedback while avoiding review bombing. , has had some success in tackling review bombing with artificial intelligence.
Christian Moro, Associate Professor of Science and Medicine, Bond University and James Bart, Associate Professor of Computer Games and Associate Dean Engagement, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Please read the original article.
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