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Comment on "Benefit of the doubt" is a very important aspect of a game's success

KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

This seems to be a trend as if you only take into account reviews with 2+ hours of play time, Highguard’s opinions are “mixed” rather than “overwhelmingly negative”.

People who enjoy a game are more likely to have more playtime, therefore the higher the playtime in the ‘window’ of reviews that you look at, the more likely they are to skew high. This is exactly what you’d expect to see on any game, barring situations like the developers making changes that ruin a game that previously was good.

So after 2 hours of not having a good time, the game was deemed bad and negative reviews were written.

Two hours is the window for a refund, so I absolutely make a call within 2 hours. If a game - especially a new / expensive game - hasn’t engaged me within that time, I refund it and move on. I don’t have enough hours in the day to play games I don’t enjoy hoping that they’ll get good eventually. Why should anyone feel the need to do that, whether they’re giving the game the benefit of the doubt or not? It’s the MMO argument. “The game gets really good around the 100 hour mark!” I don’t care. I’m not sticking around for it. There are plenty of other games to play that are fun within the first 2 hours. If a developer expects people to slog through an unenjoyable 2+ hours to get to “the good parts”, they probably deserve the negative reviews.

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Grailly@piefed.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

therefore the higher the playtime in the ‘window’ of reviews that you look at, the more likely they are to skew high. Yes, I’m looking at 2 hours, not exactly high.

Two hours is the window for a refund, so I absolutely make a call within 2 hours. 2 hours is arbitrarily chosen as a catch-all. You can finish some games and refund them within that time, it doesn’t work well in all situations. It’s not some objective measure of how much time you need to judge a game.

specially a new / expensive game - hasn’t engaged me within that time, I refund it and move on. The example is a free game. There’s also a difference between moving on and leaving a negative review

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- Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  Yes, I’m looking at 2 hours, not exactly high.
  
  Some games don’t need even 2 hours of playtime to see the flaws. It took me a single COD match to understand why I hate that kind of gameplay. Getting to some arbitrary time spent would be time wasted.
  
  The example is a free game. There’s also a difference between moving on and leaving a negative review
  
  There are no free games. You still need to invest time and effort into the game. I got Star Wars Outlaws for free. I understood I’m probably not going to enjoy the game before the tutorial was over. I still gave it a shot under the same “benefit of doubt” idea and in hindsight I should’ve just put the game down when I got the first hint that I’m not going to enjoy it, because I probably would’ve given it a more generous evaluation. Instead I ended up with the opinion that the game is a waste of time because playing it was a waste of my time.
  
  I agree there’s a difference between moving on and leaving a negative review and I think it’s stupid for people to leave negative reviews just to feel like they’re part of some kind of a zeitgeist. But the negative reviews don’t change anything because the reason a game is getting negative reviews is because it’s not a good game. Had Highguard been the new Overwatch it wouldn’t be in the overwhelmingly negative category even if the initial impression of the game was negative. Just look at Doom 2016, prior to launch it ticked all the boxes of being a bad game (development hell, tacked on multiplayer, poor marketing material, no review copies etc) but then it came out and people loved it. I don’t think the benefit of doubt would’ve saved Highguard. It simply would’ve made the trend from a nosedive into a steep slope and the “dead game” claim would just come a few months later.
  
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