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General discussionGOG 2022 update #6: OpenCritic reviews on our gamecards!(66 posts)(66 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 12, 2022
That we care about games is an undeniable fact and our strongest driving force. But besides that, we care just as much about providing our community with the best possible experience both on GOG and GOG GALAXY. Having said that, we are constantly improving our platform to make your – fellow gaming enthusiasts’ – stay on GOG the most enjoyable, smoothest and pleasant.

Another step in achieving just that, is OpenCritic implementation to our gamecards!

We’re very happy to announce that OpenCritic – one of the most renowned and respected review aggregation websites for video games – will now be a part of GOG’s gamecards. OpenCritic lists reviews from critics across multiple video game publications for the games listed on the site. Statistics generated by OpenCritic, alongside critics’ reviews will be available to you just below information about the selected title’s system requirements. We’re currently live-testing the implementation, so don’t worry if some of you don’t see it – you will soon!



We believe that such an addition will allow you not only to grasp a better understanding of games that you are interested in, but also help you make better decisions when making purchases and expand your library with titles that suit your gaming needs best.

As excited as we are about this news, we can’t wait to hear your feedback. Check out how it looks yourselves and make sure to let us know what you think about it in the comments!
Posted December 12, 2022
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HilariousHank: An interesting experiment would be removing the numerical score from reviews. Since most people only glance at the score to make conclusions as to whether or not "critics" like or recommend a game, walls of text become redundant. Removing the score would make people draw conclusions from opinions and arguments of "critics" instead.
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phaolo: I disagree. I like the rating scores, even if I check some reviews too.
They're flawed, but more or less like the reviews.
Also, I'm more interested in users scores, since the critics' ones are questionable since ages (see the IGN meme).

Btw, I actually wish I could personally use at least a 10 stars rating system, instead of 5.
I agree... i like the the current rating and 10 stars would be better, after all ... we had a 0 to 10 score at school (that is in my era :D.

Anyway .... the old games magazines ( the paper ones i used to buy) had a 10 stars rating , that is the ones i used to buy in the early gaming days.
Post edited December 12, 2022 by gamesfreak64
Posted December 12, 2022
high rated
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FoxySage: Well since you asked for feedback. Please allow us users the ability to edit our reviews.
And please also let us change our votes for reviews (e.g. in case of misclick's).
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Ice_Mage: If you really want to improve things, please get rid of the current review system and adopt Steam's instead:
• A few bad reviews is enough to tank a game's score and that's neither fair nor useful. Make every review a simple Recommended / Not Recommended and let players provide whatever details they want in the review itself. Get rid of the star score and replace it with Overwhelmingly Positive / Mixed Reviews / Mostly Negative, etc.
I disagree. The most missed feature on Steam reviews is to be able to give a mixed rating, not only a black and white recommended or not recommended rating.
Post edited December 12, 2022 by eiii
Posted December 12, 2022
Yes!! This ends my effort to manually search for games in OpenCritic :)
I like their ratings and I'm really happy with that change! Thanks, GOG!
Posted December 12, 2022
All professional critics are industry shills, so this "feature" is actually a value-removing feature that makes the GOG website much worse, not better. It should abolished since it's a horrible idea.
Posted December 12, 2022
This change/thread made me think about how little I like the GOG numeric rating so I created these ublock rules to hide them now the only star rating I will see is the one next to folk that actually write a review.

! this one is the one at the top of the game page
www.gog.com##.productcard-rating
! these two are the ones that show on the mouse over
www.gog.com##.star-rating__stars
www.gog.com##.star-rating__label
! this is the section above the reviews on a games page telling you the different aggregate scores
www.gog.com##.average-body__col--big.average-body__col
Posted December 12, 2022
Great addition, thanks :).
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Ice_Mage: If you really want to improve things, please get rid of the current review system and adopt Steam's instead:
• A few bad reviews is enough to tank a game's score and that's neither fair nor useful. Make every review a simple Recommended / Not Recommended and let players provide whatever details they want in the review itself. Get rid of the star score and replace it with Overwhelmingly Positive / Mixed Reviews / Mostly Negative, etc.
No, I actually like to know when a majority of people that thumb up a game consider it ok, good or great.

If enough gamers vote, the statistical distribution of a binary system will converge towards a similar degree of exactitude, but it will take a lot more voters to accomplish this than if people could simply assign a review score across a range (and for a lot of recent and sometimes not so recent indie games, they don't have enough votes to accomplish this).

For my part, as an occasional reviewer, I even find the current 1-5 value too small a range to represent my opinion and 1-10 would have been better actually. For many games, I'd rate them 3.5/5 or 4.5/5 instead of having to round them up to 4/5 or 5/5 (especially when I compare my enjoyment of games I rate against each other, not all 4/5 or 5/5 rated games are equal), but it is impossible right now.
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Ice_Mage: • Separate the score derived from recent reviews from the rest. I didn't think I'd have to explain the value of this, considering Cyberpunk 2077. Many times games are radically different at present compared to release day, and not always for the better.

A way to find our own reviews and edit them would also be very welcome.
This, I agree with.
Post edited December 12, 2022 by Magnitus
Posted December 12, 2022
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phaolo: Btw, I actually wish I could personally use at least a 10 stars rating system, instead of 5.
A thumbs up, down, or sideways (for mediocre games) would be my preference. The 10 point scale in reviews these days has become pretty meaningless. All I need to know is whether a game is worth my time or not.
Post edited December 12, 2022 by P-E-S
Posted December 12, 2022
high rated
Honestly I think the whole "review aggregation" is blight, something that helps destroy the "art" of proper reviews in favour of reducing everything to single number, while ignoring all nuances. But hey, I guess that's what the modern consumer wants.

I guess next step is replacing stars in our reviews with thumbs up/thumbs down, and further down the road removing the latter.
Posted December 12, 2022
So long as the current review system remains in place. I will appreciate the additional information. But GOG-centric reviews are important: We have different standards here.
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Breja: I guess next step is replacing stars in our reviews with thumbs up/thumbs down, and further down the road removing the latter.
Let's hope not. (Also, I hate review systems you refer to... Then again, back when Netflix did do numeric rating, it treated 3 as basically "hate it!" for recommending other things similar to it. There was no room for "I enjoyed this and liked it, but it's not the best thing."
Post edited December 12, 2022 by mqstout
Posted December 12, 2022
Most of the games I like predate the existence of OpenCritic, or even most of their maintainers.

Like, there's no OpenCritic on Commander Keen 1-5, because well, those are five different games from the 1990s and collating old magazine reviews is more research than most would bother with; people seriously thought a greasy haired grifter was a cousin of Steve Tyler until research up the family tree showed that would be an unlikely possibility.

Also, here's some feedback in big bold letters:

Would it be too much to ask for the ability to track my own reviews? I've written over 40 of the dang things, and that precludes the ability to edit them; FINDING THEM.

(Also, I'd eliminate stars in favor of a less nebulous :) ☺ :| 😐 [or :\ or :/] :( ☹ system or something.)
Post edited December 12, 2022 by Darvond
Posted December 12, 2022
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HilariousHank: An interesting experiment would be removing the numerical score from reviews. Since most people only glance at the score to make conclusions as to whether or not "critics" like or recommend a game, walls of text become redundant. Removing the score would make people draw conclusions from opinions and arguments of "critics" instead.
I agree with you, but you won't ever get that here (or anywhere else, I suppose).
People today don't want to read, why exactly somebody may think of a game as good, or bad, or mediocre...they want to look at a number instead.
That number doesn't tell them anything, of course, but hey - it takes no time to look at a number, and if that number is above an arbitrary set threshold, that's supposed to indicate a "good" game, then people will buy that game blind.

And then they come back and write scathing reviews, because the game is not what they expected.

The whole "this game received that number, so it must be good" - system is nothing but a joke.
So, do what is expected from you when you hear or read a joke: laugh about it.
Posted December 12, 2022
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phaolo: Btw, I actually wish I could personally use at least a 10 stars rating system, instead of 5.
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P-E-S: A thumbs up, down, or sideways (for mediocre games) would be my preference. The 10 point scale in reviews these days has become pretty meaningless. All I need to know is whether a game is worth my time or not.
Yeah, I don't like that. But ideally, each customer could select his preferred method (not gonna happen lol)
Posted December 12, 2022
Is this going to interact/replace/augment the current critic reviews in gog galaxy?

Hoping this is just augmenting, I mean IGDB is seriously flawed as many games have no reviews or poor quality of reviews have been chosen but at least they cover old systems (open critic only goes back to wii/3ds/psp).

I think someone from Gog actually should assist the IGDB team in improving their critic reviews, as I found when I reached out to their devs, they were unaware you were even using their reviews.

Take the Fallout games as an example - I have 1,2,tactics, 3, vegas and only 3 has any reviews
Posted December 12, 2022
Without an clear explanation, what a rating in any system imaginable should stand for, any system is going to fail.

Also it feels like the expactaion is: reach the highest score in the given system, or you have a failed game. That's neither usefull, nor true.
Posted December 12, 2022
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kzadur: Without an clear explanation, what a rating in any system imaginable should stand for, any system is going to fail. Also it feels like the expectation is: reach the highest score in the given system, or you have a failed game. That's neither useful, nor true.
BoardGameGeek has defined criteria for its rating system.
10 - Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change.
9 - Excellent game. Always want to play it.
8 - Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
7 - Good game, usually willing to play.
6 - Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
5 - Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it.
4 - Not so good, it doesn't get me but could be talked into it on occasion.
3 - Likely won't play this again although could be convinced. Bad.
2 - Extremely annoying game, won't play this ever again.
1 - Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.
The reviews still skew because of the tendency of people just not to review middling games; they tend to review highly-rated ones they like (plus the layer of self-selection of only trying games they're more likely to like...), or the ones that are the worst (which often feel even worse to the players because they did select it at some point). It's better. But no review system is perfect.

I tend to read text attached to numbers. But a no-numbers-attached, text-only review system [as some have proposed] is also not very useful.
Post edited December 12, 2022 by mqstout
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Community
General discussionGOG 2022 update #6: OpenCritic reviews on our gamecards!(66 posts)(66 posts)
(66 posts)