Topic: Petition to have NintendoLife stop reviewing games of abysmal quality

I'm sure this was suggested before but never taken too seriously because NintendoLife is a videogame website and videogames websites publish videogame reviews, no matter the quality.
But I think, with the release of PANDA LOVE from the very consistent developer RCMADIAX (consistently sh1t€, that is) we have hit a new low when it comes to both videogames and journalism.

The game in question, reports the reviewer, is poor in quality, 5 to 10 minutes long and costs £1.39/€1.99/$1.99.
And yet it scored a 4 (FOUR), a super score considering the actual quality.
You would expect a respectable website to punish, or ridicule, or at least call out a game and a developer for trying so blatantly to con his audience into buying products of extremely low quality just to make a dollar. Unfortunately this never happens. And this is bad for a variety of reasons.

First, it creates a lot of confusion and unfairness in the overall scores. One month ago, the lovely 3Souls - a game in the works for many months that goes above and beyond what's available on the eShop when it comes to original GamePad applications - was given a 5 for "trying to hard to implement the GamePad". A couple of weeks ago, the highly polished game Poncho was given a 6 for being "too hard". Countless games have been awarded average scores for being "too this" and "too that". This is absolutely fine, but not when games like Panda Love get awarded a similar score for being, quite frankly, "nothing".
When a game that offers a lot and takes months (if not years) to make get awarded a similar score of a game that offers 5 minutes of playtime and was made in one Sunday afternoon by someone who is clearly in the business just to take advantage of people's wealth and bad taste, you really ask yourself "why are we on this planet?"

Second, reviewing these abysmal games means that no matter how low the quality, a bad product is always guaranteed coverage on one of the main Nintendo based websites around. And the coverage will simply state if a game is bad or good, raising awareness in a non-critical manner. No developer has ever been called out for shady business. Nobody had their professionality questioned even when it's clear some of them are only after your money and DON'T CARE about the products they deliver. How many times have you read a reviewer simply state "Don't give your money to them. It's a scam."?! I have never.

So I think it's in the best interest of the readers and other developers who are really trying hard and expect a fair treatment, to stop reviewing these games altogheter since it's clear you are unable to provide a fair reviewing system.

Please put your petition in your signature.

Wait. This is not a change.org petition?

Anyway, they can and will review whatever pleases them. And the ones that need these reviews the most are the smaller studios, which often produce these abysmal games you speak of.

I'll leave this open, so someone with higher rank than me can see and decide what to do. I'll just move it to the correct area.

@Meowpheel Did you delete the other thread as well? I was just adressing that one. No mention of anything on the Dashboard.

@spizzamarozzi You make a really good point here. The score system seems quite unfair, here. In the end I cannot see what influence the pricing of the game had on the end score. I guess, Panda Love wouldn't have got a 4 if it was a full price game.

There were two? I had only seen this one.

@Meowpheel Chandlero made a thread as well, but it was gone as soon as I posted my reply. Not even locked, it's gone.

Maybe they deleted it themselves.

my post refers exclusively to eShop games. That's why I originally posted it in the WiiU eShop section but it was moved - I have no idea why.

I think this is very important topic since the eShop is flooded with bad games or let's say low-budget game. There are good ones and it would be good to have a site like Nintendo life to distinguish bad cheap games and good cheap games.

EDIT: I deleted my thread since I found the original thread after the moving. So there was no point in having a complain thread about "deleting an important topic".

I think the same. The eShop section was fine but it doesn't matter so much. It is important to address the problem since I often bought a game after a good NL score and often I was disappointed.

I personally think it's impressive they take the time to review everything released on the eShop.

Maybe the scoring system could be better, but asking for less reviews is never good.

I think NintendoLife should review what they want, especially during a time where releases are "rare." I would even encourage them to go back and review 3DS and Wii U games they might have missed when they first came out. The more info they can give the better.

I wanna know if a game is worth my time. One hour of pikmin is worth much more than one hour of abyss. That game isn't worth a snot from my left nostril.

I agree we need a better way of finding out what the true gems are.

This is the main reason I miss ngamer magazine. Nintendolife has the most potential to be that place.

Although eurogamer, with its dropping the scores, comes some way too. Our gamergate crap showed how vile journalism in general is though.

I wonder if there's anything left for us than to crowdsource impressions.

the problem is that the info are always published in a non-critical, forgiving manner.
You would expect a professional website to alert the readers when they spot bad practices and people who take advantage of the customers' good faith, but it never happens.
They rate the product, full stop. The overall vibe is always "better luck next time" rather than "this is dishonest", "this is shady", "this is hurting the business". And this believe it or not hurts both the audience and honest developers.

Regarding value for money, does anybody else have an association to arcade games. Some games are so cheap I just equate it to an 'insert coin'. I remember when Street Fighter came out on the SNES, me and my friends played it so much that we must have saves so many 20ps. Lol.

So... You want them to vilify their reviews to get back at bad devs... Instead of actually offering useful reviews? That's not very professional or good for business.

You know, these reviews are also meant to be directed at the dev, not only the customer. They offer feedback and ratings of their work.

If you want to let people know a game is bad, you, as the user, have many ways to let your voice be heard.

I have to agree with this, use the full scoring system if you're going to use a scoring system at all. If this site want to continue reviewing every game on the eShop then they need to be more critical, if this game is as bad as the OP suggests, then it really has no place warranting a 4.

I mean sheesh, No Man's Sky recently came out and got a few reviews that came very close to a 4, and people have similar thoughts about it because it's boring more most people after a few hours and downright unplayable for some. I'd even rank the recent Platinum TMNT game at a 4 or so (as lots did) because it was badbadbad.

But then compare them to a terrible 10 minute game? No way can it be said this site is using the full score system. Some other sites put this one to shame in that aspect.

How is calling out bad practices "vilifying"?!
That's actually what honest journalism should do.
If I put out something on the market to deliberately rip you off, people should be told by the press.
Without all the silly sugar coating used nowadays like, "If you have a kid, and he misses 75% of his brain's functions, and he has no arms and no legs, can't read and will probably die in the upcoming months, you might find this game interesting..."

@Meowpheel it's not vilifying to give a game a 1 when it deserves it, and that is as helpful as any other review as it's as blatant as an AVOID sign can be. I don't see why you're being so defensive, OP has a very good point even though they don't put it across in the best of ways.

RCMADIAX could make a good game once and we'd never be aware of it. I know it's very unlikely, but not reviewing his games would mean a potential gem could pass unnoticed.

Also, I don't think writing reviews for those games take that much time.

I agree the rating system could be more consistent, though.

Question: So...how do you know a game is terrible if no one has played it before?
Why shouldn't they review a bad game, even one from a studio that has traditionally produced crap?
How does one find out about these studios if no one talks about them?
How do you know they aren't honest studios that just need some proper feedback in order to improve?
How do you know that there aren't people that were interested in the game, and might've taken a chance on it, potentially wasting their money, since they couldn't have known anything about it beforehand?
How in any way is it "fair" to stop reviewing certain games just because its success wasn't already guaranteed?

And most importantly: How do you know about all these low-rated reviews? I never even knew they reviewed 3Way 3Souls, because I only read the reviews of games that seemed interesting to me in the first place. Do you...read all of there reviews? Why? How could you possibly stay sane after that? Even the ones I "read" I usually just skim. A lot of the reviews around here are terribly written to begin with, but that's a discussion for another time.

My point is: stop. The problem isn't that there are too many reviews of bad games. The problem is you. You're obsessed. Just chill out, take a step back, find something else to do. If you like the reviews so much, just come here less so you build up a backlog of reviews to read. If you feel that strongly that their reviews of important games are being slowed by these bad games...they aren't. This website has a lot of writers on-hand. They'll go at their own pace even without the shlock. If anything, the shlock helps keeps things in perspective - both for the writers, and the readers - by showing how many things we take for granted can be easily messed up in less competant hands. The next time you see a game you were looking forward to get a 6 or a 7, you can just take a look at RCMADIAX's library, and you'll know that it's not the end of the world.