If you were trying to play Hearthstone (Free) in the EU servers last week, you probably got quickly frustrated from being unable to log into the game. Apparently, Blizzard’s servers were experiencing some kind of undisclosed issue that prevented many from enjoying the game. It’s unlike Blizzard to have such issues for such a long period, so many were surprised (and frustrated). This wasn’t the kind of advertising Blizzard was looking for so recently after unleashing the game on mobile devices, but the issue is now fixed and everyone can go right back to dumping dozens of hours into the game.
In a move planned to appease the pitchfork-brandishing masses, Blizzard is giving two free Classic Card Packs to all European Hearthstone accounts (provided the account was created prior to May 3rd, 2015). The two packs can be found in the “Open Packs" section and should already be in your account. The packs won’t expire, so you don’t have to drop everything you’re doing and log into the game. If for some reason you don’t see the packs in your account, contact Blizzard, the company’s great at taking care of these issues. Now, if only Blizzard fixed the never-ending turn issue that’s been plaguing my matches for quite some time now (the game won’t freeze but no one can play a card or do anything of the sort).
This column was great. I give it one star!
Your comment was great! I down voted it!
Your answer was great! I give it a 1/10.
Excellent discussion. 1 star. I'll add stars when you bring me coffee and cookiez.
All of your guys' comments so far are just thoughtless comedy and asinine, juvenile attempts at humour. 10/10 must buy
Comments cannot be bought..i give your comment 100/10 :P
Sacrificed my first born to play your game. 1/10 would sacrifice again.
Your comment made my day..I give it 0/10
Glad to see you rated me so high, -10/10 would look at your ratings again.
I hate that the iPhone app doesn't let me down vote a comment. 5 stars!
Comments were boring 5/5 stars!!!!!
Lmfao at the tiny wings one 😂 2 years
That one made me sad. I think I'm stuck in the same place. :'( but that game is still a five-star game.
Amazing comment! Loved it! Read it in under 40 mins though. Needs more animals and the ability to fly. I give it a solid 1 star until you stop scamming me!!!
Apple's review system is primitive.
I hardly read reviews anymore. It's almost as infuriating as reading YouTube comments or basically anything on Twitter.
YouTube comments are the best!!!
Game reviews are difficult for us because we fall in a niche of enthusiasts. Like everything else, the enthusiast niche is better informed and more appreciative and thus, we feel other people's opinions are kind of dumb in a lot of cases.
But flip it around and I'll certainly read reviews for nearly everything else I buy. Not because these people are experts but because their experience (as other people who are not experts) may yield similar outcomes. In this sense, game reviews are still useful for nearly everyone else.
Most who have played Desert Golfing know that it's more than a game, it's an experience. This is reflected in App Store reviews and my favourite is this gem: "It's just one big bunker - just like life..." He gives the game 5 stars, of course.
Here was one I got a kick out of:
Eddie Vedder Ukulele Songs
Great album, but it sure has a lot of ukulele in it.
It's like saying "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" has too much cowbell.
People have a right to complain, but this article is spot on. A quality premium game's revenue can be ruined by a couple of imbeciles who down rate a game due to an illegitimate complaint. If the game is crashing or it doesn't work on a device where it should, there is a problem. Otherwise, stifle it Edith!
That's part of why I went into programming in the insurance industry rather than looking at game studios; the market is monstrously fickle. Not something I personally want to tie my livelihood to.
I'll make games on the side so I can not care about the money.
I think you have to really question whether a quality premium game will so easily let some negative reviews affect their revenue though.
Sure, a string of people complaining that Monument Valley is too short is silly in our eyes but it's possible it's a perfectly valid opinion that it's beyond most people's expected value for money.
I dont trust people I dont know. Easy that is. Even on the AppStore.
You should basically quit internet, then.
Seriously though, i guess when you dig into a subject long enough, you learn how to read between the lines and still get the info you need to make your own general idea.
Sometimes stupid bad reviews prompted my instabuy due to the fact that what they find unlikable was gold for me.
Something like "since you are clearly stupid and don't like this game for stupid reasons, it must be awesome".
Reverse psychology, i guess.
How is this different from any other comment/review culture? This isn't ground breaking.
Easy target, everyone needs an excuse to laugh at stupid people and TA's readership with their inferiority complexes and near-blind allegiance to premium devs (don't even need to make a good game, paying to have it will make it good) need to laugh at kids who got lost, tut at fools bashing their indie darlings and generally think they're the only ones who truly get it though never leave a review.
I don't know what th world is coming to if we can't point at idiots and laugh any more.
I think we're reading two different TouchArcade's. I see a LOT of reviews and comments by the TA staff supporting F2P and was even belittled by Eli because a comment I made was misinterpreted as saying that F2P was blanket bad.
There are definitely some staff that promote games that eschew the F2P business model. There are three common reasons for this, I'd imagine. One, they make money from referral links to paid purchases. Two, a site like this can only continue operating due to a large readership to provide ad revenue, thus they need to write lots of articles, resulting in some mid-level games getting semi-positive reviews to keep viewers coming back to the site to read everything (and to make more money from referrals per #1). Three, a number of people (readers AND staff) still prefer games with a more traditional campaign with a clear end goal and/or narrative. Final Fantasy Record Keeper is fun and a great way to spend your toilet time, but it doesn't provide the same experience as Monument Valley or Chaos Rings (or whatever your preferred premium title may be).
Remember when folk attached more value to games?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
One word: entitlement.
The bottom's gone out of the market and yet (some) gamers are judging solely on entertainment (not cost ratio). Can't blame them, they're not the ones that started the race to the bottom.
Back in the day, when things cost money and gamers attached more value to games, they'd be more thoughtful about their comments and criticism.
That and the fact that ratings aren't weighted or moderated for value.
So let's get back to games with a base price of $20 to even out who gets to play and opine? Sure, why not.
It would be nice if users could optionally share the amount of time they have played the game. Or the percentage of achievements reached. Or even if it was just opt-in but automatic, so people with GameCenter accounts would get a badge on the review and then it could have percentages of achievements or time-played-compared-to-average could decorate the badge.
With native analytics from Apple coming this might be a possibility.
Amazon has done a pretty good job of automating this process where it's possible to get a better signal-to-noise ratio in the review sections.
It would also be nice if devs could reply to comments/reviews. When reading bad reviews on Amazon, I always read the responses.
I would love to see a dev reply and start an all out troll war 😂
On a serious note: if you love a game (as so many of us do Monument Valley, for example), offset the babbling idiocy by leaving a review of your own and bring up the average! More positive reviews = more buys = more resources for the developers to continue to produce great games.
Agreed. I've left reviews solely because I saw negative reviews that I disagreed with and wanted to try to balance the average.
Funny read.
Going through the examples you make i started wondering if these people are aware they are reviewinf a product, and not leaving a comment on a facebook page.
I also doubt they know the real power their reviews can have, or the consequences of them typing words on a screen.
While the enthusiastic 1 stars reviews really sound like a mistake.
Or maybe not.
I love the touch arcade forums and have spent countless hours browsing them instead of playing iOS games so for that I vote them 1 star for wasting so much of my life 😜
I'll never sympathize with those Monument Valley haters. I loved the game so much, and my wife loved it even more. So much, I gave her a hand-made totem that cost like $200. Shoot, I should have given the dev team $200 for that much entertainment for the both of us.
I also love trolling the App Store for bad reviews. Take screen shots even, if they're so bad that they're good. I won't throw those iTunes users under the bus though. But some are funny! And some... are probably not so wrong after all.
Ah, so you're the guy who brought one of the totems! How is it?
It's awesome! Looks and feels like it was made from the heart. And I really like how it is constructed. The 4 pieces seem to be able to twist off, though we haven't done it. We've been wanting some inspiration art to adorn our room, and it just fits in perfect. You the artist? If so, great work!
Hilarious! I almost dread finishing developing my game.
On the other hand, I sometimes see simlarly-hilarious forgiveness: reviews along the lines of "⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Latest update deleted ALL my progress, and now it won't open at all. I paid the full $7.99 too, plus a $2.99 coin pack that I never even got. Still, very fun game! One of my all-time favorites."
Haha I like reading App Store and album/song reviews on the iTunes Store too. It's full of idiots
People can be so hateful and spiteful for no reason. People think just because they are anonymous, they have the right to be be mean. It's shameful IMO
Early in the app stores life, when the top free apps were apps that emulated real life objects, one was a taser app, that looked like a realistic taser. There were loads of one star reviews from people who believed the app was misleading because it didn't turn your phone into an actual taser.
LOL
The world is full of not so smart people. Just because someone knows how to use a smartphone doesn't make them smart.
I was going to ask if this surprised you based off the commenters you get on your own site, but they beat me to it.
Nothing surprising about that. The wider pool of people, the more you find mediocre people spewing their nonsensical mediocre poison.
It's just the way the world is.
Mobile gaming will bring its own downfall in the end, because its foundations are very fragile and built on shaky sandy bases. Devs who are jumping into it now will bite their nails in ~5 years; dedicated gamers are very loyal and potective of their favourite games, while mobile gamers...well the article sums it up quite nicely :)
I think the entitlement is on both sides.
In console gaming I see things like,
"Didn't like that voice acting. No buy."
"Doesn't have multiple language audio. Not buying it."
"It's also coming out on another platform I don't like. That's not fair."
"It has DLC available. They're ripping us off. Not buying it."
Gamers in general are shockingly fickle.
I was happy to read this to find out it's not just console fans.
Oh yes I agree. But the dedicated gamers you hear moaning and whining are anastoundingly vocal minority (I reckon you visit GFaqs like me to witnes them lol).
In the end, they always give in and buy the game during dry times or good sales.
But mobile gamers are more of a majority in this.
While I'm certain some of these App Store reviews come from adults, I have to wonder how many of these reviews come from kids with no self-regulation or impulse control. I'm sure there are too many kids with iOS devices whom have free range access to the app store but no oversight from their parents.
Too much water - ⭐️
I had an ideal awhile back to mimic Celebrities Reading Mean Tweets (check Kimmel youtube... worth a watch) but instead do 'Developers Reading Mean Reviews'. We garnered some interest from some dev friends but never got enough response to get it going. Perhaps with the connections of TouchArcade we could make this happen? :D
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. - Winston Churchill
Ironic.
Best TA's article I've read during this month. I don't know, but the way you worded it got me laughing from the start to the very end. Needless to say, it tells the very truth behind some of the App Store's reviews.
I find it very ironic for the people that complained and whined about the paid-expansion (just $1.99!!) of Monument Valley are probably the very same people that have spent over $100 for some garbage free-to-play game like Candy Crush and they continue to praise that game. Just sad...
These reviews simply show how people out there can be that ridiculously stupid.
I doubt they are the same people. Very few people spend much or even any money on Candy Crush. It's just the few who spend loads that make it so profitable.
As in most comment sections on the Internet, Google Play suffers from the same symptoms describe in the article.
On Google Play there is, however, a thumbs up/down button for each comment to mark a review as helpful or not ( I don't remember if the App store had this).
I love marking all unhelpful comments, specially when a low rating is unfair, but I have no idea if marking them actually helps the overall grade. Does anyone have any insight on this?
They need to be like reviews on Steam......
10/10 - would eat my iPhone in frustration again
Lol love those, I make nachos and popcorn and then read them
I like the reviews on Amazon:
5 stars - I can't wait for it to arrive.
1 star - it's taking to long to arrive.
How about actually waiting till you've read the book before reviewing it?
I always intentionally change my rating to one star when a game comes out as a paid game and then within the month goes on sale or free, explaining that it's unfair to their early adopting fans. It causes the environment of the App Store in general to shift to waiting for games to go on sale to buy in.
The same goes for when you buy a game when it has a paid model and then goes free to play, introducing fun timers in your previously timer free game. Bait and switch... Release a new f2p version, don't change the game for the worse after taking a customer's money.
Am I alone in this?
It happens all the time with MMOs on the PC/consoles.
The paid app at launch is meant to get back all the money spent for the development. When the player base stops growing, for many developers it becomes more profitable to switch to a F2P model, where they can appeal to new gamers who can play the game for free, thus increasing game-world population and potentially making it easier for everybody to participate in group activities such as dungeons or raids and so on.
They usually give bonuses to older players who have paid for the game and give some cosmetic or little boosting items to buy for real money.
Sometimes in the F2P version you are limited in which content you have access to, giving you the opportunity to switch to "premium user" for some cash.
And it seems it's a working model, since many a developer have been using this for the past 3-4 years I think.
There's no excuse for adding timers and the like to a paid game. I can understand sometimes games have to go free after a while, but it can be handled well - like happened with Rapture the other day.
As a developer myself, I got a bunch of such reviews too, as many devs I think. It's a pitty that Apple doesn't provide us the opportunity to answer reviewers the way Google Playstore does, in order maybe to fix problems. Regarding the "it should be free" reviews, I'd be glad to see their reaction if their boss argued "well, today your work should be free for my company, are you ok?", do they really think devs are making games for glory?
Wholeheartedly agree (I'm also a dev).
I'd also like to add that many of the people that give those ratings aren't necessarily evil or lack intelligence. They just didn't give it as much thought as core gamers do, or don't understand how the system works. Once you talk to them (at least some of them) will actually turn around and are able to have a positive dacussion, with feedback and no hate.
But as a dev you need the tools to talk to users and/or money to fund a customer relations team - not easy for a startup or small freemium game
I remember a review of Doodle God, proclaiming that the oprah singers were annoying. Turns out he meant opera singers.
User reviews are always inane. This article didn't really do anything interesting, it just listed several reviews that seemed ridiculous. 5 out of 5 stars.
the two kinds of reviews I friking hate getting: the Asker and the blackmailer
Asker: "2 stars: Will you be adding feature X?"
Like, dude, we can't reply to you on the store, not all stores are like the Play Store.
Blackmailer:" 1 Star: I Will give you 4 stars when you fix this bug"
Of course you are more likely to forget about this game and your 1 star will be etched in the walls of my app page for eternity.
Or those that reviewed it at 5 stars, that then change their review to 1 star because you they weren't still receiving new content 2 years after spending $1.99 on it
you talking about my game ? :p
Not all eternity. All reviews get effectively wiped when a new update comes out. You will only see them if a user specifically chooses to see reviews from all versions.
It's the same everywhere apparently. I see it on Google Play too. A more recent example is the free-to-play update of Zombies Run, every comment I see is either a complaint about crashes, or the anger at the conversion to F2P. 3 words: be appreciative, brats.
As an aside, being in Singapore and in the Singapore App Store, you hardly see an app break 3 stars (notable exception: Pixel People), simply because the apps aren't up to international standards (eg. UI too simple). Sigh, the world we live in now.
I stopped reading reviews on the AppStore because seeing all those 3-years-old minded people writing bullshit and ruining the rating on apps is what angers me like crazy.
Freedom of speech is sacred, but should be only given to people with a working brain.
A good question to ask is if the reviews and opinions of less knowledgeable people are any less valid than opinions of us, the enthusiast niche. Obviously expertise is no sure sign that our opinions should match up with a potential customer. The likelihood a potential customer will match the opinions of these 'stupid' people is much higher than they will match our own.
Flip this around and go to Amazon and a product that is expensive and some expert who says is 'worth every penny' may actually not be worth every penny to me. Many products I own from my headphones to my power tools to my TV to my kitchen gadgets to the coffee and beer I drink to the computer I use right now might be looked at and scoffed at.
Some of these people's concerns may be valuable to other people deciding on a game, some may not, but these are people who took the time to actively share their opinion of what they thought and the experience they had. Their opinions, however uneducated, may be perfectly valid.
In some of these reviews, there even might a glimmer of things we may care about. For example, I'm not really into scary games, so I might appreciate if a review told me whether Five Nights at Freddy's is actually really scary or maybe just horror themed. I may not care as much as some people about game length but even I have my limits and maybe Monument Valley could hit that limit. Maybe it won't but I won't know without someone's reviewing informing me.
Besides, even among us long time gamers, there are factions that decry a retail $60 game simply because it has less playtime than GTA or Skyrim or whatever.
My infinite runner, Air Supply - 1bit Run got lots of positive reviews (thanks!). But this was my favourite bad review (possibly of all time!):
"2 Stars - Crazy hard right from the start. Did not hear one single song by Air Supply while playing this game."
I mean, that's just brilliant! :D
QS =D
I believe some of the fault lies with Apple as well. The only way for users to give feedback or complain is with a rating that has an attached comment.
Since you're mixing feedback and complaining (the comments) with the emotion that the game gave you (rating), it's only normal that aberrations occur. Some people also intuit that developers follow star rating comments so they abuse it so they get heard (and for some users I'm sure they don't understand the consequences for a low rating - not being promoted by Apple, or dropping in the tops)
Some of the solution would be in giving the users and devs the possibility to talk. More and more game devs take the matter into their own hands and integrate in the game the possibility to feedback, report bugs or suggest improvements - and they actively reply to users. The surprise is to see how positively surprised and delighted the same users that would give a 1 star review are when they get a reply from the dev and see the human side and willingness to listen and improve the game and experience. It's these users that put a lot of emotion and heart in the game and they turn out to be drivers and ambassadors for the game.
But in-game systems are and customer support are COSTLY, especially for a small game dev. Also they are not unified in their user experience, interface and options and this is a barrier for many users. As long as the star rating is so easy to use and doesn't separate rating from comments, the problem will persist.
All I can say Andrew Smith is welcome to the real world. The problem with your article and all of the developers worrying about one stars is this is just the way life works no matter what you do. Perhaps it's just a flaw of human nature but no matter what you offer, half of the people will love it and half of the people I hate it.
The good news is is that it affects everybody on the App Store equally - no one game is more prone to have praise and hatred than any other really, so in the end it all comes out in the wash. Once it's finally realized this is just another cost of doing business, sorta like Apple taking 30% off the top, we can stop gnashing teeth over ugly human nature and move on. The worst possible thing anyone could do is give attention to these wankers.
Although I agree that some one star reviews may be spiteful, I also view the phenomenon as a counterpoint to artificially inflated review scores, such as those from the developer's family and friends, or more sinisterly, from companies hired to provide positive reviews.
Also, let's not forget there exist plenty of incentives, from an ad revenue perspective, for review websites to artificially inflate review scores.
The "I personally do not like quality over quantity" comment is hilarious.
You do see a lot of fickleness in gamers across all platforms. You do see more of it on mobile platforms, probably because the user base is so much larger than the others.
Some of those review comments are amazing though. Really makes you wonder.
great read!
ps i really love ff record keeper but i gave it 1 star cause i wished supercell developed it