Darkemage - I couldn't agree more. I'm from Sydney, originally Adelaide - I think Americans in general are more like people from Victoria in terms of manners. That said, I think most people these days are rude pigs - also impatient. ^-^;
Here's one we got for our latest app puppet pals. Interestingly we have had overwhelmingly positive written reviews. The majority of our ratings (not written) are 1 star however, presumably from people downloading the free app and deleting it immediately while being prompted to tap 1 star. I almost expect this with free apps though. The interesting thing is none of these 1 star reviewers had taken the time to actually write down why. Until this review... "I wanted to know why the majority of reviews gave this app a one or two star, yet apparently I'm not allowed too! I won't even put the app on my iPad until I see some criticism allowed. I just downloaded the app so I could rate it one star for that reason. I will now delete the app." Apparently this person thinks that I have the ability to approve or disapprove the reviews being left for my app. Also it sounds like he didn't even try our app, he just reviewed it at 1 star as a matter of principle I guess. weird.
Being an Aussie I would really like to know how you find our reviewers. Also I know it's a little unrelated but do your apps sell well in Australia? I find a lot of Aussies don't even know how to use the app store properly and find many friends saying "I've got Angry Birds and Doodle Jump", and have no idea about gems like Crush the Castle and Orion Racer for example.
Making an app free definitely brings in more negative reviews and ratings. I made two apps free temporarily and they each dropped a star! Many bad reviews are just a grumble and grunt, but I've found some of the most expressively obnoxious reviews to be written by toucharcade members. Sometimes it's entertaining, like the guy who said all my apps sucked and the latest one couldn't possibly be good and then complained that he didn't get a promo code. Nevertheless, this is partly why I've cut down on distributing promo codes on toucharcade. Another part of the problem is that many people don't bother to write a review until they want to complain about something - when I started requiring OS 3.0 one user wrote a one-star review saying he'd give me 5 stars as soon as I started supporting OS 2.2 again. Another one recently complained vehemently when I added content that only ran on the iPad. Still, I'm gratified there are some reviewers that come to my defense, and I exercise what little control I have with the Helpful/Not-helpful button and hope the nice reviews come out on top (although I've noticed the web versions of the iTunes page is very slow to update)
Normally all of our reviews from Australia are either very nice or at least very humourous. That said, our most irate 'review' ever came from there too: No clue what this guy's problem with using the App Store was, but it had nothing to do with our game. Still got a 1 star review from him though.
I think this one beats them all Our game Tiki Totems Premium (in short the purpose of the game is to save a tiki idol) received the following review:
I got two one-star reviews from the same person, which were basically not reviews but questions. Translated to English, the "review" goes something like this: "Hi, I got your game when it was free, but I accidentally deleted it and now it's back at .99. When will you make this great game free again?" (one star). Ugh. I tried "reporting" this review - has anyone ever had any luck with that?
It seems like almost half of the 1 star reviews I see for any app are because it crashes while loading. I've never had this problem with any app, but I guess restarting the iDevice almost always solves the problem. When will people learn? On the subject of stupid ratings, I think it's lame that you get asked to rate an app when you delete it. It just makes the reviews biased, since it is so easy for people who didn't like an app to give it a bad rating.
I've been amazed at how many users don't actually know how to reboot their device fully, this has been the main cause of crashes with my App (which is admittedly rather memory intensive) - I had already upon release placed a 'memory warning' page into the application so that if it realised it was running short of memory it requested that people save and reboot their device. However I found two things happened, (1) People complained about the screen and ignored it (often quoting "but I have 10Gb of memory free"), (2) They toggled the device on/off using the power button thinking that was rebooting it. I've added in an explanation of how to reboot your machine in layman's terms and that seems to be helping a bit - but the moral of the story is that your game has to 'just work' for a lot of users ... even basic self-maintenance of their device isn't something they want to do. This situation does lead to some users just continually spamming all apps they purchase with 1 star reviews indicating that they don't 'work' because their device is either faulty (accelerometer being the most common) or because they've never rebooted it ... until there is a system for replying to individual users unfortunately there's not much can be done about it unfortunately.
When my game first came out I tried reporting a couple of reviews which were simply factually inaccurate and nothing ever happened with this in the couple of weeks I checked on them - no idea what sort of 'lag' is involved though and tbh I haven't gone back and checked since (it could be that there are no many such things that it takes a month for them to review a report for instance).
Of course your game must "just work"! You should take the necessary precautions to ensure your game runs fine with the limited resources available. IMHO, you can't blame the user for complaining if a game needs the phone to be rebooted to work properly.
iFishing Lite: "What sick weirdo wtote this game? All was well until i get the message: "you threw back a 5lb fish to room for this one." what kind og twisted fisherman hooks and kills a fish just to throw it back? Its only a game but to be promoting that kind of respectless behavior is just plain wrong. Eat what you catch or dont go fishing." This is just dumb because the fish are kept in the live well and we promote catch and release, not EATING every single fish caught lol. "You just drive the boat around looking for fish while each time you stop to cast the pedofile narrator tells you find a new spot" Puppet Jump: "his is like playin wiv poo and u have to wait ages for the thing to flaming load" Pocket Farm: "I try and buy all farm games available. I continue to find this game frustrating due to it's mechanics and bugs. This game is in dire need of an update. I have never written a negative review on here and I tend to probably rate most apps too high. I am not that hard to please but this app has continued to disappoint from the day I bought it. So far it wins the award of my least favorite farming game and maybe even my least favorite game overall. Fix your game and improve it. You owe us at least that. Ranch Rush which is a farming/time management hybrid blows this game away. I believe this game has some potential but as it stands now it is completely unrealized potential." That's a lot of negative without saying anything specific. Another: "When I purchased this game the description promised weekly updated. That has been removed from the description and there have not been any new decorations to buy in at least two months. Who knows what other promises they will punk out on in the future. The game is fun, but I think the company lacks integrity." Actually Apple was taking so long to review the app I finished all the updates I had planned into one update. iFishing Saltwater: "When I got this app my I pod started to smell like cows" uh..
What the hell does that even mean? I'm in decent shape LOL! He's the only person on my ignore list here, only due to private messages, not normal posts. That's hilarious...I think...?
