Fri, Nov 18, 2011 | 15:19 GMT
Jurassic Park: The Game developers post glowing user reviews on Metacritic
Telltale employees have posted user reviews for Jurassic Park: The Game on Metacritic, and while such a thing isn’t a new occurrence, it sparked a bit of a red flag with Gamespot when it noticed four 10/10 reviews going up during the same time frame.
After doing a bit of legwork to confirm the reviews were posted by employees, the site contacted Telltale, which said it doesn’t make a habit out of censoring its employees’ online actions.
“However, it is being communicated internally that anyone who posts in an industry forum will acknowledge that they are a Telltale employee,” said the spokesperson. “In this instance, two people who were proud of the game they worked on, posted positively on Metacritic under recognizable online forum and XBLA account names.”
As of this post, there are only three critic reviews posted to Metacritic, with Cheat Code Central handing it a 6/10, Game Informer giving it a 5, and 1UP doling out a D plus.
User reviews, are a different story all together, and when combined – even with the now five 10/10 scores, and one 8/10 – the average score comes out to 4.3.
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Posted in: Action, Adventure, PC, PS3, Telltale, Xbox 360, reviews
Tags: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: The Game, metacritic
13 comments
#1
rrw
18/11/11, 3:31 pm
oh cmon is it wrong for employee to post their own review. it maybe Bias but it have little effect to overall reception
#2
Optimaximal
18/11/11, 4:03 pm
It’s not the point. It’s hardly professional for people employed by the company to astroturf the game and artificially bump the Metacritic rating, even if it is the user rating and not the critical one.
#3
rrw
18/11/11, 4:09 pm
so is it really matter?
i can make review “this game is awesome” 100x but people dont really care about it
#4
schnide
18/11/11, 4:46 pm
@rrw
Yes, it is wrong. Is that answer enough for you? No? Okay..
Reviews are there to guide you as to whether something is good or not. To do this, you need to be able to trust the review. If the review is made by the person who made the product, they are very likely to say that something is good even when it isn’t. Therefore, you can’t trust the review.
Does this make sense to you now? If not, read what I just again until it does.
#5
G1GAHURTZ
18/11/11, 4:51 pm
I’ve done similar things before.
Who wouldn’t want to get paid for their hard work?
#6
SplatteredHouse
18/11/11, 5:26 pm
They should be ashamed, that’s some real shit to be pulling. I don’t care about who did it before, or who regularly plants in there, you tell me that TellTale have been exposed to this, and I hold them in a good grace and I’m not happy to have read this.
I’m sorry, but they’re not the buying public yet they’re stepping in to that forum under such a deception. What a ringing endorsement that is, to be concerned from the beginning that your game may not be able to cut it, to the extent that you feel the need to do something like this.
That’s a user review area. They’re spitting in the face of the paying players, by suggesting through their actions that their game needs to be at the top of people’s attentions, through some manner of concern that paying players would be unable to decide for themselves the game’s merit.
In the end, there’s no good that can possibly result from a company/its employees messing about like that. It ought to be a practice universally condemned.
#7
KrazyKraut
18/11/11, 5:34 pm
I like my own created “ginger-garlic chicken with rice” meal….but other ppl hate it. So, I had to change the recipe that other ppl like it. and now everybody is happy. i am happy because other ppl like it.
#8
Len
18/11/11, 6:53 pm
Post the recipe, let us decide!
#9
Big_Boss
18/11/11, 7:10 pm
shitty game is shitty, deal with it devs
#10
The_Red
18/11/11, 7:12 pm
This is definitely wrong though I think they are doing this as a response to the official reviews. Most online reviews are really REALLY harsh and the game is getting a lot of really bad scores. The thing is that I actually liked a little of it I say, It was less than an hour but the sections I got to experience were mostly fun (Though the delays and sudden loads was really annoying).
#11
LOLshock94
18/11/11, 7:15 pm
Amazes me how they even think this was right.
#12
rrw
18/11/11, 8:31 pm
@4 is not like you will read only one review to judge the game =.=
#13
IL DUCE
18/11/11, 11:11 pm
Lol when I read those on the 15th looking to see if any critic reviews had come out for it yet I knew it had to be the Telltale guys…
The problem is they didn’t even review it honestly, they gave it several 10/10s which is baffling since there are plenty of games that do what they do much better…
It just goes to show you no one is different in this industry, they are all trying to get paid so they are just as bad as EA or Activision…when you try to sell a shitty product to people by rating it highly and giving it glowing reviews undeservedly then yes, that’s an issue, and it’s phony…