I was on Twitter recently when I saw news that the new DLC for Horizon Forbidden West, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, was getting review bombed on Metacritic, to the point that Metacritic is going to now be more strict when moderating user reviews in the future. The reason for the review bombing of Burning Shores seems silly to me as I have mentioned that I often play female characters in video games and I tend to choose a female partner if I engage with the romance in the game. However, I do think it’s worth sharing my thoughts on review bombing and the impact it can have, both positive and negative, on video games.
Understandably, review bombing is a relatively recent phenomenon that has come into being with the rise in the internet and the ability for people to leave their own reviews for products. Review bombing can apply to any product or service that allows people to review it and its purpose is to artificially adjust the rating. There are some examples of review bombing being used to improve the score of a product or service but the overwhelming majority of review bombings attempt to drive down the score. It’s also important to note that these review bombs are typically unrelated to the quality of the product or service itself but are due to other factors such as politics, societal issues, the actions of the developers etc.
It’s also interesting to note that Metacritic isn’t the first company to try to moderate user reviews. A particularly important example was when Valve, who run Steam, announced that they were implementing a new measure that would detect when off-topic review bombing occurs and remove their contribution to the calculated user score while still retaining the reviews in question for people to read if they want. Their definition of an off-topic review bombing is “where the focus of those reviews is on a topic that we consider unrelated to the likelihood that future purchasers will be happy if they buy the game, and hence not something that should be added to the Review Score.”
I will refrain from giving my thoughts on any one particular review bombing incident as it is very subjective but I do want to share my thoughts on the method of review bombing itself. On one hand, I understand the rationale behind it. It can be hard to make your voice heard sometimes and being able to affect something as public as the user score is a way to achieve this. However, it’s so easily misused and can give a disproportionately loud voice to a vocal minority over what may be seen societally as petty issues.
There are occasions where I would consider the subject of review bombing to be legitimate but, for the most part, review bombing is more of a problem than a solution. In the case of video games, review bombing about topics unrelated to the game itself harms it in a way that will, most probably, not be relevant to the majority of customers but may choose to ignore it simply based on the user score. It also hurts users who leave legitimate reviews during the same timeframe as a review bombing campaign and end up having their voice lost because of it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s far more effective methods to protest an aspect of the company, politics etc. than by review bombing and, as you can see from the above news, it’s quite likely that the effectiveness of review bombing is only going to decline.
While I can’t completely write review bombing off, it’s become increasingly looked down upon and I genuinely believe there are more effective methods of protest, that will take more effort to organise of course, that will prove to be more constructive, will not attract the ire of everyday customers and offer the chance to show that they are not a minority. Let me know what you think about my thoughts on review bombing and video games, what aspects you agree and disagree with, whether you believe that review bombing is an effective form of protest or if it’s unlikely to achieve the results it desires and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.