Dragon Age 2 Dev Posts Perfect Userscore to Metacritic, EA Defends...Should We?

Why is the text so small?

trying to fix. Hold on.

Its a shame how low Bioware has fallen, not surprising how low EA has gone though in some of the older stories.

Well, this just added on to the pure suck of today.

meh, i agree with the review so it ain't so bad

That's just despicable.

Well that's pretty...I dunno. Kinda makes me question if there are any other games on metacritic that have had third developers scored.

In perspective, it was only one person who did it. I could understand a developer working hard on a game, and then nerd raging when they see other people bash it.

I'd be calling foul a lot more if maybe a bunch of accounts were linked to developers trying to purposefully raise the score, but as of now it's just one person. I'm kinda finding it hard to blame Bioware as a whole for this.

As wrong as it is,I wouldn't be surprised if it was just one employee acting of their own accord. Otherwise those userscores would look a lot better. Speaking of which,I'm not too fond of blatant Bioware trolls bombing the page with 0s and 1s. "Kane & Lynch 2" has a higher user rating for god's sake. DA2....a disappointment? Fair. Mediocre? Maybe. But a 0/10 game? Come the fuck on now.

I am pretty sure his score was in vein to the ridiculous 4.2 user score DA2 has on Metacritic.

I wouldn't be as disgruntled by this if the developer hadn't said that everyone else's valid opinions were nonsense.

Meh, regardless of how i feel about a game or developer i think an employee acting under his own volition and doing something skeevy like this ultimately says little about anyone other than the employee himself. You really cant blame EA or Bio for this, its like how wikipedia can and has been used for damage control. It may be morally repulsive but its also completely within the rules of the system and individuals doing this shouldnt be reflective of a whole corporation.

The pic that apparently started the controversy:http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1838/1300131100311.png
parody review by "BioWareEmployee" :http://www.metacritic.com/user/BioWareEmployee

However if one wants to hate on ea or bioware, theyre serving up some pretty good reasons with the securom/DADC non disclosure scandal and the unsettling bioware forum bans resulting in people being unable to play the game they legally bought for $60.(dont call EA the devil on Bioware forums, FYI, seriously) The future of the game industry perhaps?

Meh, It's not like metacritic user reviews are taken seriously by anybody. I doubt anybody even reads them.

Look at the 50 people who rated Dragon Age 2 with a 1 the day the game came out. Do you honestly think those people played the game all the way through? Most probably didn't play it at all.

Whats the big deal? It was a user review.

That is pretty low, even for EA.

This is sad. The feeling I get from this is that he/she didn't feel that the game was as good as they expected it to be and was just trying to convince themselves that it was.

So the guy should burn in hell for reviewing his own game? Harsh. So if I draw a picture or make a sculpture, step back and say, "hey this is pretty damn good!" my opinion is completely invalid.

What SHOULD be debated is if he just saying that to influence people to buy the game or not.

Either way I don't care, neither should anyone else to be honest.

It was a user review. WHO CARES?!

Hey, dont go so hard on the guy. He is well within his rights to review his own game. HIS OWN GAME WHICH IS AMAZING. BUY IT. BUY IT. BUY IT. BUY IT.

well, it was only a user review. Would imagine it is frustrating working on a game with nothing but loud, dismissive criticism from everyone based on assumptions. Perhaps should have been more up front with his position but regardless I am not too put off by it.

People have been rallying for a long time to complain about everything without really giving it a chance. Everyone seems to just want to hate it for an arbitrary reason and pick out any detail, even things such as "Hawke's eyes aren't very good, I won't buy it".

I would say he would be well within his rights to say that people should play it and then feel free to point things out. Some things may have been better with a longer development cycle but for the most part I find the game very enjoyable, dialogue flows better and companions pitch in more.

Although the dialogue is a bit more "simple" in presentation it is essentially the same thing with a similar amount of options. Many conversations in such RPGs are not branching trees, they are more interwoven, where many times out of several options most of them will elicit the same response with the tree looping in on itself.

It was perhaps a little underhand that he didn't reveal his position, but he is within his right to at least try to defend something he worked on when everyone is lined up to pounce on any little sleight to point out that Bioware now sucks and is the spawn of satan, etc. Though he has simply made matters worse in that regard.

I enjoyed the 50 hours the game lasted (10 less than origins) with me, and I found a lot of the interactions interesting, also having a voiced character tends to help them relate better to companions. Rather than being some awkward mute stood shuffling on the spot as a companion reels off a lengthy exposition.

In my opinion Bioware turned out an enjoyable game with impressive scope considering the alloted short development cycle. Would have liked them to have more time to make the environments more varied, but the most important parts of the game such as the story and characters are still there moving it forward and I very much enjoyed it.

Even if it's just a user review, makes you wonder who are the kind of people working at Bioware like to where one of their own makes such a statement and is back up by EA.

I really think the guy that discovered this had waaay too much time on his hands >.>

I skimmed by the headline of this story on kotaku as well I believe, didn't really interest me, but I enjoy the way you write Joseph so when I saw the post here I thought I'd check it out. Don't really have an opinion on it, as a writer I tend to be sensitive to people critiquing my work as well, so I can see where the guy is coming from and it is only a user review. Either way I really enjoy your writing, you use interesting analogies and your opinions are always sprinkled with just the right amount of sarcasm, wit and humor.

After further digging into the legalities of such activity, the Reddit user who broke the story (GatoFiasco) posted a followup that explained the FTC's standpoint. From the FTC Guide Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising: (http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf)

"§ 255.5. Example 8: An online message board designated for discussions of new music download technology is frequented by MP3 player enthusiasts. They exchange information about new products, utilities, and the functionality of numerous playback devices. Unbeknownst to the message board community, an employee of a leading playback device manufacturer has been posting messages on the discussion board promoting the manufacturer’s product. Knowledge of this poster’s employment likely would affect the weight or credibility of her endorsement. Therefore, the poster should clearly and conspicuously disclose her relationship to the manufacturer to members and readers of the message board."

I agree this is definitely the sort of thing that should be accompanied by full disclosure of the fact that the user works for the company making the game. Sure 1 or 2 reviews out of 1600+ doesn't affect the numeric score, but it's a matter of principle really. It kind of calls into question why Metacritic even has user scores though, since they're almost always polar extreme votes. Every damn game is a 0 or a 10.

No offense Joseph, I truly enjoyed this article, but I have to imagine that Bioware and EA have this sorta mind set, even if they were to read this article

http://tinyurl.com/47sqayw

this is why devs shouldn't be reviewing their own game. if they rate it low, people will think it sucks, if they rate it too high, people will think theres a bias.

WTF happened to Bioware!? EA not soo surprising tho....

Remember when this was just found, lold hard. There was a neat image on /v/ which showed the steps the dude took to find the guy out.

I agree that it seems a bit distasteful, but a company can't be held accountable for a developer's personal opinion of a game - you have to prove the connection before crying foul. That's true of any industry. However, if there's a history of questionable ethical conduct, I think that this type of non-legal exposure of the user's identity will create more than enough backlash if they were actually trying anything stupid. It's particularly uncomfortable because Metacritic is using a patented scoring system that claims to provide unbiased information, and it's for-profit; if we were talking about someone's private site/review archives, it'd be much harder to take one user review seriously.

This isn't so bad if it turns out that was the way that person actually thinks, but I think it's dumb to pretend you're someone you aren't. Why can't a developer just come out and say that he likes the game? Not too hard.

Had it not been for the Metacritic run era that EA has ushered in this wouldn't be an issue at all. So many developers and companies that are funded by large publishers have their fate determined by an arbitrary Metacritic score. Overall the reviews have been very positive for the game. Aside from the user score being low because the only people taking their time to write something are complaining because everyone else is, oh I don't know, playing the game! Everyone bitched and moaned about Mass Effect 2's changes and it was still a unanimous Game of the Year at most places. People need to calm down and stop being babies when the game they've hyped up so much isn't the golden piece of heaven the dreamed it to be (that being said I enjoy the game quite a bit, just as much as the original in fact).

I really don't want to take this as a definitive sign that Bioware is changing (regressing), but I might have to.