Let me preface this by saying I am not involved in the game industry, so there are no sour grapes here.
If you play a game for, say, 223 Hours, would you give it a negative review?
Note that in the modern world of patches, I understand that a change can make a formerly good game into a bad one. That is not what I’m talking about here.
Don’t get me wrong: you can play a game for 223 hours and still have all manner of problems with it or things you’d like to see improved. I just can’t imagine dedicating that much time to a game and, given two choices, negative or positive, going with negative.
I don’t know, I’m inclined to think that someone who has played a game for 223 hours probably knows what they’re talking about. As opposed to someone who only played a half hour, let’s say. Given that things like “hate watching” exist, I no longer try to second guess exactly why someone would play a game for hundreds of hours and then leave a negative review.
I don’t get it. I get, in most years, about 150-200 max of gaming time. There are only about 15 games I’ve ever put 100 hours into, and every one of them I love. Only 2 have crossed 200 hours.
If I’ve got that time into a game, it’s not just a positive review, its a 5 star equivalent. Spending that time on a game you dislike? Hell no.
I played through Baldur’s Gate. That was a lot of freakin’ hours. I’d definitely give that a big fat negative review. Why did I keep playing it? I guess I was always hoping it would get better, since people I respected loved the game.
So yeah, I can totally see it. It’s just much less likely to happen now that I’m older that. As a noted philosopher once said: Ain’t nobody got time for that.
This has come up before, usually alongside discussions of review-bombing. The most important thing here is that for some games, like Football Manager, there’s legitimately no alternative on the market, so if you’re into managing a soccer team, you’re stuck with those games whether you like them or not, and it’s easy to see a thousand-hour negative review there.
For me, the reviews (positive or negative) with ten minutes logged are far more offensive.
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the details of the review.
That’s because I have played the game before, and I actually think it’s a good review! The points the reviewer makes are certainly reasonable reasons to dislike the game. But these things are all on the table from Hour 1. I just can’t imagine persisting through 223 hours without there being other, extenuating factors you haven’t mentioned.
I’m not sure I personally could go 200+ hours and dislike a game enough to give a negative review, but I can understand it. I’ve played games longer than i should have given the amount I disliked it, or the little amount I liked it.
I’ve got 105 hours in Empire Total War and would give it a thumbs down. I put in a bunch of hours in Diablo 3 and I can’t say I liked it. Tyranny, Two Worlds, Crusader kings 2 - all games over 60 hours and wouldn’t recommend.
The problem is that there is only thumbs up and thumbs down on Steam. What should be the answer for a game that you neither liked or hated? Take Tyranny. I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Should that get a thumbs up or down?
I still wonder if I put more time into CK2 whether it would finally click. So while there are games I dislike enough to never even think about playing more, there are some games where I wonder whether they may eventually cross the threshold from bad to good.
There are some games that I play way out of proportion to how much I enjoy them. I’ve got 64 hours into Skyrim. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t like 3D dungeons, fiddling with my inventory, or running back and forth between shops. It’s much better at getting you to keep playing than it is at actually being enjoyable. But I don’t know if I’d go so far as to give it a negative review. Clearly I didn’t get bored enough to stop playing, so it must have been doing something right.
The answer to the question is yes but only in extenuating circumstances. A new patch that changed the game for the worse, a corrupted save file or game mechanic that hindered the game only in the latter stages could be a reason to do so.
For instance, I have played Stellaris about 250 hours. After the last patch I would give it a negative review because I do not enjoy the game nearly as much as I did. I could see giving a game like FM a negative review after such time if I encountered a bug that corrupted my progress or I found that the replenishment of players was not up to snuff (as happened in one of the late 90s versions). I might also see it if the game has been in an extended EA cycle where the player was promised something that never materialized.
But on a feature that is available from hour one? Not really.
If at the time you give the review your experience is negative, then leave a negative review. Hopefully you’ll explain why so it makes sense that you spent all the time playing and now dislike it. This will happen more often as more games start selling incomplete too which is another angle… I’ll negative a game that promised me something but never delivered, and I might play it earlier since often the EA stuff claims to let you be part of the process or something.
I also played empire:total war for 100 hours before putting it down and relegating it to my list of bad games, as well as it informing my non-recommendation to my (very patient) friends.
I think this came about from:
Being hopeful and exploring more and more of the game / systems / difficulty level / battle variation etc. in an effort to see if there was anything worth playing in there (I had played and enjoyed immensely Medieval 2),
Having the spare time to dig into it,
At that time, not having a very high threshold for “won’t bother with games that aren’t good”.
I think that hours played can be used as an initial proxy for positive/negative review, but I think it’s entirely reasonable to play a game for many hours and come to the conclusion that you would not recommend it to someone else.
I just treat these types of reviews as a thumbs up.
I’ve only crossed 100 hours a few times in my life. So if someone has 300 hours and gives a thumbs down I treat that as a glowing review…I don’t even need to read the text. With my schedule I doubt I would ever get that far or deep into the game so it is unlikely I will notice the types of issues a 100, 200, or 300 hour player would.
Games change. And just because you’ve invested a lot of time into a game doesn’t mean its good or that it should be ultimately recommended. MMO’s are prone to this kind of thought, I think. Games that suck you in at first but then put up a paywall (maybe black desert online? haven’t played but have heard this criticism)
on the other hand, the game i’ve been playing recently a lot is PUBG, which has an assload of negative reviews that are just BS. if you’ve played it for 500 hours and just have some annoyances with the developers not adding things fast enough, you are missing the point of a review imo
I have played both Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider to the end. I wouldn’t recommend either. I don’t regret playing them (though I kind of regret buying them, especially Rise). But at the same time I know some people might enjoy the gameplay more than I did, or not be bothered with the storytelling as much as I was.
In the end, I usually refrain myself from reviewing stuff, unless I’m particularly passionate about said stuff, for good or for ill.
