Topic: Review Bombing

I was chatting with a friend last and we ended up talking about "Review Bombing" after she had watched the latest Peter Pan and how it is getting low viewer scores.

We have all heard the term thrown about when popular games or movies get downvoted on aggregate sites like Metacretic, but what is the difference between people not liking a product and voicing opinions and people "review bombing" a product.

Most of the controversy comes from media that embraces a more Liberal leaning world view and includes themes aligned with this ideal - gender/identity politics and forced diversity.

Why is it that if someone doesn't like these ideas thier views are seen to count less than someone with a more progressive perspective?
Also why does this "score bombing" thought not go both ways with people giving media 10's when they don't deserve it.

I personally love aggregate sites and find it gives a decent overview, if more people hate it than love it doesn't that give a fair reflection of quality and content regardless of the reasons they don't like it.

The only thing I would change would be to have some form of system in place to ensure that only people who have actually watched/played something are able to leave a review. This would go a long way to stop political bias coming in to try and sway a score.

What are your thoughts on this topic, and please don't use this as an excuse to argue about politics as that wasn't my intent. I just thought this was an interesting topic worth debate.

@Chaotic_Neutral I thought this would be about review bombing? Bringing up left vs right, right vs left, in a forum will always turn toxic. Even here, this mostly nice place, it doesn't matter how nicely, or well thought out it is. It's unfortunate, but predictable. If it doesn't get locked today, it's only because mods are on their weekend.

The point of score aggregators in to show what the average person thought. Review bombing/floating is where you deliberately attempt to make the score as low/high as possible, sometimes using duplicate accounts, throwing off the average.

Before this thread gets annihilated, I wonder if the pre-release Mario Movie critic scores count as some form of review bombing. The 30+ year old cranky folks hated it but literally everyone else that wasn’t a professional goof, sorry I mean critic, thought it was just fine or even great!

That's not really the same point as the rest of your question - people can dislike something for political reasons without it being review bombing. But if they're giving a game 1/10 because it has gay people in it or something, that obviously doesn't reflect the actual quality of the game.

And to answer the quoted question outside of the context of review bombing, I imagine it's because people with more progressive views will inherently disagree with the kind of person you're talking about, so their opinion won't matter to them. If I see someone saying a game is bad because it pushes a woke agenda for pronoun-badged snowflakes I'll just ignore that review (or it may even make me more interested in the game).

I will definitely drop unlimited nuclear bombs on every rated M games since I hate every single rated M games.
Bias? Who cares!
I don't care what other peoples said, but when I found very inappropriate games, I will demolish those games with my nuclear bomb opinions.
How about the score?
It will be always negative unlimited from me or in other words evil rubbish stuffs.
Woops... I think I already drop my nuclear bomb here.

Yeah another ticket for me to punch!

I don’t think this is review bombing, just a difference In Opinion.

Oh @eel.

In b4 lock. Please don’t make political threads trying to stir up arguments.

Thing is subtext in movies has always existed, it's just now people are having it pointed out to them on the social inter webbing medias unlike before when people would watch it blissfully unaware. Plus they then they get stirred up by the zeitgeist trying to belong.

Scores are boring anyway. I like the debate, articulation and argument of art which is becoming a lost skill as people just repost memes and YouTube vids to express themselves. Unless it's grandfathered in user reviews are pretty useless nowadays as folk just click 10 or 1 which is a shame as there’s movies you need to “get” but they are just being valued on the surface level. Gamers are the worst for this as they have an idea of games must be the bestest experience so everything that’s not a 9 or 10/10 is unplayable garbage and then trying to apply that idea to music, books and movies which is more down to interpretation and feelings.

Although I am sucker for lists, like 10 best games with googley eyes or 10 best movies where the McGuffin is a sandwich as well as using them as general kickstarter for conversation.

I still value movie critics because well they actually like movies. If it was up to a general consensus of the masses then low rent stuff like Minions, Shrek and Marvel would only ever be considered yet I hold a lot less value in music and game critics.

TL:DR people are just stupid.

Reviews have become a mockery of their former selves… they’re less about recommending the quality of a game and more a statement. Consumers are also so fixated on numbers slapped on the bottom of a review that they often skip past a well thought out review to see what score it has, and Lord forbid it isn’t a 10 out of 10 otherwise it’s automatically trash. It all boils down to the rapid shortening of our collective attention spans, which has made us completely dumb when it comes to looking beyond scores.

Review bombing usually tells me one of two things, either the game is very polarising, or the game has a fundamental issue that people hope to force a change to fix through lobbying. Otherwise user scores can be indicative of a game’s overall quality, more so than critics, just look at the Mario movie. Sometimes the critics just lose that touch with actual consumers.

@TheJGG I’m guilty of doing this in the past, I try actually read the reviews now.

@WoomyNNYes I wouldn't exactly call this thread political, and so far aside from @Anti-Matter trolling and people clamoring to silence the OP, this thread seems to be holding together and staying civil.

@LilyGoMEOW It’s not that it is, it’s that the topic makes it really easy to head that way, but as long as it stays as it is, we good!

@LilyGoMEOW You obviously didn't read the first post. :/

Some really good points here, good job keeping the discussion civil.

I will admit that I'm guilty for skipping through a review to get down to the score as I tend to go on my phone in between other things so don't have that much time.
I think that's why I like Metacritic so much as it gives an overall view of how it was received - including the nutjobs from both sides of the political spectrum.

@Tasuki I tried me best to stay away from the political side of the debate but it is something that heavily impacts a lot of these "review bombing" topics.
Surely as rational people we can discuss these topics without it descending into an argument or flame war.
If I wanted to start an argument I would have gone to Reddit not here as the Mods are way to quick to shut stuff down.

@Chaotic_Neutral Right because reviewing bombing is a political moment now.

@Tasuki low scores usually gets labeled as review bombing. Which was what prompted the thought.

When is a low view user score justified and when is it seen as review bombing?

This