I find that user scores are plagued by polarized fanboy mob action. Users will rally to flood places like Metacritic with bad reviews to punish developers that they don't like for personal (or herd) reasons.
Virtually all of the negative user reviews for Gone Home demonstrate the "Gone Home is not a game" meme. These are not reviews from people who think for themselves and engage in actual criticism. These are the reviews of people who are mad because the "gamer" milieu tells them they should be mad about Gone Home.
It's the same thing as when people ding Fez because "Phil Fish is an asshole." Or they write off Minecraft because "Notch was lucky."
Maybe, just maybe those people brought Gone Home expecting a game by the old definition and were disappointed? The condescension towards actual gamers is getting more and more irritating. It is not users fault when he does not like the product.
I found user reviews more useful the professional when deciding what to buy. Professionals tend not to tell me what I need to know to decide and tend to like games I do not.
You might not be aware of this, but (for some reason I don't fully understand) Gone Home became a target of the gamergate folk. This is definitely a case where I wouldn't trust user reviews, because there really was an army of trolls out to get the game.
Nonsense. Gone home had user score 5.4 in January[1] 5.3 in February[2] and then climbed back up to 5.4 and kept it till now. First #gamergate tweet ever happened in August 28.8.2014 [3].
So, if the gone home is target, #gamergate activity hardly budged its score.
Actual gamer is someone who plays games for pleasure e.g. the customer. I added the for pleasure so that game tester or somebody similar who do not like the games much but do it to pay food does not count as gamer.
I know that some people put more limits on the definition (minimum number of hours played, type of game etc), but I did not meant to do so for the purpose of my previous comment.
Real game for me would be something that requires more activity from player then just passively experiencing it. Either some skill based challenge or puzzle and possibility to fail or at least get week score.
Not a game is not necessary derogatory descriptor. I love reading and watching movies, but neither are games. Comics read on phone or laptop is not a game, but you click things to turn pages and occasionally have to think to put together clues. A thing can be interactive experience (e.g. not game) or whatever and still be fine.
I'm ok with the fact that there will by grey zone between games and non-games. If you say "X is somewhere between game and non-game" you still conveyed much more of useful information then as if you lump everything with pictures into large group "game".
I find that official scores are plagued by corruption and wrong incentives in place (game critics get paid by advertising from game companies... how twisted is that? If this were in any other serious business nobody would take it seriously). And don't tell me we don't have examples of that.
I think user reviews can be great. I read a lot of them before buying a game. They are often way more detailed than anything coming from actual "journalists", because a number of users can be expert a certain type of games instead of journalists playing any kind of junk out there for money.
Don't discard social media, you are on Hacker News after all.
Virtually all of the negative user reviews for Gone Home demonstrate the "Gone Home is not a game" meme. These are not reviews from people who think for themselves and engage in actual criticism. These are the reviews of people who are mad because the "gamer" milieu tells them they should be mad about Gone Home.
It's the same thing as when people ding Fez because "Phil Fish is an asshole." Or they write off Minecraft because "Notch was lucky."