rating trails fair or unfair?

[Terrin]

So at work today we were looking over the ratings for some games and we seen some low scores on quite a few titles (some are not surprising) but a few of the comments looking them over surprised me.

Such as on burn it all overral rating is 2/5 with 7 ratings

6 out of 7 gave it a 1 to 2 all saying trail was to short and the person who purchased the game said it was extremely fun.

On Lunar Landing quite a few of the ratings said 1 or 2 stars saying trial wasn't long enough. (or downloading the trial and rated it on the price but I can see that)

Katamari same thing saying trial was not enough to enjoy game, (alot of control complaints but to be expected).

My compaint is these people rating based on trial are lowering scores on some games that they judged on a demo I know its part of the final product but on a glance of just scrolling through the marketplace alot of people may be turned off burn it all without trying it due to a 2 star rating, so is it fair to the games being able to be rated on people using trials.

(just learned you can rate items you dont even have downloaded which I think should be changed).

So what do you guys think on this is it fair or unfair?

 

[cdook]

I personally don't think you should be allowed to rate a game or app unless you own it. Like you said it'll cut out complaints. That being said every app has this problem, so if a game has 5 stars then somethings going good.

 

[mbudden]

It's rather disappointing seeing that people will rate down an app because the trail was limited or just because they weren't offered the full fledged application experience.

 

[supadryz]

Have to say being able to rate trails is wrong, some of the reviews people write are a joke. It doesn't work on my phone 0/5 rating, to expensive 0/5 etc, etc....

 

[Dark Mirage]

It's probably not fair to rate trials, but I know most people can get just the impression they need from them.

If you can't like a game after the first few levels, or an hour of play, chances are its not going to change drastically enough that you'll feel any different.

 

[Paul Acevedo]

Rating trials is definitely unfair. The first slice of a game often isn't enough to make a proper judgment, especially when a learning curve is involved. Heck, if I wrote a review based on Tentacles' trial instead of the full game it'd be way more positive...

 

[starblade876]

Are some of you guys' auto-corrects failing you on 'trial' vs 'trail'?

Anyway, yeah, I think it's unfair. In fact, I almost want an intelligence test to be done before someone can review. I've seen bad ratings in other apps that just say "doesn't work" when it's probably just some ID-10-T issue on their part.

 

[Dark Mirage]

Rating trials is definitely unfair. The first slice of a game often isn't enough to make a proper judgment, especially when a learning curve is involved. Heck, if I wrote a review based on Tentacles' trial instead of the full game it'd be way more positive...

Ugh, that's so true... I guess it depends. You never really know what you're in for.

I tried the Bodycount demo today and I could tell right away it was a crappy, mediocre shooter. Why you would even publicly display your game has a terrible frame rate, jerky controls, and really poor visuals is beyond me. That's the kind of demo where you know you're getting an accurate, ugly snapshot of what you're in for.

But then you have a game like Tentacles, which starts off brilliantly... Then about half-way through it just becomes a frustrating annoyance.

Trials are a mixed bag. Some do them right, some do them wrong, some will completely mislead you (like the ones where you get half the games weapons in the starting level).

 

[wellsmanfu]

Rating a trial is definitely wrong, but what really gets me are people who rate a game with zero stars because it's not available to download. That has nothing to do with the game, it's most likely some marketplace issue or because you're not in the US (which I don't like, that sucks for people in other countries). It would be nice if the marketplace made you at least download the game to be able to comment on it.

And I like the idea of an intelligence test, but lets take it a step further. You have to pass the test to even get a smart phone at all. THAT would help fix alot of these "issues" people have with their phones and/or apps.

 

[selfcreation]

Allot of haters , half the games i own ( and i find are awesome ) have below 3 rating ,, and i see some games that SUUCK!! bad graphics , not stable , terrible game play with 7 stars , lol...

considering the Marketplace is still young , i wouldn’t be surprise if DEv`s had there friend go on and rate games. and down rate games that our competitors. specially with 7-8 ratings , its very easy to FAKE ratings for competition sake.

My app PWNS , yours suck…… lol

 

[Jeanclaudebaktiste]

Is it possible to rate the Game more than once? That is imho a bug in the system.

Everyone can rate everey game without buying it. It Would be better to establich a system that you can rate game after a playing time of 20 minutes …

 

[Fleon]

Is it sad that I had to read half the posts to figure out you meant trials?

 

[Terrin]

sorry yea I was typing on my work phone and it auto corrects everything to what it thinks the word should be so I just let it go half the time.

But on topic yea I see that you get what the game is about on the trial but still your basing your vote on sometimes 5 *maybe 10 mintues of the product* when soem games take hours to get into such as tentacles. and on that anybody could download the trial is what I mena to try it themselves with no cost so I mean couldn't it be only full purchases get to rate the product as we got the full picture of what the game is.

*a good example is still burn it all as its got 7 ratings 6 of which are 1-2 stars due to the fact that the trial wasn't long enough* now anybody scrolling over the titles looking for a great title will see 2 stars and not even click it to view pictures (it happens trust me) and move onto the next game.

 

[jonnyvix]

All in all I've had like 250 reviews and I can count a lot of zero-stars-not-even-a-comment or even things along the lines of 2 stars and "make it free for 5 stars" lol...
Imho trial based reviews should just be sent to the app hub developer account : its feedback and its always (well most of the times) valuable, but sometimes its just pure spam.

 

[Reflexx]

I believe that most people actually read the review before purchasing the game. It's well known that some people will just rate something low because it's not free.

But there are some things that can be legitimately rated through a trial. Like if the controls suck or if there are frequent freezes or crashes on a particular device.

 

[Paul Acevedo]

But there are some things that can be legitimately rated through a trial. Like if the controls suck or if there are frequent freezes or crashes on a particular device.

True, but I think those things could be expressed just fine by actual purchasers of the game. Too many opinions (especially from people who've invested less time in a product) creates much more noise than necessary.

 

[Reflexx]

Though, I wonder how many people actually buy a game just based on the number of stars it has.

I think it would matter a lot more if there weren't trials in a game. But since there are trials, I bet most people read reviews to see if it's just worth downloading the trial.

I know when I see someone give a game only 1 or 2 stars, it catches my attention and I look to see what they said. And if it's something stupid or lame I ignore it and move on to the next one. If most of the low reviews are stupid complaints, and the high reviews are about gameplay, I'm pretty likely to give the game a try. Then make up my mind from the trial.

 

[Terrin]

I know 3 people at my office that will not even look at games its its low stars and they dont read what they say just the overral rating if they want a game they go to the highest rated game and look at the pics if it seems good they dl the trial, so the general masses ratigns sometimes matters before trials do.