Are Reviews Bringing Down Your Game?

The truth hurts my friends because this "theory" is spot on. It's so easy to tear something apart when the consequences are so minimal. Especially in the case of the reviews in the app store. It's not like most sites where you have to sign in and become a member. If there is an issue or whatnot, the person running the site (or whatever it is that you have signed up with) can contact you, respond back, and address any questions you might have. Works fairly well, right? However, that isn't the case in the app store. Devs have no way to really contact or address anyone directly. This leads to lots of unanswered questions and usually tons of bad reviews. For example, on this site if anyone has an issue about anything that I write here I can just reply right back and clear things up. Which does tend to make for more...civil conversations, I hope? In the review process for the app store, we're brutal. In most cases we only leave negative feedback over writing a positive review. Ask yourself this: How many negative reviews have you left compared to positive? Plus, Apple only asks you to "rate" an app when you delete it. What's that about? Isn't that just encouraging us to leave only bad feedback? I mean let's face it, if I'm deleted an app it's because I don't like it and don't want it anymore. Which means it's probably going to get a negative rating...yes? Why can't we get an option for apps we like and keep? Is there even a way for Apple to do that successfully? Who knows? My point is that there seems to be a lot more negative ratings on applications than positive, which how an application will lose stars. If you're like me, once you buy an app and really enjoy it, you almost feel like you've invested in it some how. You want it in the top 25 list. You want to see it have that five star rating. You get personally upset when someone leaves a negative review about it that you don't agree with. Does that then prompt you to leave a positive response? Regardless, the review process is a lot like the old wild west...anything goes. I'd love to see a more productive process in the future. I mean if most basic websites can have discussion boards that are more constructive than the app store why can't Apple? It's just disappointing to see great game applications out there not getting any recognition because of bad reviews that aren't being equaled by positive one's. (this is assuming the game in question is worth the good responses of course) If anything, just don't become another internet ****wad...please?

App Pick of the Week

This week I'm going with the recently released Lemonade Tycoon by EA. It's just like the older version of the game and is still just as fun. The best part...it's free, so what do you got to lose?

Retro Game of the Week

So congratulations to the winner of last week's game, Adam Milecki. He guessed correctly that the game in question was Truxton for the Sega Genesis. Nice job! So this week let's see who can guess this game. As always, I want the game and the system it was played on. Good luck and see you next week...

Related articles