A WAY TO DIFFERENTIATE REVIEWS WHETHER IT'S FOR THE DEMO OR THE FULL GAME?

Yes, or mark the reviews demo, completed, etc.The reviewer should type this in however. As you said you may need to redo the way things are set up to reflect the reality of circumstances- form follows function. Of Even if you decide to limit reviews to only full games people will still submit demos for feedback..Reviews are one type of feedback That shouldn't be retroactive, BTW, especially with ABL 2.1. Honestly, if demos are being reviewed too then mark that. In a way it sort of gives a history of the development process to be able to read reviews at different stages. Not every stage needs a review though- there may be a great deal of difference between versions 1.0 and 2.0 , and possibly an appreciable difference between 2.5 and 3, but no point in bothering between 1 and 1.3 for example.

i am fully behind F-G's idea.

post=136956
Perhaps games can only have previews (as opposed to reviews) before they are completed/cancelled. These previews do not have formal ratings. Only once a game is completed/cancelled can it receive reviews that have formal ratings.

This.

Why don't we just have a little tag next to reviews that state which demo was reviewed?

It might not solve the overall rating of the game issue, but it'd allow people to see at a glance which demo was reviewed and which reviews represent the current generation of demo. It'd be nice for games with several reviews (or review periods!).

Older reviews could be shimmied down to let the newer reviews (for the newer generation, that is) have the spotlight. Some people release updates and new demos quite frequently, so this would accommodate smaller changes as well since it probably wouldn't be disregarding all older information.

Also, I think reviews are an important element of the process. If I were to ever release a demo (YOU KNOW IT COULD HAPPEN MAYBE) then I'd like to see scores and real reviews, so that I know exactly what people feel the game's weaknesses are. Maybe they shouldn't count for anything, but people will get into the "previews are not reviews" mindset and not take the demos at their current value. One thing I find annoying in current demo reviews (and why would we want more of it?) is how much "this could be good down the road"ism there is. That's a fine point to make, but the whole review shouldn't center around it. Live in the now, people!

We're not a professional review site. The main function of a review should be to entice players into playing the games that they think they'll enjoy (and to ignore the ones they think will be crud); what better way to do that than to give reviews early on and let the creator check those weaknesses before a full release? If I release a full game and someone says "this game would be great except this part SUCKS SO BADLY I STOPPED PLAYING" then the creator has no real power except to fix it in a sequel (since, hey, it's completed!). If a reviewer tells me that when I release a 25% demo, then you can be sure as hell it'll be fixed by the 50% demo.

edit: WIP brought up the differences in how we review things and how professionals review things and I think the REASON we review things is just as important, being a community of developers or whatever you want to call us.

edit2: this critique idea may seem to be the exact same as what I just said BUT I feel structured reviews are good for everyone to read to... you know, avoid those mistakes.

True, but the structured piece-by-piece breakdown tends to be much more informative than "I don't like that!", which is the general level of quality in the comments (outside of the ubiquitous sarcasm!). I agree with you that scored reviews aren't necessary for demos, but I like them. If we do away with them I won't be overly upset, but the more structured constructive criticism, the better.

bahleted

I am not sure what exactly you guys are getting at, but the way I see it, this is a user driven "problem" (which I am probably the worst offender of anyone on the site) and it seems silly to base site functionality around preventing people from doing something wrong instead of just saying "HEY GUYS DON'T DO X."

I like this because people won't not play a game because they didn't play the demo because someone else didn't like the demo and gave it a shit rating. It makes sense if this happens with games but not with demos.

Of course then there are things which don't fit into the game/demo duality. (I am guilty of several of these things.)

Don't call me an idiot, F-G =(