SAILERIUS'S PROFILE

I agree that review scores don't really help much at all. I think that the reason reviews are so helpful (and necessary!) is because they provide the developer with valuable feedback on how to improve their game, or how to improve their future projects.

That being said, the reason most people make games is because they want people to play them. Regardless of what we as developers think of the review scores, they're the single biggest factor determine whether Joe Random Lurker will download and play a game or not. We can keep saying how "oh, they shouldn't worry about the review score!" all we want, but it's not going to change the reality that the vast majority of the people that play our games judge which ones to play based on the score. When a review is submitted for a game, whether intentionally or not, it is directly affecting whether or not that game will be played.

@LEX: You raise a good argument, but my point is that you *shouldn't* try to pad out the length of your game if you're out of ideas. If your game turns out to be short, then so be it; that's all the time it takes to get to the point of the game. Don't drag it out any longer than it has to be.

I'm going to disagree with this somewhat because there are some games where the battle system is fun to the point where you want to get into fights.

That's true, but fun is very subjective. Some players might find fights very fun and some might find them annoying. From a design standpoint, it makes more sense to give players that enjoy grinding the option to do so while not forcing those that don't enjoy it to do it. In that case, reward players that go out of their way to grind but don't punish players that don't.

In short, reviews can be a useful tool to help you make a decision, but they shouldn't make it for you.

Although that's true, the fact of the matter is that if you're an uninformed user browsing the games database, you're going to gravitate toward games with higher reviews.