R
RPGFool
Guest
Thanks for clarifying and I don't think any harm will come to Larian one way or the other because of this review.
I admit to still being a bit confused. So are you saying that when someone writes a review they should adjust that review if the score doesn't fit into the average and is an outlier? That reviewers should change their scores so they meet some external idea of fair?
No. I did not say or mean that.
As a matter of being objective, it is normal to check one's work with other objective criteria. None of us are perfect. It's easy to err and/or not be objective.
Many ways to try and evaluate objectivity. Colleague review or other peer review in some instances. That btw is the standard for scientific and other publications. It's not some big knock to submit one's own work to a peer review evaluation. It can help improve the work and help identify hard to spot errors.
In some cases there are other standards that can be looked at as a spot check against one's own work. The 43 reviews at Metacritic are one such collection of data. The CCU data is another set of such data, If objectivity of one's work is important, one looks at and compares with available data collections, preferably as many as are available.
What if there is a significant deviation between one's work and the data of other sources? One could ignore the discrepancy. One could mindlessly change their work to fit the data of others. I think most would agree that neither of these are the correct approach.
Alternatively, one might take a significant discrepancy as a warning that something could be amiss. One might ask whether the size of any such discrepancy makes sense. One should IMO reevaluate their work and try and take a fresh look. If one's initial conclusions are found lacking in view of significant discrepancies, one shouldn't hesitate to honestly revise one's initial work.
At the end of the day, if everyone else is wrong and one's own work is the only correct result, so be it. But that generally isn't the case.
I do believe the reviewer should feel a duty to their own honesty and integrity, but that should be balanced with the appropriate care for the artists, developers, and perhaps others who invested years to create a game.
Regards.
__