Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Interview: Chris Buzan on GameFAQs Reader Reviews

GameFAQs caused a minor stir among some of its readers earlier this month when they took down some posted reader reviews for the PSP hardware. Some people thought the reviews came down because they were overly critical of the PSP. Others thought it was because they were unduly prejudiced, and didn't back up their points.

One GameFAQs reader, Chris Buzan, decided to do an informal test of the GameFAQs review filtering system to find out if either explanation was true. He submitted a review of the PSP that, while negative, was "careful to keep the information accurate" according to Buzan. The review was posted, taken down, tweaked by Buzan, reposted, and taken down within the span of the week. I talked with Buzan about how his experiment affected his view of GameFAQs' reader reviews.

Editor's Note: GameFAQs did not respond to a request for comment for this story. I encourage anyone from the GameFAQs team to contact me to respond to this interview.

Update (4/16/05): An editor from GameFAQs has publicly responded to these issues.

Video Game Ombudsman: First off, how long have you been visiting GameFAQs
Chris Buzan: Since August 2001.

VGO: How regularly, would you say?
CB: This sounds horrible, but pretty much every day.

VGO: Have you written any other reviews for GameFAQs?
CB: Years ago, under a different account. For Donkey Kong, or something. A few others as well.

VGO: What was your first reaction when you noticed some reviews of the PSP had been taken down earlier this month?
CB: It tore me apart. I briefly considered suicide. Seriously, I guess I was surprised. GameFAQs usually supports a healthy balance of both positive and negative reviews.

VGO: Did you feel negative reviews of the PSP were being singled out for removal while similar reviews of the DS were being left alone?
CB: I hadn't seen them, but I feel that they were being singled out. There%
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2 comments:

  1. GameSourceApril 14, 2005 at 5:51 PM

    This is interesting. I've been visiting GameFaqs since 2000, and joined the boards in 2003. Weird things have been happening to GameFaqs ever since that darn CNet invaded. While this most likely wasn't directly related to CNet, I think that Jeff Veasey's "selling out" of GameFaqs and a new full tiem administrator have skewed certain aspects of how the site is ran. There are too many new variables compared to the old site. CNet may have wanted the reviews down so they could push the PSP, maybe for advertising reasons. Or, the reviews could get mixed between admins and that just causes unnecesarry confusion.

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  2. EricsRangelApril 18, 2005 at 9:40 AM

    Either way...if people are allowed to post reviews on a public site, taking them down is unjust. I don't care who complains or what their complaint is. Unless the review is written specifically by a reviewer, the complaining readers can shove it, quite frankly.

    There was no reason to take down his review, bottom line.

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