The internet has changed so much about our lives, not least in the way that it has given us all a voice. How we use that voice is up to us and many of us use it to argue about music, movies, TV shows and video games. This has forever changed the way that public opinion is formed about whether something is good or bad, shifting the power away from critics towards the rest of us.
Sometimes we all agree that a video game is great or dreadful, but there are so many examples where the critical consensus says one thing but the fans say something completely different. Take FIFA 20 for instance. The average critical score for the 2019 incarnation of the long-running soccer game was a solid 79/100, but the fans were rather less impressed, rating it a pitiful 11/100.
So what was behind the huge difference in ratings? The critics loved the evolution of the gameplay, but fans were infuriated by flaws in the formerly popular Career Mode as well as the perception that in-game purchases were becoming ever more important for the enjoyment of the game.
A common theme across a new study by The Toy Zone is that FIFA isn’t the only long-running sports franchise to incur the wrath of its fans while still wooing the critics. Amongst the most divisive video games are NBA 2K20 and Madden NFL 20, while three of the top five were FIFA games.
On the flipside, games like Left Alive, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky and Postal 2 are examples of titles that were savaged by the critics but adored by the fans. As the internet gives us all a voice and even issues like reviews of video games get more and more divisive, this study shows that knowing who to listen to is getting ever more difficult.
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