There are countless repositories of reviews on the internet. Amazon, Google, Yelp - these are the basics with which we’re all familiar. The reviews are plain text, maybe embellished with an emoji here or there, maybe some bullet points, but by and large, unadorned.

Goodreads, though it is owned by Amazon, does allow for various elements of style - bolding, italics, GIFs!

But it is on Steam that a reviewer’s personality really comes through, and there you’ll learn not just of the product, but also of the reviewer.

And Why’s that? What is Steam?

Well, anyone who’s been stuck in the mud in Alabama knows that Steam is an online marketplace for video games. Customers come in, download a game, and enjoy it (or not) from the comfort of their own PC.

So these people are again, very comfortable with their PCs. They might not live online, but they spend a lot of time there, and they know all the jokes. They don’t take things too seriously, and they expect others to appreciate the same sense of levity. These are gamers after all, they’re there to have fun, and so they do, in their reviews.

That’s how we end up with reviews like these:

Fun, right?

AND, you can see that readers can vote on whether or not a review is helpful (or funny). And look, 20 people found Shrek helpful. If you’re into him, why not?

But if you analyze those reviews, you’ll see how granular the data actually gets.

The first reviewer had a “pre-release review,” probably of a beta or an early release of the software (maybe they backed it on Kickstarter?), and yet they are recommending it.

Reviewer 2 also recommends, and we can see they did so after spending over 5.5 hours playing. It’s interesting to see that they haven’t played much more since. Did they not like it THAT much? Were they looking for a place to post a Shrek meme and nothing else? Hard to say. But this hours played/hours played at review gives us insight into how informed their opinions are.

It also raises questions when we see a large sum of hours, but a “Not Recommended.” Unlike Amazon, Google, Yelp, or (m)any other reviews sites, Steam uses the binary Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down, which means it’s hard to look for that middle ground.

Additionally, software changes, from alpha to beta to release, and through updates and patches. Sometimes games change for the worse, and reviews are updated to reflect that. Sometimes developers take an unpopular stance, and reviews reflect that. Again, these are internet savvy reviewers, there is a reason so many review bombing attacks happen on Steam. The army has long been training.

If you want the true breakdown of Steam reviews, head to their site here. But I’d recommend just taking a look at a random page. You’ll find the fun fairly fast.