With the growing number of games in Steam libraries, more players prefer to check reviews before deciding whether to purchase a new game. Recently, a team from the Indian Institute of Information Technology released a new paper exploring another aspect of the relationship between playtime and reviews.
Chetan Mudlapur and Om Prakash Singh from the Indian Institute of Information Technology jointly published a paper titled "Critical yet Committed: Analyzing Player Sentiment Paradox in User Generated Game Reviews," which explores the "credibility" of negative Steam game reviews from a different perspective.
·The team categorized reviews into three types: positive, negative, and neutral. They also divided player playtime into five stages for analysis: 0–2, 2–10, 10–50, 50–200, and over 200 hours.
·First, positive reviews account for 58.12%, making up more than half of the total, indicating that players generally have a relatively high tolerance for games. Negative reviews make up 21.22% overall, while neutral reviews account for 20.66%. When broken down by time segments, things get interesting.
·In the 0–2 hour stage, where most refunds occur, the overall negative review rate is as high as 45.6%. For the 2–10, 10–50, and 50–200 hour groups, who tend to be more patient with games, the negative review rate is relatively lower at 18%. However, among the dedicated players who have played for over 200 hours, the negative review rate sharply rises to 28.2%.
·Not long ago, another research team published a study suggesting that players are more likely to leave negative reviews during shorter playtimes. That study examined the relationship between playtime and reviews marked as "Not Recommended" on Steam. In contrast, this current study uses sentiment analysis to assess the credibility of reviews identified as negative. The results show that not only do players in the short-playtime group (under 2 hours) leave negative reviews, but the proportion of negative reviews also increases among players who have played for over 200 hours.
