Objective Bias – why reviews are always subjective (Topic Discussion)

If you have spent a number of years reviewing board games, you will have seen how people keep bringing up the topic of how reviewers should not be biased and remain as objective as possible. Of course, reviewers, like all people, are always going to have biases and a review will never be objective. As this topic was recently discussed yet again, I wanted to share my thoughts on bias and subjectivity in my writing.

There are many. many biases that people are influenced by. Whether it’s deeply ingrained prejudices or just general preferences, whether there is a big monetary influence or complete financial independence, or whether there is conscious or unconscious bias, it’s unavoidable that we are affected by what we like or dislike, what we vitally need to survive or emotionally desire to please ourselves, or what we think is right or what is wrong.

Selection Bias

When I write my board game reviews, it is pretty much always for a game that I chose to play and discuss. When I am contacted by an indie publisher or marketing company to review a game, I always vet it first. Only when I am confident that I will be able to get the game to the table and play it with the people who usually play games with me, will I accept a review copy. Of course, games I bought myself will be games I am probably going to enjoy, otherwise I wouldn’t have forked money out for them.

So, on the whole, many of my reviews are mostly positive. That’s predestined due to how I choose the games that I review.

I do have the odd negative review, of course. Sometimes a game that looks exciting and enjoyable when you look at the marketing material and rulebook, doesn’t meet the expectations. Some games have flaws that only come to light when playing them, others just don’t create the joy and excitement that I had hoped for, and there are other reasons why I have a negative experience with a game, which is reflected in my review.

Ideally, I should just randomly choose games to play and review. I should not have any active influence over what games are covered on the blog. That way there would be a much wider range of positive and negative reviews. However, that would only be possible if the people who I play games with were prepared to play any game I bring – and that’s just not going to happen.

Funding Bias

Another form of bias is monetary. I have to pay my bills, like we all do. Hosting the blog costs money. Finding time to write and record my reviews, as well as my other articles, isn’t easy. While it would be amazing if I could live off the work I do under the Tabletop Games Blog moniker, I am also acutely aware of the potential conflict of interest I could create.

Don’t get me wrong. I love all of my Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters. The money I make through these platforms allows me to just about cover my costs for hosting and other digital software subscriptions. So while I would love the income from these platforms to grow a lot more to allow me to reduce my hours at my day job, I am also acutely aware that the more people support me, the more I run the risk that one of these people works for a publisher or is a board game designer.

The reason why that is a concern is that getting paid by someone working in the industry could very reasonably be seen as creating a financial dependency for me. If I were to review a game from a publisher who paid me money for example, people would understandably wonder if I was biased in any way towards the game in a positive way due to the money I had received. It would be hard to argue against that. After all, if I wrote a negative review, chances are the publisher would no longer support me financially. Of course, that implies that the publisher saw the monetary support as a form of marketing spend.

Negative Reviews

I know there are some publishers out there who happily share negative reviews of their games, because they don’t want people to buy them and then don’t like them. A negative review can prevent people from having a negative experience with a publisher, which ultimately works in favour of the publisher.

On the whole though, getting paid by someone and then writing about their game is a big no-no for me. I no longer write reviews for games from Asmodee or any of their studios, because I got paid by them for demoing on their stand at UK Games Expo for the last two years. That’s big enough of a financial dependency for me to justify not covering any of their games.

So now you’re wondering why I don’t see the same problem when I receive review copies for free. Well, it’s mostly because I don’t sell any of the games I am sent for free. It’s also because I often get preview copies or prototypes of games and often I forward the game to another reviewer or return it to the publisher.

However, I do not completely ignore that there is potential funding bias when I am sent games for free. I do appreciate that it could influence me to write more positive reviews, because if I don’t, I might not get any further games from that publisher or marketing company. As I mentioned before, I appreciate that that’s probably the case for a lot of publishers. Ultimately though, I see my responsibility towards you, the people who read or listen to my reviews. I want you to get my honest opinion of a game. If that means I will no longer receive review copies from that publisher, so be it. Of course, I completely understand if you don’t believe me when I write about free review copies.

Transparency

That’s why I always state at the bottom of my reviews whether the game was sent to me for free, whether the publisher or someone else linked to the game paid me anything, or whether I bought the game myself or played a friend’s copy. It allows you to decide whether you take my review with a pinch of salt or not.

That transparency is very important to me, which is another reason why I wanted to write this article. I know that I am constantly influenced by my prejudices, likes and in many other ways. My reviews have been and always will be subjective. They are my personal opinion based on my gameplay experience. My reviews reflect some of my personality and not only in the way I write. The games I cover are based on my personal preferences and the preferences of the people I play with. They reflect the mood I was in when I played those games. The bias in my reviews is my own and I try to be aware of as much of the various types of bias I am influenced by as possible.

I hope that when you read or listen to my articles, you get an idea of the type of person I am. I hope it helps you decide how to interpret my reviews. For example, you may have noticed that I love economic simulation games. So knowing that means that you know what to do with a glowing review of mine of such a game. If you hate these types of games, then my positive review still won’t convince you to buy the game.

How About You?

I know there is a lot more I could talk about in this article, but I hope I have covered a large chunk of the topic. I hope you better understand what biases affect me and how I try to avoid others. Now I want to know what you think of biases in reviews. Do you think reviews need to be more objective somehow, whatever that means? Do you like it when a reviewer puts their personality into their review? What do you think reviews should look like? Do you have a favourite reviewer? As always, please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

Audio Version

Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Easy by | e s c p | https://www.escp.space
https://escp-music.bandcamp.com

Playlist

These are the songs I listened to while I was writing this topic discussion article: