User and critic reviews are a major factor when it comes to players purchasing video games. It signifies consumer trust with a certain game. Initial reviews can deeply affect the sales of a game and the reputation of the developer, for better or worse.
At the 2008 DICE summit, Activision Vice President of Marketing, Robin Kaminsky, went so far as to suggest that "For every additional five points over an 80 percent average review score [referring to Metacritic], sales may as much as double."
Unfortunately, false reviews can be used to make or break a game. By false reviews I’m referring to reviews contributed by people who haven’t played or bought the game. This practice is known as “review bombing.”
A good example of how false reviews can affect a game’s sales is Star Wars: Battlefront II.
Star Wars: Battlefront II faced a mass consumer revolt based on its loot crate practices. Many fans who have not bought or played the game, left negative reviews. However, most critics have left mostly positive reviews, with many praising its high-end graphics and single player story mode. Possibly as a direct result of the consumer revolt, sales of Star Wars Battlefront II tanked. According to Forbes, sales for Battlefront II were 882,000 in its launch month of November, which was roughly 20% of its main competitor Call of Duty WW2.
Many have speculated that blockchain technology could be implemented in the world of voting. Seeing that nearly every major election receives accusations of vote tampering and/or manipulation, blockchain can provide much needed transparency to the process.
By using blockchain technology, voting could be easy, secure, and at the same time more transparent and open source.
Cryptography can protect each vote against tampering from end to end, keeping votes anonymous and immutable though tamper-evident on the blockchain ledger. There are already several companies dealing in developing blockchain based voting solutions, the most notable of them being Follow My Vote.
A system such as this is being considered in Game Protocol’s Game Store. Should it be implemented, our game store would not only be decentralized and ranked by reviews, but game reviews will be tamper proof and verifiably fair. This would offer developers a fair and evenly balanced playing field where game quality is all that truly matters.
