We are consumers. We have to realize that no gaming company in the world considers us as anything BUT consumers. We are not gamers, we are not individuals, we are not even a number or a generic demographic. We are only a Consumer!

As a consumer, our only purpose is to buy. And if we buy, then the company has succeeded in whatever it is that it did. This is the same for games, sausage makers, car manufacturers or sex toy shops. So if you bought Star Wars Battlefront, then you already have approved of the game. You have lost most of your power now to say something about the title, because the most important thing you could have done about it is already done. Your money spoke, in accordance to the Supreme Court’s ruling that “money is speech”.

You may sway a friend not to buy it, but honestly, who have you affected like that? Consider how many of your friends bought it, and how many were still waiting to be swayed by your input. In essence, you became their reviewer of the game at that moment, and that is what everyone who waited is like.

They, and me, wait for the review, although we are not enough. I wonder why we are not enough though. My life, actual or social, does not hinge on my having played the game, any game. I would like to play all of them, but I also do not want to play the crappy ones. I need to organize my time appropriately, to devote time to the things I like, and not waste my time to the games that suck. I also want to have SOME kind of value for money. Would you consider a game that you finish in 30 minutes and spent $60 on to be of good value?

So we have what we have. Another game that fails to satisfy many, with metacritic user scores ranging from 32 for the PC, to 50 for the Playstation 4, dividing the users and the critics. But we have another problem here, that of “who do you trust”. The reviewers I trust have never let me down. I know how they think, what they like, where they are coming from. I can understand and interpret when they say something (good or bad) how this is meant and how that applies to my tastes. And all of the reviewers I trust are negative about SWB. So where does the 75 critic score in Metacritic come from, I have no idea. The user’s score is the one I believe to be accurate.

SWB is a game without a campaign, without a meaningful progression, as I cannot consider unlocking faces, hairstyles or emotes a character progression in a multiplayer online shooter, and without substance. it is visually the best SW game out there, but that is all surface. Paying $60 for surface, and then being asked to pay another $50 for more surface has caught me completely by surprise as to how easy it was to do it.

So far, rumours are that SWB is not selling well, but EA say that “There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title” in the words of EA chief operating officer Peter Moore. He may know more, despite GameStop having not met already reduced targets.

This is what I mean. EA keep talking about sales figures, and the language used is that of a product’s sales performance, not the merits of the game as a game. The same language could be used for a share price, a piece of fruit or a collateralised debt obligation (CDO). None of these high level individuals are ever going to be affected by hearing that the spawn points in the game make no sense. And they are the people that WILL decide on the fate of the next game, by funding it (or approving funding for it).

Anyone who wants to affect what game they are offered and they can buy, has to be responsible for what they buy and how they decide. There are a lot of reviewers out there. If you listen to a reviewer about your game, he liked it, and then you bought it, then you should like the game! If you don’t like the game, you have to question your reviewer and how much you will trust them in the future. EA has nothing to do with this. You’ve either bought their game or not, and that is the bottom line.