Post
You already decided you would love the game before it launched -- you are just looking for reviews that agree with you.
Confirmation bias in gaming reviews is the tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information that confirms pre-existing beliefs about a game. If you are hyped for a release, you will gravitate toward positive reviews and dismiss negative ones as 'not understanding it.' If you have already decided a game looks bad, you will find the one-star reviews far more convincing than the five-star ones. This bias distorts the entire review ecosystem: players curate their information diet to validate decisions they have already made, creating echo chambers where nuanced takes get drowned out by the takes people wanted to hear.
Example
The Last of Us Part II saw players sorting reviews by score to find ones that matched their pre-formed opinion about the story. Star Citizen backers seek out positive coverage and dismiss critical journalism as 'hit pieces.' Players who refunded No Man's Sky at launch and never went back still believe the game is terrible despite years of substantial updates.
Why it matters
Confirmation bias in reviews undermines the value of review systems entirely. When players only engage with reviews that confirm their existing opinion, reviews stop being informational tools and become validation mechanisms. Recognizing this bias in yourself is the first step toward making genuinely informed purchasing decisions.
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