AON, you know that looking at phrasing, idioms, terminology, grammar, and structure are all valid criteria when evaluating writing. It's criteria I use daily in my endeavors with others' writings to consider whether they are original works or not, as well as the quality of their writing.
I'm not saying that your analyze is wrong. It's the accuracy of your conclusion that I'm questioning, as well as the validity of the method
in that particular case.
There's apparently at least one reader that will need the emphasis.
Since you use this daily, you know better than me about it's main limitation. Below a reasonable length for the text it's not reliable enough. And here, we are face to reviews that are all below the 300 characters (space and punctuation included).
The possibility that it's pure coincidence, or that the last (in date) reviewer just copied the previous review, are as high than the possibility that it's wrote by the same person, or following the same template. Too short for the difference to effectively appear.
There's also at least one inconstancy, the use of two paragraphs in one of the review. This already tend to point to at least two different natives languages, or two different education level.
In such context (suspicion of opinion manipulation), the behavior is more significant than the, hmmm, let's say "writing logic" to stay simple ; at least unless there's clear evidence that an AI is behind the text.
I'll not give names, but there's a dev who's famous in his game thread for his attempt to praise his game by making fake account and talking with himself about how good his game his ; once Sam removed ~30 accounts in one go. You wouldn't have been able to effectively tell apart the legit members and fake ones just by their text. He was dumb when it come to hide his trace, but smart enough to write effective different posts.
Regulars just know when it's him because he's the only one to praise his below average (but not necessarily uninteresting) game as if it was a Nobel Price awarded works ; what was an improvement with the, "oh thanks you a lot for the love you show for my game", he used to answer to everyone at first, even those saying that it's pure shit...
But your retort about "accordingly... a third of the reviews are fake" is oversimplifying nearly to the point of hyperbole to attempt to make a point, no?
Yes and no. I guess you know that it's a habit I have, I draw big fat lines to make the whole figure more discernible.
But it's not far from the reality. If you pick one game with at least a tenth reviews, and look at those reviews, there's really more chance that you find at least one that will looks like a copy/past of the three you pointed, than chance to not find one.
After, yes, of course, 1 over 10 is not a third. But when you look at games with pages and pages of reviews, you'll see tons of them, sometimes a full page ; mostly because people don't find something new to say about a game already over praised. And this compensate, leading, in the end, more or less to a third.
Side note, knowing you: Don't looks at games with pages and pages of reviews, you've surely better use for your time.
When I looked into what you said about the activity, I see that the day the newest reviewer made that comment in the thread is the only time they ever commented in the thread and was the same day as the first review. Coincidental and not fully expository, but interesting.
I know, I noticed it too. But it's pure coincidence.
If you want to write fake reviews, you'll not starts with the most suspicious of your accounts (no visible activities in 6 years, knowing that there's possibly a reset around late 2019). Especially if you are already connected with a way more legit account ; account that you'll later use to write a review for the game after the next update.
This being said, I must admit that, despite all the flaw the game can have, and therefore despite how legit and objective the bad reviews are, those three are rights. The arts is amazing AI work. from my point of view it's not enough to give 5 starts, but I understand why someone could want to do that.
