The Gates of Olympus reviews research

I have done research on a coverage of the Gates of Olympus game in the gaming publications. Research focus areas were: tone of document, sentiments towards the Gates of Olympous as well as other entities or keywords in article's text, and, finally, emotions (joy or sadness) as expressed by means of words towards specific entities or keywords. I used IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Text Analysis software, link for demo version that allows all functionality I used here. Please note that option 'Try your own URL' may not work with all of the web pages, so then yiu may want to try copying and pasting the text instead.  

Scope of research of Gates of Olympus slot reviews

Performing Google search in English from France on the phrase "Gates of Olympus review" resulted in 66 relevant results. 17 of them are eligible for analysis (satisfied reasonable requirements) in that these publications:

contained editorial opinion (deliberative),
showed a constant output of gaming articles over the recent year (consistency),
contained more than 100 reviews of games (dedication),
contained a score measure of quality in numeric form (methodology), were written in English (accessibility), and
document analysed contained more than 500 words (reasonability).

You may find publications names, intro paragraphs as well as their scores and links to the full text of the documents analyzed in the section 'Editorial Reviews' below. 

I must note that the great majority of documents analysed were written more up to Google requirements than to satisfy the actual reader's interest. Likewise, they contain search engine optimised texts, would try to capture as many keywords in the documents body as possible, and they are written towards popular search templates created through scraping the whole mass of possible queries that may potentially relate to a slot game.
 
Of 17 documents that I researched, only 2 may satisfy criteria of 'deliberative' article:

• employ critical thinking,
• demonstrate both positive and negative sentiment as well as
• may allow dissentive (not comporting) ideas. '

Deliberative' quality is important in reviews because reviews must not be impartial by definition and they - as a genre - are made to be discussed. So, in a way, they would normally start a discussion that may further on be carried by readers on their own. 15 of 17 documents contained only positive attitudes and may be labelled as 'Hooray' articles.
 

Research Findings

 
1) Overtly positive tone of voice seems to have already installed itself as an iGaming press standard, in the sense that it is followed by the vast majority of journalists. From the research of the Gates of Olympus press coverage, it is seen that 15 of 17 iGaming publications are being exalted in the overall tone of writing, which creates a stable 'positivity' noise. This kind of exaltation is not in place in, for example, movie reviews or even video games press. 
 
2) Documents with an overly positive tone of text were also particularly positive towards the Gates of Olympus release. There is a high correlation of the overall tone of text and a positive sentiment towards a game and a level of joy the author expresses, when describing Gates of Olympus slot machine. In 11 texts authors would use a particularly high tone of words overall (towards every entity or keywords in the document) and even higher and praiseful tone when it came to Gates of Olympus. 
 
3) Making 'positivity' noise is a usual setting of the editorial team's routine when it comes to the gambling review sites. In 4 editorial reviews, the overall tone (sentiment) of text is more positive than that of a particular item being reviewed. This means that the author was more emotional about the overall gaming experience than of the Gates of Olympus experience. Apparently, words are used as a means for selling advertisements whereas the Gates of Olympus experience is only one of possible vehicles to convey the advertisement.
 
More specifically, Clashofslots produced a document that's been defined by IBM Watsons as highly positive overall (72%) whereas the tone of voice towards the Gates of Olympus is neutral (0%); emotion of joy related to the game is expressed at 86%. 
 
Aboutslots and Casino Guru documents show similar picture: both articles are 68% positive overall, whereas Gates of Olympus gets only 28% positive sentiment with Aboutslots while treated neutrally with Casino Guru (0% positive); joy is given 68% score with Aboutslots and 34% with Casino Guru.
 
In the case of Good Luck Mate review, Gates of Olympus sentiment is simply statistically lower than that of the overall document (66% and 57% respectively).
 
4) In 9 of 17 reviews the editorial team has shown less (or equal) emotional attachment to the Gates of Olympus than to the Pragmatic Play (the publisher company) or Sweet Bonanza (the predecessor game) as it is seen through analysis of Sentiment score or Joy score. The NLU analysis shows, apparently, that Pragmatic Play brand strikes more joyful emotions and positive attitude than the specific game itself. It may show that the brand's power dominates the perception of a particular game release (brand's bias) or the brand's influence skews the perception of the quality of a particular item reviewed.
 
5) Reviewers expressed particularly positive sentiment to the following group of keywords:

• Free Spins
• slot features
• bonus feature
• [big] multipliers
• Ante Bet feature
• Pay Anywhere engine
• [massive] payouts
• cascading / tumbling reels
• Video game music
• artwork / animation
• EGR award

In terms of Joy and Sadness, it is found that the game is joyful, so as its producer Pragmatic Play and its predecessor Sweet Bonanza. Also, NLU software revealed an expressed Sadness on the part of gambling publications about its [low] RTP. 

So, if we briefly sum-up the Gates of Olympus experience from the NLU analysis of the available corpus of editorial reviews, we'd see the following sentence:

6) The overall attitude (and intent) of the editorial team of 15 of 17 publications discussed is re-translative, not critical. Authors would recite the game's product sheet and adjourn the fact with laudative phrases to create expressly positive emotions that are alleged to have an impact on sales. The connection between tone of voice and sales has to be further discussed, but it looks like the igaming publications see a link between positive sentiments in review and their commission of sales, so they tend to be neutral or positive towards the game (Gates of Olympus) but necessarily positive and joyful about gaming in whole.
 
7) Only 2 publications have produced deliberative reviews: bigwinboard.com and askgamblers.com. The former gave an actual context of discussion and in clear words set an item to the backdrop of its predecessor Sweet Bonanza, which, obviously, is regarded more positively by the author. askgamblers.com used its usual Op-ed genre, where one or two editors (labelled as 'players') will give their own opinions on the game. So, here the Gates of Olympus and it's developer Pragmatic Play was criticised by the authors for: 

1. employing streamers to make pressure on players through showcasing huge wins on YouTube;
2. making numerous reskins of the existing slots with changes in theme and design only.

Plus, both authors have referred back to its prior negative experience with Pragmatic Play's games and concept. In whole, the content allows for a discussion and deliberation of the ideas laid in. 
 

Concluding thoughts

As seen from the Gates of Olympus coverage in the online gambling press, publications are not being critical. They do not provide context to their findings, neither they are being fair, reflective or go into depth with the subject.
 
Emotional writing prevails. Texts are created to entice users to try this game out. In this sense, the majority of the reviews is an advertisement genre, whereas the product is not a specific game but the whole gambling idea.
 
'Hooray' articles on the Gates of Olympus dominate the Google search results. When combined with industry acclaim symbols such as 'EGR award winners' referred to, for example, by playcasino.com, this scopus of opinions creates a serious pressure on both players and industry professionals. 
 
YouTube content has been out of the questions of this research, but from what is addressed in the Gates of Olympus reviews it is clearly seen that 1) 'massive payout / payback' 2) 'epic multipliers' narrative has been transferred from YouTube video to online press too. If staged by the Pragmatic Play, these two story lines would reinforce each other and exert enormous pressure on players where deliberative articles are in clear minority.