Metacritic Matters- How Review Scores Hurt Video Games

[SpoonFULL]

Insulting me is not necessary.
Also, I am a scientist heavily involved in software engineering, and was not particularly angry: just frustrated.

I was not insulting you and apologies if it appeared this way; I was making a general comment about common complaints.

 

[jwmeep]

Does Steven Spielberg paycheck depend on movie critics giving his films two thumbs up? Does Justin Bieber depend on good reviews on rolling stones?

I don't think the issue is critics marking a game down. If it's a poorly made game, it should get a bad review. The issue is publishers giving metacritic power it shouldn't have. If they are relying on game reviewers to do their marketing for them, they are marketing wrong. Does the thing with new vegas bother me? Yes. Especially since Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc all were buggy messes, but that didn't hurt their metacritic score. But in the end what a critic says really shouldn't matter in terms of who gets payed. Especially with how broken videogame journalism is.

 

[Zloth]

Well, in this case Obsidian agreed to the contract. Both sides agreed to it so it's fair, as long as the publisher didn't go and force the game to come out early or some such.

Metacritic isn't a perfect measure at all but what's better? Maybe you could pay for a random sample of buyers but even that is going to be subject to some heavy bias. People who enjoyed a game quite a bit may still decide they didn't like it much if they hear a lot of other people say they didn't like it.

(What has me most surprised is making a B a 75. Is that a typo?)

 

[ChienAboyeur]

For a team of 70 or so, that averages out to around $14,000 a person.

You've got to believe that.

 

[DArtagnan]

It's pretty simple, really. Either all reviewers listed on sites like Metacritic use the exact same rating system or they shouldn't use a rating system at all if they want to be a part of it.

Sites like Metacritic should only include sites with identical systems if they want to take scores seriously.

Having reviewers use different rating systems and having different approaches to those systems will never accurately reflect anything at all.

That's why I don't use Metacritic as anything but a curiousity that may or may not be helpful in determining how appealing a game might be.

That said, I will concede that Metacritic is somewhat useful MOST of the time. Especially when we're not talking hyped games or otherwise controversial titles. Since I'm fully aware of the general tendency to exaggerate the quality of AAA titles - I already know what to expect.

Then again, I stopped relying on reviews many years ago - because I find that most reviewers are incapable of being objective (something I think is important to strive for) - and the majority are simply not as informed as myself when it comes to gaming and the industry as a whole.

 

[borcanu]

+1 . Good points. Unfortunately from the emails I sent to Meta I didn't get solutions and improvements.. but at least they responded. I guess showering them with emails could work on the long run.

I try to remember to go on metacritic and give reviews to games.. and I am usually biased trying to steer the grade to what I want. As Games are not like movies, you can't forget them and forget what you liked about them - so the only purpose of a review would be to impact the general grade of that game. I suspect 70% of reviews are false, and 19% are done by immature ppl.

 

[Maylander]

I honestly thought the whole metacritic bonus was a joke when I first read about it. It would make a lot more sense to me if Obsidian simply got X% and Bethesda got Y% after all the bills had been paid. For example, I assume Bethesda paid for the development and marketing of the game - their investment has to be repaid before anyone starts dividing the profit.

 

[DArtagnan]

In the case of FO:NV - they deserve all the crap they get for the technical state of the game and the clear lack of polish. It's STILL full of floating objects and misaligned meshes - as well as super flickery distant textures. Much, MUCH worse than FO3.

 

[joxer]

I'm currently replaying FNV.

Okay in the meantime the game was patched thoroughly so it comes to…
Bugs? Where? So far I've seen only one (Harold optional quest is messed up if you didn't talk to another ghoul prior to him in Helios One) and honestly not getting some more XP is actually a benefitial thing. I haven't even scratched the main story nor touched DLC, yet I'm already level 25 (cap is on 50).

Crashes? Sure I've had a couple. But crashes every few hours like with Fallout3? No.

Story, substories, humor, etc… It's all there. References to old Fallout? Yup, if only I could recruit Marcus again…

Okay the game doesn't deserve 100%, but 84% seems too low. Especialy since all this positive stuff I can't say about FO3 nor TES (Skyrim).

However, there is one thing I'd also slash the score down even more than the reviewer who did it because of bugs in release version.
Too much of XP is the big problem and there is (was) a way to deal with that by cutting out goddamned respawns. However, when you reach the vilified reputation with certain factions, even if you turn on the game and stand on one spot doing nothing, it'll spawn a group of assassins that are after you every ingame day. These respawns mean at least +200XP. Per passed ingame day. Revisiting areas also nets you tons of XP on respawns, much more than you get from quests. Were they normal while designing the world to function like that? Why would a player go questing if he can grab level 50 just on respawns? Oh I know, a few quests solved gives you some special moves… If you'll be fighting unarmed somewhere. Who needs that?!

Oh, and weapons you'll collect from respawns and sell mean tons and tons of money early game, hell I've already bought all possible (expensive) "augmentations" in New Vegas medical center (7*4000+12000+8000=48K bo'lcaps!).

Spoiler

You need high endurance to be able to buy them all.

No matter how much I love guys at Obsidian, those respawns killed the game for me.

But then again, FO3 and Skyrim also have that retarded respawn everything system. And in my case where buggier and crashing more than F:NV. And if F:NV is on 84%, FO3 and Skyrim shouldn't have higher than that as F:NV beats those when it comes to stories/sidestories.

Metaritic does hurt video games. It's not fair, obviously the criteria is not the same for different developers.

 

[wolfing]

I do read reviews, but I mostly ignore the numerical score. I read what the reviewer considered 'good' and 'bad', which usually is quite the opposite for me. Like, if they give a good score because of great multiplayer, or 'exciting action gameplay' that's actually a con for me. And if they lower the score because of bad music or bad/lack of voice acting, or bad animations or outdated graphics, I couldn't care less about those things.

 

[qpqpqp]

As much as I dig Obsidian and feel for them, this article's premise is completely absurd. If you don't want to be held hostage by review scores, pretend you have a brain and don't sign a contract demanding high review scores. Now if this were just a piece on how, shit, Obsidian got screwed, this is a terrible deal for an otherwise unusually good game, that'd be fine by me. But we already got those articlea, six months ago. Metacritic is broken? Of course it is, they treat IGN as a serious review site. It's a total joke. But you'd have to be basically insane to hinge your life's work - literally a tenth of some of those people's total career output - on something as mercurial and meaningless as review scores. I've been a game reviewer, and it's something I take seriously, but I stand by a rather simple maxim - It all boils down to your PERSONAL relationship with the reviewer. If you, the reader, have a similar background, then that review may be worth something to you. Otherwise, just scan it for mention of bugs and then ask somwone you trust. It's an art, not a science - a valuable, but ultimately limited work of theatre.