Fallout: New Vegas - Missed Metacritic Bonus by One Point?

Bethsoft are obviously fucking crooks.

I bet they engineered that 84 using shill publications.

Grimlorn said:

Check this out guys.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/57290-layoff-hits-obsidian/page__st__120__p__1166380#entry1166380

"Excuse me if this has already been mentioned, but I thought it was important enough that I should try to see it brought to someone's attention.
Presumably, quite a lot of financial trouble has hit Obsidian due to them not receiving their bonus for Fallout: New Vegas over the Metacritic score - one point of difference, an 84 instead of an 85. However, I noticed something while I was reading through those reviews.

One of the Metacritic reviews for Fallout: New Vegas, by a German reviewer from a website known as Gamestar, is actually not for Fallout: New Vegas. It is for the Honest Hearts DLC, which he gives a 72%, rated as 'Gut' (Good). That review (as well as the overview where you can check the score) are available here:
http://www.gamestar….arts/46936.html
http://www.gamestar….36,2323023.html

It's in German, but the URL and a simple google translate both make it abundantly clear that this is a review for the Honest Hearts DLC. Now, this is where things get interesting.

This same reviewer also reviewed Fallout: New Vegas itself. The kicker? He gave it an 88%, 'Sehr Gut' (Very Good). The New Vegas review (and overview with score) is available here:
http://www.gamestar….egas/44882.html
http://www.gamestar….82,2318592.html

Now, obviously, this is something of a screw up on Metacritic's part. Not only have they posted an incorrect review, but an incorrect review with a considerably lower score. I don't know if this is something that Obsidian's staff are already aware of, or if it is too late to change things now, or even if this would have been enough to tip you over the edge into a score of 85 at all - but I thought it was worth bringing it to your attention.
I have a great respect for Obsidian as a company, and consider you to have some of the finest writers in the current videogame RPG climate (in fact, I consider working as a writer at Obsidian a possible career goal of mine) and I would hate to see you suffering as a company because of a simple misunderstanding or mistranslation.

If this isn't the correct place for this, or if I should instead be emailing it to somebody or whathaveyou, please let me know. I just wanted to bring this to your attention in the hopes that, just maybe, it'll push your score over the edge and earn you that bonus from Bethesda."

Let the RAGE flow through you.

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That is crazy.

CAvellone@obsidian.net

Email away.

I wish it made a difference but it doesn't. The average with the score changed is still like 83.7. So 84 was still right, unless there is another low review that's wrong on there. Averaging for the lower score of 72 lowered it to 83.2

If user reviews mattered for that I would like to help them but I really doubt the metacritic bonus still applies after more than a year has gone by since release. And you really think that if obsidian could get their bonus from getting a couple of bogus reviews cut from metacritic they wouldn't be on that like a hawk?

The firing of 30 or so people because of the canceled project might sound bad but in how bad a financial shape can they be if at the same time one of the owners -MCA who according to someone's interpretation went months without getting paid- just donated 10k to the wasteland kickstarter? Like another poster said the hiring and firing of teams is likely business as usual for the brass.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

If user reviews mattered for that I would like to help them but I really doubt the metacritic bonus still applies after more than a year has gone by since release. And you really think that if obsidian could get their bonus from getting a couple of bogus reviews cut from metacritic they wouldn't be on that like a hawk?

The firing of 30 or so people because of the canceled project might sound bad but in how bad a financial shape can they be if at the same time one of the owners -MCA- just donated 10k to the wasteland kickstarter? Like another poster said the hiring and firing of teams is likely business as usual for the brass.

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This was a cancelled project for the xbox console. So it's not business as usual.

I'm sure there's no conspiracy. There is no sign that Obsidian and Bethsoft didn't have a mutually beneficial relationship. Obsidian was a bit unlucky (or didn't hit the quality required, depending on your view) and that's a shame - but that's life.

Let's not spam MCA (or anyone else) - the Metacritic bonus would have been clearly defined in contract. After all, if the bonus was paid, then a bad review took the score under 85%, would Obsidian pay it back? Obviously not. The bonus apparently wasn't paid, based on the contractual definition and that's that.

As for being a bad contract - that's not clear either. Let's say you had a sales-based bonus but Bethesda's marketing was poor and sales were lower than expected despite being a kickass game...you lose. Using a Metacritic rating allows you to receive a bonus independent of sales, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Grimlorn said:

This was a cancelled project for the xbox console. So it's not business as usual.

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It is in as much as this happens in the gaming industry and has happened to Obsidian before. Other than not being about to carry a team with no project (not very surprising), we don't know their financial position.

Edit: @KapitanUnterhosen - where did you get he donayed $10k? I thought he tweeted $250.

staylost said:

That is crazy.

CAvellone@obsidian.net

Email away.

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Sadly the 88 Gamestar review was for the PC version.

The performance-contract apparently only dealt with the X360 (probably since that's Bethesda's biggest market).

Regardless, Metacritic should not compare strawberry's (DLC/Expansions) and Apples (actual games). If that much weight is given to them you should at least be able to rely on them.

Another folly is that there is nothing official about MetaCritic yet 'official' people give it so much weight.

Also, the influence of metacritic has been known for years. In fact I was kind of surprised that Zenimax didn't demand anything less than 90.

You know what would be really 'meta' if reviewers got critiqued, sadly it would result in how the 'user review' page at metacritic looks now Fanbois and Haters duking it out with 10/10s and 0/10s.

Also conspiracy theories are both hilarious and sad at the same time.

Dhruin said:

Edit: @KapitanUnterhosen - where did you get he donayed $10k? I thought he tweeted $250.

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Could've sworn I saw Ausir post that MCA was one of the 10k backers along with notch and cliffyB (possibly on the codex/nma/dack boards).

Can't find the post anymore so I'm assuming I was mistaken as it really wouldn't make sense for him to make an insensitive/potentially bad pr gesture like that, doesn't seem the sort.

CountChocula said:

I don't think that would even be possible, let alone worth risking the massive negative PR that erupts whenever even a single metacritic reviewer is revealed to be using a media company IP address.

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It's not only possible, it's easy to do. Just don't spend as much on advertising and marketing of the product so as to intentionally lower the MC score. Review sites are more generous with publishers who advertise/support them. I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm saying it's easy for a publisher to sabotage a game.

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CountChocula said:

it's probably a lot smarter to negotiate a flat fee rather than chase after publishers for royalties based on net profits.

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Maybe. Maybe not. Have you negotiated such deals with publishers?

According to kotaku's sources "after almost seven months of development, Microsoft cancelled the project".
http://kotaku.com/5893427/rumor-obs...-was-for-the-next-xbox-published-by-microsoft

According to gamebanshee's tipster "the owners weren't paid for 6-7 months"
http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/107270-obsidian-entertainment-layoffs-project-cancelled.html

Have a hard time believing the implication of both anonymous sources being right: that obsidian hired for and worked on an xbox3 game for MS for 7 months without being paid, getting the actual real story would be nice.

It's also interesting that it was to be an xbox3 title since that means it could possibly have been planned as a launch title (the console has yet to be announced and likely won't come out before late 2013) and I'm sure there is no way Bethesda would miss the chance to have FO4 as an xbox 3 launch title given that they've attributed a big part of oblivion's success to the fact that it was one of the xbox2's launch titles(Todd said it was his idea to move it from an xbox1 title to an xbox2 launch title- his best) and MS likely also considers oblivion to have been important for the xbox2's early success.

Wild speculation of course but if obsidian's rpg was indeed meant to be an xbox3 launch title same as bethesda's fo4 then I can see bethesda bitching about it and MS suddenly finding obsidian's rpg redundant for their line-up (also a funny coincidence that old news like the bethesda metacritic deal now gets picked up again).

KapitanUnterhosen said:

Wild speculation of course but if obsidian's rpg was to be an xbox3 launch title alongside bethesda's fo4 I can see bethesda bitching about it and MS suddenly finding obsidian's rpg redundant.

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This is just another wild conspiracy theory that paints Bethesda as the bad guy for no logical reason. As I've alreasy pointed out, Bethesda wouldn't have helped Obsidian in such a big way by allowing them to use their brand, their license, and their tools if they intended to pull some sort of cutthroat, shady business manuever meant to destroy them. What, are they some sort of James Bond super-viallain with a long-term, overly convoluted plan with the end-goal being the destruction of the "good-guys" at Obsidian?

Besides, you really think Bethesda has that sort of pull with Microsoft, a company they have no real ties to? Enough to persuade them to do severe harm to one company just to appease another? What are they going to do, throw a tantrum and refuse to release their next-gen game on Microsoft's console, shutting themselves out from a large market in the process? Bethesda is clearly not afraid of competition; they allowed another RPG developer to create a new Fallout game, and they released Skyrim in the same week as Modern Warfare. Something tells me that they couldn't care less what other companies do.

Aside from that, looking at it from Microsoft's perspective, the more games to a console's catalog at launch, the better - one of the biggest problems with the PS3 in generating console sales in the early period of this generation was the lack of games; conversely, Microsoft was able to market/boast about their higher volume of games.

Bethesda has never done anything to deserve a "villain" label. If anything, they are one of the "good guys." The Elder Scrolls series continues to offer a great open-world RPG experience (and is one of the few of its kind), they don't nickel-and dime their products with day one DLC garbage, "pre-order" goody-bags or online passes, they continue to make non-linear single-player games with long campaigns when all of the "experts" continue to insist that single-player gaming with long campaigns is dead, they take a long time to develop their games rather than milk their properties to death, and they revived a classic series that had long been dead in Fallout. Aside from making a very good Fallout 3, they also allowed another solid RPG developer with ties to the series produce a Fallout game using Bethesda's assets, allowing them a lot of room for creativity in the process (they clearly must view Obsidian as a rival meant to be crushed….). How are they the bad guys again?

Its a messed up system with all the flaws to base your games on a rating site like Metacritic. Most publishers and consumes only think games with 90 or above are great and worth buying and the rest are junk.

Bethesda really isn't the bad guy. While the contract might seem unfair (upfront payment with no royalties, metacritic bonus), my understanding is that it's standard practice in the industry. That's not to say I wouldn't have wanted Obsidian to get a share of New Vegas's pied since it sold very well, but it juts seem not to be the practice.

Also, I might not go as far as saying Bethesda sayed Obsidian, but in all seriouness Fallout New Vegas came just at the right time for them. When they got the New Vegas gig, Aliens Crucible had just been cancelled by Sega... which sucked but is what allowed J.E Sawyer and his team to get to work on New Vegas. It's not stretch to think that without the New Vegas contract and the flow of cash it brought, the cancellation of Aliens could have led Obsidian into financial troubles and would likely have led to layoffs, that didn't happen because Obsidian got the chance to get a new game to work on immediately after.

If anything Fallout New Vegas was beneficial to both parties involved.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

Anyhow, gotta wonder about the timing of this since this old news is now getting attention only a day after obsidian got a project canceled and canned a whole team.

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There's no secret about this news really. In light of the news about Obsidian's financial, one user commented to Avellone on twitter that he thought New Vegas' success would have brought a shitload a cash to Obsidian, to which MCA replied the quote tweet.

-Sergorn

Sergorn said:

Bethesda really isn't the bad guy. While the contract might seem unfair (upfront payment with no royalties, metacritic bonus), my understanding is that it's standard practice in the industry. That's not to say I wouldn't have wanted Obsidian to get a share of New Vegas's pied since it sold very well, but it juts seem not to be the practice.

Also, I might not go as far as saying Bethesda sayed Obsidian, but in all seriouness Fallout New Vegas came just at the right time for them. When they got the New Vegas gig, Aliens Crucible had just been cancelled by Sega… which sucked but is what allowed J.E Sawyer and his team to get to work on New Vegas. It's not stretch to think that without the New Vegas contract and the flow of cash it brought, the cancellation of Aliens could have led Obsidian into financial troubles and would likely have led to layoffs, that didn't happen because Obsidian got the chance to get a new game to work on immediately after.

If anything Fallout New Vegas was beneficial to both parties involved.

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Well put Sergorn. Sometimes people forget to look at the whole picture - I had forgotten about the canceled Aliens RPG (which sounds like kind of an odd project for a company like Obsidian anyway) and the timing of the New Vegas deal that came shortly after.

Given Obsidian's history of cancelled projects and unpolished releases (something that already existed at Black Isle Studios, I might add. Interplay was blamed, but why has the reputation remained nearly a decade later?), you can only surmise that they're doing something wrong, whether it's in project management and/or bug tracking. They certainly have talent and pedigree, but a poor system can cause everything to collapse.

Microsoft's reason for canceling would be the biggest piece of the puzzle. We know that Aliens got killed because of chaotic early development (IIRC, a focused direction didn't come together until it was too late, causing Sega to cancel in light of their financial situation). We also have people claiming that Alpha Protocol was troublesome and should've been canceled.

If there were similar warning signs on the Microsoft project, could the publisher really be blamed for wanting to back out before committing a lot of money? For all of Obsidian's good ideas and writing, they haven't proven themselves to be reliable at delivering a polished and fully realized end product (aside from Dungeon Siege 3, which lacked any ambition and suffered critically for it).

Maybe the reason the rumours persist is because that's how rumours tend to work? For example, can you support that work on Alien RPG was "chaotic", which you list as the primary cause of cancellation?

Are you sure it wasn't primarily because Sega reported a loss of $238M (think about that figure) and immediately promised a 20% reduction in development expenses?

If their track record is so obvious that Microsoft chose to "back out before committing a lot of money" - why did they sign on in the first place? Were all those signs that are obvious to you, not obvious to people in the business?

CKSqua said:

you can only surmise that they're doing something wrong, whether it's in project management and/or bug tracking.

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I agree; and typically when there is a problem with 1 or 2 of those things, it harkens back to management who decide who is going to PM a project and agree to deliver a product within a contracted schedule.

Btw, I was one of many who had to let my PS3 version of F:NV sit on the shelf for 3 mos. because it was unplayable. So, from my perspective giving the game an 85 would be generous, even though the resulting, patched version was quite enjoyable. Reviews, issued at time of game delivery, have to factor in quality assurance.

Daroou said:

It's not only possible, it's easy to do. Just don't spend as much on advertising and marketing of the product so as to intentionally lower the MC score.

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;-)

yes, that sounds like a wonderful plan, sabotage your own marketing campaign so that you sell less copies of the game, all in order to avoid paying the bonus. Who cares about releasing a successful game, as long as you don't have to pay that bonus, right?

Nerevarine said:

As I've alreasy pointed out, Bethesda wouldn't have helped Obsidian in such a big way by allowing them to use their brand, their license, and their tools if they intended to pull some sort of cutthroat, shady business manuever meant to destroy them. What, are they some sort of James Bond super-viallain with a long-term, overly convoluted plan with the end-goal being the destruction of the "good-guys" at Obsidian?

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Exactly, knowing that a high metacritic score results in more sales, why on Earth would Bethesda want a low score? Both parties wanted the release to be a success.

Beth puts a lot of effort into its press events and relationships with the press for one purpose only, to get as much (hopefully positive) coverage for its games as possible. Each game has two metacritic scores and I imagine the one that was used for purposes of this bonus was the metacritic score generated from critical reviews by press (not consumer reviews). It is silly to think any publisher would want professional critics to pan their game in order to avoid paying a bonus.

you can only surmise that they're doing something wrong, whether it's in project management and/or bug tracking.

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I think there are two majors issues in that respect :

1. Most of the games they have done, have been done in a *very* tight schedule. One might argue Obsidian is perhaps too ambitious for their own good in these cases, but just look at new Vegas - it's crazy to think they managed to create a game of this scope in 1.5 years even if it used FO3's engine/gameplay (I mean... when Bioware does a game in 1.5 years... we get Dragon Age II you know ?). But then it's no wonder there are bugs.

2. They are using tech created by other companies/developpers, and often to implement and do stuff that were not exactly thought out for it. I remember some of the Obsidian developpeurs explaining how that was an issue, because every time an issue pop up that goes back to the core of the engine, they have to go through the developpers of the engine to get answers and that takes times.

It is *very* telling that Dungeon Siege III, which was their first game created with their own take was their most polished released to date and was essentially bug-free. (Though I would argue Alpha Protocol was well polished as well in its PC version - I think in this cases some people confused features with bugs. I do get the feeling AP and FNV had more issues on consoles than PC though)

But to be fair: buggyness have always been a major issue in ambitious RPGs. It's nothing, and it doesnt just concerns Obsidian. (Remember Ultima VII or Daggerfall for instance ? ). RPGs tend to be complex games, that means bugs tends to pop up more often. It's one thing to debug a linear corridor FPS game. It's another to debug a bit RPG with a lot of choices&consequences and a big world to explore.

But that being said, I've played all Obsidians RPGs on release except for NWN2, and frankly while they often had their issues, none ever came close to the horror of bugs games like Ultima IX, Gothic 3 or Vampire "you need to open the console and flag a trigger manually to continue the game" Bloodlines had upon release.

We know that Aliens got killed because of chaotic early development

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Actually now we don't. We've never heard anything about the reasons of Aliens Crucible's cancellation. The question was asked multiples times to Feargus Uruqart but he couldn't answer because they still had a NDA with Sega. So we can only speculate.

Alpha Protocol HAD a chaotic development though, but we don't just don't know about Aliens.

I actually think there must have been some change in management or direction at Sega at that point, because the Aliens RPG cancellation came at the same time they annouced a new AVP game out of the blue, and that there was some shake up about GearBox's Colonial Marines FPS game which for a while was reportely changed from a solo FPS to a L4D kind of coop game before dissapearing for a while to reappear in its current form (I mean Colonial Marins has been in development for six years now: this is crazy for a FPS).

Btw, I was one of many who had to let my PS3 version of F:NV sit on the shelf for 3 mos. because it was unplayable. So, from my perspective giving the game an 85 would be generous, even though the resulting, patched version was quite enjoyable. Reviews, issued at time of game delivery, have to factor in quality assurance.

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That's a fair point. Except they don't really. I mean, have you seen Skyrim on the PS3 ? This was worse than any Obsidian release, and not a single critic brought the issues and the game got away with 90+ scores and GOTY comments, even on the broken PS3 versions.

-Sergorn