• Should we kill Metacritic
    89 replies, posted
IMO buying a game based on a number it got is pretty narrow minded. Some games are just not for everyone, while they may still be very good to some people. The one thing I go to metacritic for, is to find the few reviews that stick out, in both a good or bad way. These reviews often have something more interesting to say about the game than the rest of the reviews that are just variations of the same opinion.
[QUOTE=Flyingman356;46283155]I'd say there are games that deserve a 0 in certain categories, but that's the problem with a review system like this, it's an objective system where people have different ways of deciding their rating and base it on different criteria entirely to other reviewers.[/QUOTE] That's more of a problem with user reviews. Getting rid of them, I'm all for that. In a world where you can generally find pre-release information about a game, including streams and well written "professional" reviews, I don't think there's a need for everyone to be a critic. Especially on a page that people check for compilations of reviews. With Alien Isolation, you'd see 9s and 10s all over the place but your eye is diverted by the zero made by xXxsm0k3m0u+xXx complaining that you can't kill the alien with guns. At least put it on a separate page.
[QUOTE=Whatsinaname;46279089]And from what I hear, it was Bethesda's fault that happened because they didn't give them enough time to bug test.[/QUOTE] And then the PoS reviewers marked it down for having the same bugs as "revolutionary" FO3, despite NV being superior in just about every appreciable aspect.
Doesn't Metacritic just work as a composite of all review scores? I mean, you can't really blame the site for bias on the system. Then again I don't really see what's so bad about numbered review scores, but I work with music review stuff so I can't really talk in terms of gaming journalism.
This isn't news.
imagine being one of the journalists that gave NV an average score and later found out the developers got fucked out of their bonus
[QUOTE=TheHydra;46284094]imagine being one of the journalists that gave NV an average score and later found out the developers got fucked out of their bonus[/QUOTE] "This was the Patriarchy's fault!"
[QUOTE=Super Muffin;46283578]The claim that metacritic ratings harm devs' ability to find work or negatively impact game sales is completely unfounded. There's no evidence to prove it and we research this stuff intently. The only studio that has had an issue is Obsidian, and the bonus they didn't get was peanuts compared to the total dev cost. Obsidian is also notoriously bad with cost projections/finances. The running joke in the publisher circuit is to add 30% to the pitch. Metacritic is simply an aggregate site used as a scapegoat. Killing it for the sake of reviews is one thing, but killing it because of scary clickbait articles is another thing entirely.[/QUOTE] A higher up from the Creative Assembly said they aim for a 90 score and cut/create features to achieve that score of 90. Like, if the guy they have to pass their features through doesn't think it'll help them get that score, they chop it. So yeah, I'd say it does harm developers ability to work.
I just buy games that have interesting concepts or that appeal to me. If it sucks then oh well, don't get the sequel or be weary of other titles from the developer
[QUOTE=bdd458;46284994]A higher up from the Creative Assembly said they aim for a 90 score and cut/create features to achieve that score of 90. Like, if the guy they have to pass their features through doesn't think it'll help them get that score, they chop it. So yeah, I'd say it does harm developers ability to work.[/QUOTE] If CA wants to do that internally, it's their prerogative. One studio intentionally gimping themselves isn't proof of an overall problem. Pretty weird coming from a studio that's had two 90's in the last five years.
[QUOTE=Super Muffin;46285414]If CA wants to do that internally, it's their prerogative. One studio intentionally gimping themselves isn't proof of an overall problem. Pretty weird coming from a studio that's had two 90's in the last five years.[/QUOTE] It's indicative of a larger problem where a Metacritic score is held to a higher standard than it should be. Just because CA had the balls to say it, doesn't mean others are not doing it. I have a feeling that an attitude like that is carried throughout many development houses.
[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;46279329]When I use metacritic I only view user scores[/QUOTE] even then that doesn't always mean much because people just put it at 10 or 0 because they don't understand how rating things work
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;46285754]even then that doesn't always mean much because people just put it at 10 or 0 because they don't understand how rating things work[/QUOTE] Ratings of 0-10 do not work period. It is all very arbitrary. What's the difference between a 9 and a 10? Or 7-8? It means fuck all. 5 star rating in style of "bad, meh, average, good, amazing" would be a much better system since it at least makes some sense.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;46286171]Ratings of 0-10 do not work period. It is all very arbitrary. What's the difference between a 9 and a 10? Or 7-8? It means fuck all. 5 star rating in style of "bad, meh, average, good, amazing" would be a much better system since it at least makes some sense.[/QUOTE] i find that a 10 is a 9 with an extra dose of polish
Metacritic just needs more guidelines and regulated reviews. I enjoy reading some player reviews and giving their honest impression, but there are just a ton of people who just give ridiculous ratings with extremely poor explanations and reasons.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;46286185]i find that a 10 is a 9 with an extra dose of polish[/QUOTE] More like extra dose of dosh
[quote]People are busy. They don’t always have time to read the whole critical analysis. Some just want to know if it’s good or bad.[/quote] If you don't have 5 minutes to read a more in depth analysis of whether a game is good or shit, you most certainly do not have time to play videogames.
the solution, really, is to let you give different weights to different reviewers to get a personalized total score
[QUOTE=TornadoAP;46279020]or maybe too many journalists try to be objective in their criticism.[/QUOTE] pffff
[QUOTE=Trebgarta;46279091]Why does metacritic receive flak? Genuine quesiton.[/QUOTE] Because it's not only a worthless system, but it's somehow reached a point where it's the only thing that matters. Imagine a review for a game. Imagine everything around the score at the end, everything you're supposed to consider when reading the review: the pros/cons, the actual review, the personality and tastes of the particular reviewer (and that particular reviewer's opinion on the genre as a whole, skill in related games, exposure to pre-launch game media, etc), the reputation of the site, the way that specific site interprets a 100-point scale (some of them will have 50 as a solid average, some will have that at 70 and consider 50 trash-can maybe-pick-it-up-for-a-dollar material). Remove literally everything but the number, and mix it with a lot of other numbers from other publications, that have also lost all context and meaning. And then use that to judge a game's financial success, or slap that on a game's Steam page to affect a potential buyer's opinion on it. That's metacritic, the worst possible way to judge a game that's ever been conceived. [editline]20th October 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Flyingman356;46282751]I think the problem with an objective scale like x/10 is that, where it can be applied to films because [B]it's easier to define what a good or bad film is[/B], there's way more go be considered in whether a video game is worth the purchase. There should really be several categories that aren't aggregated into one score. I'll say make them gameplay, innovation, aesthetic (story/graphics/cultural significance) and replay value. [B]It doesn't make sense to give a game a 10 because it has a fantastic story and ignore the fact that it's lacking in every other area[/B] (Bioshock Infinite/The Last of Us are the prominent recent examples) and people look for different things in purchasing a game. Being able to look at the category that matters most to you to decide whether it's worth it is much better than just reading one number and hoping it got that score because of the same kinds of things you value in a game. The problem is that because it's a newish medium, the reviewers have followed the film review blueprint of objective scores and it just doesn't apply well at all to this completely different form of media.[/QUOTE] Not really? There are examples of movies that manage to tell a fantastic story through terrible shots or general technical quality, and plenty of movies that end up bland despite incredible demonstrations of technical prowess throughout the whole thing (Avatar, Transformers etc come to mind). Reviewing movies is just as hard. Hell you can give the same example with music, there are entire genres devoted to making something great while working under technical limitations, and they coexist with grand orchestras and stuff like that. Numerical scores are just the ultimate form of tl;dr. You're supposed to [I]actually read the reviews[/I] if you care about an aspect in particular.
Numbers are too fucking vague to let anywhere near judging a game, words are the only way to work out whether it's good or not, or whether it's for you or not. Don't get me wrong, there are many [U]objective[/U] qualities for a good game, like if it runs smoothly at 60+fps, if the game is stable enough to be considered playable, if the textures aren't all muddy and blurred, most of these qualities being on the technical side of things. But when it comes to things like setting, gameplay mechanics, the story and the world, characters and so-on, those things are subjective in that not everyone will like them but there are many people who will, and you can't quantify a complex subjective opinion with mere numbers. I think the best way to do things is say "I liked this, this and this, though I didn't enjoy the conclusion or that one time I clipped through the floor when I was jumping on a dead piglet and fell from a great height", listing what you liked, what you disliked, and whatever technical issues the game had. A much better conclusion and final judgement that trying to cram all those details into an arbitrary numerical value, where it means precisely fuck and all. As for folks who try to be all "too long; didn't read" about said conclusion, despite attempts to be concise, maybe they're not the people you need to read your reviews/analysis? Or want messing up the market through bullheaded wilful ignorance? So in conclusion, [B]FUCK METACRITIC[/B] in its current state.
I don't think the solution is to kill metacritic, because people wouldn't use metacritic if they didn't think it was useful. If you want to blame anyone for placing too much importance on scores, blame the people who put too much importance on scores, as they are what enable metacritic.
I like the user ratings on Metacritic. They're the most honest you get these days, and that's after you take into account that some people rate 0 because they don't like the company, or have a PC not capable of running it, or what have you And that's saaaaaad.
[QUOTE=TheTalon;46289081]I like the user ratings on Metacritic. They're the most honest you get these days, and that's after you take into account that some people rate 0 because they don't like the company, or have a PC not capable of running it, or what have you And that's saaaaaad.[/QUOTE] If there's a 0 or 10 rating on anything, I always check and see what was the most common flaw or good thing among them. If it's they hate the company's guts, and has nothing to do with the game then that's no reason against the game. Also I kind of like steam reviews, you can only vote up or down, and it tells you the review splits. so if everyone has a disagreement with the game then it shows up. Also the most helpful reviews that actually tell you info are upvoted to the top so you can get a fairly good review that tells you the flaws and good things in the game.
The only thing I can really complain about is that as more and more games are being released as early access it's becoming increasingly difficult to find out about what games are good/shit from a purely text based and rating based review because by the time the game has finally been released it could be completely different from the reviews placed on it a year ago. (same for video reviews) It's still got to be one of the biggest catalogs of videogame reviews for multiple platforms ever, to the point that thinking it's going to die off is a complete joke. I'll admit that I now use videos of gameplay more often now to determine whether a game is worth playing/if I have doubts about it but sometimes it's a useful place to find out things about the game and if your internet is a bit shit then it's the next best place to go.
I reckon we should nationalise metacritic in order to try and rectify this inherent problem in our system.
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