Quake Wars Dev Says Metacritic Pressure 'Ridiculous'

i use metacritic to get a feel for what reviewers are saying about a game. for instance, many said the new prince of persia was a bit easy as you couldnt really die in it. however they also shared the fact that it is still fun to play and so i bought it, knowing its flaws that multiple people noticed and also knowing its strong points.

I also read reviews of games on my favourite websites aswell as comparing them on metacritic as i get used to how a certain website scores games and i know if i trust them or not.

Its interesting to read the closing comments on metacritic of the highest scores and lowest to see how they compare.

I agree that royalties for devs shouldnt be based on this, however it is a useful tool for consumers and i would check out metacritic for a game that i helped make to see whats been said about it.

The 5 (or 4) star rating system would really benefit games I think. Please, no half stars, either.

The ratings should be:
* Bad game, do not play
* * Subpar, nothing special
* * * Decent game, worth playing
* * * * Excellent

what a fucking whiner.

percentage system is good for the consumer, i don't hear the reviewers complaining about the "pressure" and it's harder for the developer to put in a fix. tough fucking shit.

5 star systems are BULLSHIT. just look at g4's xplay. 3 stars for both a pretty good game and 3 stars for a pretty bad game. fucking hell.

and wth developers twisting arms like mad (cougheidoscough) to get good numbers, 5 star systems are way too subject to being fudged.

fuck em. you make shit, fuck you. get bent. die. if you make mediocre crap, fucking take the lukewarm reviews and stop fucking crying you damn babies. if you don't like it, get the fuck out and don't get in the way of the hundred or so people behind you waiting to take your place.

percentage system, 10 star scale or thumbs up, thumbs down. everything else is bullshit that's subject to corruption.

jin

Quake wars is a great game but it is not easy to get into and I can't help but think he might have said this because of the negative reviews of the game.

Technically the metascore system is flawless - if you consistently average a high score you must be doing something right.

That said, it's the contributors to the metascore that are questionable. Shit like IGN who love everything, or Gamespot who seemingly have 'negotiable' opinions of most games, can make a big difference initially to a metascore as ratings come in.

What would be ideal is if scores/ratings from each source could be weighted in some way. Gamespot would obviously be less important than say a review from rockpapershotgun or penny arcade (assuming you could assign a numeric value to their reviews - "It's quite good", "it's shit and will give your cat cancer" not being particularly easy to convert).

Metascores can be influenced by a wave of hysteria started by a larger publication, there needs to be a way of lessening the impact of a score that, under other circumstances, would be seen to be a particularly obvious outlier compared to the average scores.

They should aggregate two separate 4-star ratings (no halfs) from each reviewer, a Subjective Fun Factor and a Perceived Technical Quality. Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent. The PTQ would include the usual considerations for audiovisual quality, presentation, bugginess, feature content, innovation, and maybe value. The Fun Factor would be the bottom line on just how the reviewer personally digs the game.

Sometimes you can appreciate a quirky game, or look past bugs, or just not really enjoy an otherwise quality game, because people have different tastes. But if most people give a low fun factor to a game, then probably it's just a boring or rehashed game design (or maybe a niche market).

My internal scale has exactly three degrees of separation anyway:

Buy It
Try It/Rent It
Skip It

Those are the actual purchasing decisions I'll be making. Everything else is semantics.

It isn't an accurate measure anyway because it is only an opinion and based on taste. The few things you really can judge about are not enough to make you decide whether you want a game or not

/agree

It does seem like most games fall between the 60%-95% range.

I think in general games reviewers have been caught up in score inflation for a long time now that I dont think they can bring it under control even if they wanted to. i.e If Game A gets 80% that means Game B which is as good as Game A needs to get 80% too. Or risk a huge outcry.

Food and movie reviews tends to rely much more on gut reactions, Ive been the same movie get 2 or 5 stars depending on what source you read, this rarely if ever happens with games. Alongside this, peoples opinions tend to vary as much as the film reviews.

Reviews need a rethink as a whole, personally I'd be happy with a well written text about the game with no score at the bottom at all. Just well reasoned explanations of features with a reviewer who's taste in games is clear to the reader as well.

So much depends on the reviewer. If some games reviews were taken from a wider demographic than young 20/30 something males. Metacritic would look alot different , for better or for worse. It works at the moment as most of us are of the same demographic and gaming ability but as gaming becomes more mainstream thats something to be considered as a bigger factor. Like in movies, your opinion of Dirty Dancing vs Star Wars will vary depending on who you are. The same applies for games. Fix plz?

And lastly, many games are capable of evolution, some have become ongoing services with additional content and improving problems as they go (think WoW, the Witcher, TF2 and ET:QW). A review of them upon release should still count as correct now? I cant even think how to fix that one, at least not while im supposed to be working right now :)

/Ramble Mode Disengaged.

I actually think it's a good idea he's dissing on. Otherwise you have the publishers trying to bribe and push around the reviewing press, which is a lot worse than just telling their own developers to make a good game.

His proposed solution doesn't actually solve anything - 3/5 still equals 60%. Furthermore, most statisticians will tell you that on a poll of likert scales (1-5 ratings), you're only going to get an average around 3.55 -- or 71%, which I'd say is close to the industry average right now.

I think his original idea hits the mark: metacritic ratings should either be a strict bonus or go out the window. Publishers should have a good idea of their target market and expected sales volume per market. Bonuses should come from excelling in those areas, as well as total sales.

Just my .02

I think that game reviewing sites have come to rate games way too high, which sets an unrealistic line between good and bad.

I bet most of us have seen a game receive 85%+ and then you turn out to hate it. I can name just a few released over the last couple of years - but due to them rating it so high, a lot of people tend to not even want to touch games under 75-80% because they seem "mediocre".

But, as Paul reflects, a 7.5 rating on IMDB is absolutely superb and even a 5 rating is highly entertaining, where as when it goes under 4, it gets a bit too tacky or lame. Games would only get 5 stars or less, if the game is full of game breaking bugs, that simply does that the reviewer cannot complete the game or if it's just absolutely rubbish, so we are stuck with using only about 30% of the damn rating scale! At least that's the tendency I've seen on most reviewing sites as well as gamerankings.com (I cannot stand metacritic). Seems a bit pointless.

There are actually quite a lot of scores below 60 on Metacritic.

I quite like metacritic, especially on Steam, where it gives you a nice overview of if a game is worth the money or not, anyone with half a brain will still do their own research before actually purchasing a game (I hope). Throwing money at it is ridiculous though, as Wedgwood said.

He's right about the 60-100 margin most reviewers seem to stick too these days, but I'm pretty sure that argument has been flogged so many times it's not worth even bringing up.

5* rating systems are good.

3*'s suggests you should get it if you're a major fan of the series/game type. It definately doesn't seem as bad as a score of 60, which suggest you shouldn't go near it.