Metacritic

[Yantelope]

I enjoy looking at metacritic to see what the overall gist of the public is toward games. I do think it's funny seeing which few games breach the rare 90 barrier. I just noticed that Bioshock got a 96. I found that somewhat hilarious in retrospect.

 

What exactly pushes a game from an 8/10 to a 9/10? (we all know nothing is ever a 10/10) critics are so shy of ever giving anything that coveted 9. Metacritic also seems to get highly skewed by the few eurogamers and 5 star ratings magazines. If you're a 5 star publication that you either give a game an 80 or a 100 and nothing in-between. This seems to really affect the metascore.

[Strangelove]

I can honestly say ive never visited the actual site in my life, but I see it being referred to all the time.

[CorgiShinobi]

Metacritic is goofy because of how every reviewer wishes to review any given material.

 

Well, we're going to go by 1, 2, 3... out of 5!

 

Oh, well, we go 1, 1.5, 2... out of 5!

 

We're similar, but we go all the way to 10!

 

(I don't know if this is still true, but GamePro use to go by a .25 decimal scale out of 5.)

 

I believe, depending on the scale you use, a game could be a 10/10, but that means readers (and reviewers) should know that if any problems do exist, they're very miniscule in comparison. Of course, going by a .1 decimal scale, I think that 10's are very rare indeed.

 

I do visit Metacritic, but I don't go by the average necessarily. I'll look at the mode (most frequent) score if a game has been getting a lot of mixed reviews, i.e. Alice Madness Returns.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Atomsk88

[WTF]

Metacritic making PR and marketing lives easier, making the average opionista aka game reviewer's life tough (especially if you're on a scale of 5 like say Giantbomb) and having no influence on the enthusiast gamer but highly influential to those lacking in time, casuals and of course stockholders.

 

I hate metacritic. I don't use the word hate often but here I absolutely would since it combines one thing I love which is mathematics (and to an extent statistics) and combines it with opinions (which are usually worth less than a penny (most opinions - mind you I'm rolling in generalisms here)) to give a skewed scale because people can't spend time reading a few pages to find out if they know something they're going to spend hours playing is good or not. I really wish people were patient enough to gather opinions - considering that these people are definitely people who would spend time playing the game and if they allocate of say 1% of the time spent playing that game to read a few reviews it'd be nice. It's like those idiots who read the Daily Mail and think that it's the most accurate thing ever...

 

And shame on you stockholders and PR guys for letting these opinionated numbers value or devalue a game without looking at what makes it good or bad. At least we've learnt not to mainly use numbers in quantifying whether we'd like a movie or not since most people don't care about film reviews anymore (except for the 'youf').

 

pre-emptive apology for the rant.

 

OT: If you're a site that reviews games on a scale of 5 you're most likely not to get a free game since even a 4 would bring the ratings down and thus skew the rating to the negative which they do not like. Reminds me of school grading systems and why they kept changing every few years or every different education system you moved to.

[Yantelope]

I love metacritic just because it gives me a very quick snapshot of the buzz around games. Most games are going to fall in the 75-85 range and if it's in that range then you've definitely got to do some reading to figure out if the game is actually good or not. If it's in the 90 range then there's pretty general concensus across the board that it's awesome and that's why publishers covet this tier so much. Usually only about 6-8 games/year on xbox get a 90 or higher and a few of those are usually just XBL arcade games. PSP didn't have a single game over 90 for years. If a game gets a 50 then you can guarantee that everyone hates it and I love those because negative reviews are fun to read.

 

I completely agree that making a snap judgement that a game with an 85 metascore is better than a game with an 80 is dumb but for a quick glance of all the recent releases it's a little helpful. Sometimes it helps me notice games with great reviews that I haven't heard much press about. Beyond Good and Evil is one of those.

 

The whole publishers trying to get higher metascores seems to me an issue of don't hate the player hate the game. Metacritic just publishes the aggregate it's others who abuse it. I do hate the marketing people who live and die by the metascores.

[deanb]

We don't use ratings at all

 

Anyway here's an article I think I popped up here the other day, or twitter at least:

http://www.split-screen.net/features/metacritique-ratings-the-inner-circle

 

Very good read into the whole metacritic stuff.

[CorgiShinobi]

Not to argue your point WTF, but you could say that about any review. There will be users who do read a review, and do forgive my assumption, but I feel like a lot of users just scroll down the page, or click to the last page to see a number.

 

Many users have different views on what a rating means. Even if people just go to a few review sites, you'll get people going on a rant/tantrum because a game got something like a... "8.8" rating.

 

Then we get, "so and so site is a tool" and "you're not real reviewers!" So yeah, Metacritic doesn't help much because it enforces that way of thinking when it comes to, what essentially are, opinion pieces.

 

I don't know if any of you guys are aware of this site, but a movie review site called Spill.com doesn't review movies by stars. Instead, they give a movie a kind of "word" rating. You have Full Price, Matinee, Rental, and Some o' Bullsh*t (and in special cases, there are the Better than Sex and F*ck You ratings). They're not numbers, but they get the point across on what you should do (at least in the reviewers opinion).

 

EDIT:

From the article Dean posted, I feel like this one chart explains it all.

 

 

Now, I'm guessing here that the reason this is true for any given user is because of the educational grading system we're all use to. That anything below a "70%/C-" is bad, and even getting a C isn't desirable. An 86%? C'mon! Everyone knows it's all about the A's! Just you know, some A's are better than other because a 92 is less than a 94!

 

Thus, we get the A range "Good, Better, Best" mentality.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Atomsk88

[WTF]

Not to argue your point WTF, but you could say that about any review. There will be users who do read a review, and do forgive my assumption, but I feel like a lot of users just scroll down the page, or click to the last page to see a number.

 

Many users have different views on what a rating means. Even if people just go to a few review sites, you'll get people going on a rant/tantrum because a game got something like a... "8.8" rating.

 

Then we get, "so and so site is a tool" and "you're not real reviewers!" So yeah, Metacritic doesn't help much because it enforces that way of thinking when it comes to, what essentially are, opinion pieces.

 

I don't know if any of you guys are aware of this site, but a movie review site called Spill.com doesn't review movies by stars. Instead, they give a movie a kind of "word" rating. You have Full Price, Matinee, Rental, and Some o' Bullsh*t (and in special cases, there are the Better than Sex and F*ck You ratings). They're not numbers, but they get the point across on what you should do (at least in the reviewers opinion).

There are sites like that for gaming too. I just can't remember them offhand. They're much smaller sites. I'm aware of Spill - I'm pretty sure they advertised on mandy for reviewers and a friend sent me the site a while back. Probably 2009/2010. But like I said it's something done by smaller sites. You know when it comes to films we basically just release some stills, give some info and let word of mouth do the advertising for us. Gaming is like that too to a much bigger extent. Most 'gaming journalism' is basically one large advertisement because honestly ever since the conventions went more mainstream we knew that they're the best way to get free advertising; provided that they treat the community right. It's a two edged sword in that regard.

 

The reason why I just hate things like metacritic is mostly cause I know why they do it and how it works and I know why it'll go on and just get bigger. We have a system in place right now and you can't really topple it. Metacritic is just something that latched onto it and honestly it is convenient for those lacking time. I don't really care about numbers and ratings and I don't care about someone's opinion on being a must see/must play etc. I just want to know quite simply what they enjoyed and what they didn't and to see if their tastes match mine. So for me personally I don't put faith in reviews because well as the Big Lebowski put it - that's just your opinion man.

 

And I was speaking about any and every review. You see film reviews were dying. I mean really they were just not something people used to get an opinion anymore. Film reviewers were also feeling the crunch. But guess what with the internet taking off in the early 2000s a lot of younger people wanted to find someone who'd tell them what was good and what wasn't in terms of cinema. Mostly because they wanted to graduate from what they watched as kids. Reviews which no one read suddenly got read again. We all know that for films the major cinema viewshare comes from the under 35/40 market (particularly the 15-25 demographic) and these people were reading reviews again and reviews got a breath of fresh life. Games always needed reviews particularly outside the US because there were very few simultaneous launches and reviews gave you a good idea of what to expect months before. All those things from the 80s and 90s of walking into a store and buying a game because the box looked interesting or the display looked fun just vanished and specialist/enthusiast blogs took their place. Reviews grew from there and well you have what you have now. Metacritic is an evolution of that. However because of the recent review not matching the actual quality of the game aspect people are starting to question reviews again and we'll see them lose significance individual reviews. However because of that metacritic will gain more prominence and that's just something I dislike.

 

 

Before your response I was also typing the following. While it doesn't add to my earlier response I do feel like adding this bit to it.

I guess in my case I'm an information sponge and I really know too much info for my own good. Even outside of gaming. One day my head's going to have an info overload. So for me I tend to read about every single thing I'm interested about and speaking purely personally since I can follow news on gaming like that most games don't fly under my radar unless they're extremely indie and such indie games are rarely present on metacritic. I think we need metacritic for things like that because well there's too many tiny games that we can't be bothered to play and find out. I find metacritic sort of useful for iOS games but outside of that not really. The presence of most regular games is just too pervasive in media today that there's no way you'll not know about it unless you pretty much hibernate away from gaming news or go somewhere where people don't discuss new game news often. I mean look at most sites, they advertise games that won't be coming out for a year sometimes. What is actually difficult to know if you follow gaming casually is when a game comes out or not.

For instance most people weren't aware that Child of Eden hit the 360 this month, weren't aware that Shadows of the Damned or Alice was out this month. You can see it from the sales. But now I see ads for Alice on many UK sites (probably has to do a bit with it selling quite low for week 1. I think the figures in the UK alone for Alice were under 9-10k all platforms combined. It's going to remain like that unless they advertise it a bit more. It can't get a massive boost but this is almost as low/bad as Clive barker's undying (which sadly also had the same fate).

 

Off Topic: Also if EA is buying popcap it's going to be amusing. Spicy Horse is now going to make games for Popcap which if EA bought means they're making games for EA but it'll be casual titles.

[CorgiShinobi]

I consider this to be a nice coincidence: Extra Credits video today is about Game Reviews

 

It's really good, trust me!

 

They go over pretty much what has been said in this thread already, and how reviews themselves can improve. Though, I think the "burnout" reviewers can experience may be the reason why game reviews are a "report" than when film reviewers go over a 90 minute viewing of such-and-such.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Atomsk88

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

This is all I need to point to in order to show how dumb (and dumber!) Metacritic is.

 

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

This is all I need to point to in order to show how dumb (and dumber!) Metacritic is.

 

That is disgraceful. Dumb and Dumber is one of my favorite comedies of all time. It's also the Farrelly Brothers' best work.

[CorgiShinobi]

This is all I need to point to in order to show how dumb (and dumber!) Metacritic is.

 

Well... that's the UMD release, and I'm surprised that even 13 critics bothered to review that kind of format.

 

Besides, I can't find the movie on Metcritic. All I do find is the asstastic prequel movie, which even a 19 is generous.

 

EDIT: Alright, I did find the critic reviews, but it was through the trailer. The positive reviews are low positive scores, while the rest are 5 mixed and 4 negative reviews.

 

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/dumb-dumber/critic-reviews

Edited June 24, 2011 by Atomsk88

[AgamemnonV2]

Generally the folks that complain about MetaCritic are the folks whose favorite (or one of) game has received a "low" score. Except MetaCritic didn't give the score; it pooled the reviews from popular video game publications from around the world and combines it into a mean score. People always bring up the issue about how they can surmise a 0 to 10 scale when a lot of reviews don't score reviews on that scale. Personally I don't think it's hard to guess what sort of score someone might rate a title if they said, "I'd rather slit my wrists than play this game." Even then MetaCritic might be liberal and give that review a 4 out of 10 score.

 

Regardless it's all moot. The video game world is a joke when it comes to criticism. People of industry like to tote that we're an art form and yet the majority of games are literal regurgitations of yesteryear's hit title. Do you know what happens in the movie industry when something like that happens? Critics go batshit. Do you know what happens in the video game industry when that happens? It gets an 8.

 

I think I can barely agree with people who claim video games are an art form when the majority of its audience doesn't even treat it as much.

[CorgiShinobi]

I can't get to sleep, so I began browsing some of the less frequent sites I visit. Thus the late nature of it all.

 

Text for the link cause the video doesn't embed well.

 

It's on the Escapist, and it's from Jim Sterling. I personally haven't made myself that aware of the guy, but I am aware of the stigma surrounding him. With the exception of his attitude, I think all his points are valid.

 

If you don't want to bother with the video, basically: Metacritic isn't the problem; instead the publishers who abuse the aggregated scores, and of course the ludicrous fans raving over their precious game's reputation lay with fault.

Edited June 29, 2011 by Atomsk88

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Review "scores" are a horrible friggin' mechanism that are almost always used improperly.

 

That is all.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

This article is quite interesting about who get in or is chucked out of metacritic's pool of reviewers it uses.

[Yantelope]

So metacritic does iOS reviews now and I find it pretty hilarious. I guess if a game is $0.99 then it has to get a good review. iOS metascores are quickly trying to be as worthless as music metascores are.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Wow. They ought to start reviewing Flash banner ad games.

 

http://www.metacritic.com/games/ios

[Thursday Next]

Metacritic for movies are really subjective. When you sit and watch the movie it will go from beginning to end every time. It won't stutter, crash or get stuck at a scene because Brad Pitt got stuck in a wall somewhere.

 

Metacritic for games is in part objective so there is a degree of validity in the scoring system. A universally reviled game is generally scored low because it is in some way, measurably broken.

 

That said, games with really high scores (90+) stray into subjectivity again...

 

My way of reading metacritic:

 

<40: Game is broken, has few if any redeeming features.

41-60: Game has some glaring errors, but also some good points. If you particularly like the franchise, genre, license, whatever, then read further into it, but buyer beware.

61-80: A solid title with no major issues. Chances are you'll like it, but check if there are show stoppers (e.g. a 78% C&C is not going to be for you if you hate RTS games).

81-100: The game is a great example of its type. The only thing that is going to make you hate it is if you don't like the genre, or something subjective like you hate the story. (GTAIV is a prime example of this, I know it is *technically* a brilliant game, I just wanted it to be like Vice City.)

[Yantelope]

Yeah. But for Music and iOS games it's more like

 

<70: This CD/iOS game is awful

70-90: you might like it

>90: general consensus.

Edited September 8, 2011 by Yantelope

[CorgiShinobi]

It's not that it's always going to get good reviews just because the price might be as low as $0.99, but that "price" will hardly be an issue. You know how we frequently talk about waiting for a lower price on a certain game like El Shaddai, or maybe Dead Island based on its quality? With iOS, or Android, those games are pretty much buy or don't buy. Sometimes you have a free week, and the more expensive games can lower in price (for a limited time), but that's usually by a dollar or so since they're already so cheap.

 

So yeah, I wouldn't expect a lot of variety since the criteria isn't that demanding for most iOS games.

[fuchikoma]

I don't use MC a lot, but I do like it and find it useful - for what it actually does, which is aggregate scores.

 

Seeing that post about analyzing the scores on there and seeing how the most common scores are around 70 actually told me that there isn't much of an issue with score inflation. Look at it this way: the games are being graded like homework assignments. 50 is not great, but it's passable. Less than 50 isn't even acceptable, but may not be totally devoid of worth.

 

For one thing, there's the cognitive issue of trying to tell if a game will be great for absolutely anyone who plays it, or will find its niche - and then try to gauge how big a niche that is, or to make the decision that no matter who you are, you will probably think the game sucks. That's no small feat in terms of theory of mind.

 

There's also the issue that not every game that is made is reviewed, so it's not a review of all the attempts to make games. A lot, or even most of the games that would score below 50... probably get canceled before they hit the shelves. It would be really weird if the average game scored 50. Then it would be less about how good the game is, and more how it compares to the average - like an IQ score.

 

But anyway, I think while it's tempting to use MC as a major metric for internal review like EA, that could be pushing it a bit far. It's hard to say they shouldn't, because the system itself is pretty objective, but people have also been caught reviewing their own games highly, and not every game will be reviewed by as many people, so for each game the value of one vote is a bit different. Also, if you tie bonuses and the like to the review aggregates, then it strongly encourages gaming the system. Almost any time you tell someone their reward or punishment is linked to a number, they'll find the most expedient way to alter the number - not always just doing what the number is supposed to measure.

 

At the same time, the site has been useful to me to grab public opinions of things. I've argued with a friend of mine who likes to project his opinions onto "the whole world," so when he tried to tell me that no one had anything good to say about Mass Effect 2... I looked it up. 94 - bam! His only counter was to suggest every review that contributed to the MC score was bought off (because they'd really spend millions/billions in bribes, right?) For actual reviews though, I don't care what's popular, so I prefer to read a review by someone I've come to know the tastes of. I still like to have a number to it though because if it's about what I'd expect, I can expect a review in line with my values, and if it's way off, it's interesting to see why they felt that way, but I'm not going to read a Tim Rogers post just to find out the reviewer was looking for something completely different than I would be.

[Yantelope]

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/power-to-the-people-until-the-powers-out-of-control/3670/

 

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/19/review-score-review/

 

Two stories just hit. Good timing.

[deanb]

The Giantbomb article kinda showed just how bad the Metacrtic site is. And no matter the reason, requesting reviews for your games, even if you state they can be negative or positive, especially with a prize at the end, is going to put a massive black mark next to your name in my books. It is shady that you can submit user reviews with scores but no text, slightly worse that Metacritic will do nothing about it.

 

As for Engadget: http://pressxordie.com/review-system/ We've had a similar system in place for nearly 2 years now. Wish we had a prior review system so we could shout out about it.

[Yantelope]

Yes, the user review scores will quickly become more meaningless than the star ratings on Amazon. There really should be no system for adding a number with no accompanying text. Additionally you'd think they'd do some sort of account control and ban offending accounts and roll back scores for the floods of negative reviews described above. That's all up to metacritic though. If they want to remain relevant they might want to get working on that. All that being said I think it's bad policy to be promising bonuses based on Metacritic scores. There is so much room for fraudulent activity it seems like a really bad proposition to me.

Edited September 19, 2011 by Yantelope