Develop’s columnist blasts the controversial review scores website
Develop’s monthly columnist today takes a look at the Metacritic website, which has become one of the industry’s most controversial and influential resources of opinions on games.
“The system is utterly flawed, pandering to the sort of score-obsessed autism that proper journalists – the ones who actually labour long and hard over their actual words – become legitimately dismayed about,” said Simon Byron, who highlights how Metacritic has even begun to effect share prices and news stories.
“Start digging round the site beyond the headline scores, though, and things quickly become worrying,” warns Byron, “Its sources are a mix of the top specialist review destinations and loads of My First Internet Sites.”
To read the full column click here.
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Mike Hayes says otherwise. He loves metacritic. It makes things more objective so publishers don't have to think for themselves and hurt brain.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/metacritic-helps-business-objectivity-says-hayes
Well just as drunken journalists who review games think they can write them, so too do misguided PR men with 5 'O' Levels and the ability to type think they can write. Simon Byron might do well to concentrate on PR - he seems not to have grasped the basic rule yet that a major part of PR is about not unduly p***ing people off...
Problem is, soon as you start vetting what sites get rated, you're left with the 'professional' specialist press. And they're hardly flawless.
Look at IGN U.S.A FFS. Remember that daft score they gave Football Manager because the reviewer admittedly wasn't into football or manager style games?
Problem is, this is the best we have right now as a measure of quality, decided upon by a large sample of pro and non-pro sources.
This is a tough problem to solve.
There is also GameRankings that just puts up every review it can find. Some games get a better rating on there because when you narrow down the sites you narrow down the opinions.
I can't see why people can't just judge if a game did well by it being a good game, if the people that play it like it and did it sell. Was the marketing any good, did you give enough time, did you get value for money in development?
"The system is utterly flawed, pandering to the sort of score-obsessed autism that proper journalists – the ones who actually labour long and hard over their actual words – become legitimately dismayed about,” Isn't that one of the core problems in the industry deeper than anything Metacritic is being condemned for...the lack of 'proper' objective journalism within the industry? Especially now so many wish to ape 'Zero Punctuation' or assume that sixth form sarcasm and polysyllabic output equals good commentary. Too many games are reviewed by people without a good overview of either the game they are reviewing, its audience or the nature of the industry...at least sites like Metacritic help balance such factors out.
