By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is METACRITIC bad for the Gaming Industry ?

 

Does Metacritic affect your purchase of a game ?

Yes 38 34.86%
 
No 30 27.52%
 
Never 11 10.09%
 
Maybe just a little 30 27.52%
 
Total:109
Augen on 26 March 2014
disolitude said:

Art, music and even movies can contribut to your individual growth as a human being and appreciation of culture. I guess gaming as an experience can contribute to ones development as well if it is enjoyed occasionally, but video games tend to trigger very addictive attributes in people. Gaming every day, talking about gaming, blogging, recodring themselves while gaming, watching others while gaming... Doing anything too much is detremental.


Seems more like an argument against compulsion as opposed to any form of creative works. I can agree with the concept that limited experiences retards mental development.  May be more a question as to the culture of gaming given its near limitless possibilites of expressing ideas.



Around the Network
Jon-Erich on 26 March 2014

Metacritic is terrible for the industry and here's why.

- Publishers look at Metacritic a lot and base a game's performance (quality performance) on meeting a specific Metacritic score. If it doesn't meet that score, this could result in development teams losing their jobs, especially if the game does fall below sales sales expectations.

- Dumbasses like the ones who work Square-Enix actually make make sales projections based on Metacritic scores while forgetting the GOTY games have bombed in the past.

- Metacritic rates a score purely on math and logical means of rating a score rather than rating what a score means on an emotional or feeling-based level. A perfect example is X-Play. Years ago, Adam Sessler complained that Metacritic considered a 3/5 to be equalled to a 60% rating. The problem was Sessler felt that a 3/5 should be considered higher since X-Play only has five ratings to give.

- Ratings are hype and with honesty, it only takes a couple of bad ratings to lower a game's overall rating.

- Many people actually do base their purchasing decisions on Metacritic scores.

- Most people seem to forget the something in the 50 range in an average score. For some reason, most people have come to believe that if some goes below an 80, it's not worth their time.

I can go on and on, but I think it's easy to conclude that Metacritic has done more bad than good to the industry.



Check out my art blog: http://jon-erich-art.blogspot.com

sabastian on 26 March 2014
Shiken said:
Yes it is bad because a lot of bias review sited are present to ruin the average. Im not getting into this too much but when people have a certain logic that if a game isn't above xx score that it isn't worth playing, a system that takes the average of a bunch of site that all have different criteria for their grading process symply cannot work.

Example some sites see a 6.5 as an average but very good game while others say that 7.5 is normal and anything lower is sub par. You can't combine these scores and expect an accurate measure of quality.

The best thing to do is pick s few review sites that you agree with and read what they have to say and get your impressions that way. Unfortunately most people are blind to this and just want a convenient number due to sheer laziness when it comes to reading.


Very well put. I have always had a good comfort wit IGN, OPM and Game Informer. At best they gave me a good idea of the game of a whole.



sabastian on 26 March 2014
Pristine20 said:
Reviews scores are mostly worthless IMO. Metacritic is probably valuable because some people rely on it especially those who don't really know what they want. At the end of the day, one man's meat is another man's poison, one size doesn't fit all, etc. Real gamers who know what they want to play watch videos of the game and decide for themselves. I've gone back to games I ignored in the past thanks to the metacritic mentality only to be pleasantly surprised.

Now, some things reviewers cite for giving bad scores are pretty accurate. However, whether said "bad" game mechanic truly affects the enjoyment of the game is up to the individual player e..g most people lambasted FFXIII for being linear. I on the other hand wasn't bothered by that at all but would have preferred gambits to auto-battle etc. For another example, a game may be "bad" because of a terrible story but a gamer who doesn't care about story at all may called it a 10/10 game because his enjoyment isn't affected at all.


In the past I tend to always like the mag reviews that had 3 seperate reviews of the same game. 3 different views. That was a nice way to get seperate views of the game



Iveyboi on 26 March 2014

In addition to your OP,
When you have users giving Infamous 0/10, and 10/10 for nothing other than to inflate/deflate scores....yes



PSN: Saugeen-Uwo     Feel free to add me (put Vg Chartz as MSG)!

Nintendo Network ID: Saugeen-Uwo

Around the Network
sabastian on 26 March 2014
MoHasanie said:
I don't think metacritic is the deciding factor when purchasing games for most gamers.


Maybe not for most gamers, but metecritic has a huge influence on many. Just take a look at these forums.



FinalFantasyXIII on 26 March 2014

I really only pay attention to metacritic if there is a game that is 90+ that I haven't heard of. I'll check it out on youtube etc. If a game gets 70-80's it won't stop me at all from buying it.



sabastian on 26 March 2014
Cleary397 said:
I know a few people who have outright refused to buy games because of metacritic reviews being below 75%, despite the games being extremely good.

For me, its a clear answer.
Metacritic is bad for the gaming industry


I also know a few of these people..... Its scary



MoHasanie on 26 March 2014
sabastian said:
MoHasanie said:
I don't think metacritic is the deciding factor when purchasing games for most gamers.


Maybe not for most gamers, but metecritic has a huge influence on many. Just take a look at these forums.

The people on these forums represent the core gamers which make up a small proportion of the market. Just look at how many Vita owners there are here; in reality the Vita has sold so little. 



    

NNID: FrequentFlyer54

sabastian on 26 March 2014
d21lewis said:
It's just a collection of data. A tool. What we do with that info, good or bad, is up to us. Whether reviewers are credible or not, that's another story. Metacritic is just all of the reviews in one place. Nothing wrong with that. When we start just looking at reviw scores and not the content of the reviews, that's when everything goes to shit.


But dont many gamers already do that now with meta reviews ?