| Rainbird said:
Okay, this is officially becoming the weirdest argument ever. No, quality (as defined by metacritic) doesn't equal sales. We know this. And any games that are bad will have less sales, but they will still have sales. Do you think there are people who enjoy a game which is currently rated 60 or so on metacritic? Yes there are, but what are the odds these people actually went to metacritic? I think that anyone who hangs out on the internet, talks about games and knows about metacritic, will know exactly what they are after, and it's these people who will be turned off by many low reviews. If the system changed, they would have to adapt, and they would. Furthermore, comparing Killzone 2 to Noby Noby Boy? How is that not the weirdest comparison in the history of gaming? You can't say "Well, they got the same score, so they must be equally good", because they are different games, reviewed by different people. If anyone are pondering whether to buy Killzone 2 or Noby Noby Boy, they should either buy both or go earn some more money. And the final score is only the punctuation at the end of your review. Nobody sees the score Eurogamer gave a game and goes "I'll never be getting that!" without reading some part of the review (raving fanboys excluded). |
First Paragraph:
In a very simplistic broad understanding of the system you are correct. However it does affect sales for a lot of people. There are people inbetween the people like you and me, and the people who judge based on the cover. Some of these people just use one website for reviews and do trust the scores. Not everyone goes to metacritic, but a lot of people get a review one way or another.
Second P:
Why would those people be turned off by low reviews any more than other demographics. From what I can tell, many people on this very site don't give a damn about low scores when buying a new game. I think the people that are most affected are those inbetween people I mentioned before who might look at maybe one review and that's it. As far as adapting, you can't prove that, and the only evidence relevant to that argument is the one I previously expounded upon. (being more expensive, people require a harder push.)
Third P:
Instead of giving you some other example that you will just run in circles again, I'll approach it differently. On the scale of 0-1 how good is a certain game. 0 being bad, 1 being excellent. You can see the trouble immediately.
0-1 scale is to 0-10 scale, as 0-10 scale is to 0-100 scale. 0-10 is too constrained. The point of comparing games in my first example is analogous to the idea of 100 scale. 0-10 MIGHT be enough for a review of one game (for some people), but once you start getting scores to compare them to, 0-10 starts losing strength as many things will end up being the same. I forget the rule in psych statistics, but whenever a certain number of things end up being equal and refinement is possible, then refinement should occur. THat's just something I know from stats that has been proven by people much smarter than I.
4th P:
You are right about that. However, once you start getting a lot of games on the market, say 3-400, suddenly you really only start looking at the 80+ games on a metacritic type list. Sort by score and then look at the top 20% or so. If you have specific interests you refine the list.
