Games Industry does like talking about Metacritic. (Except Frictional)

[Euphoria14]

I found this to be a really good read and gives good reasons as to why I also heavily dislike Metacritic. It is a disease.

 

Since the story a while back that certain Sonic games were to be pulled from retail due to less-than-fantastic Metacritic ratings, I’ve been trying to piece together a feature on the industry’s attitude towards the ubiquitous reviews aggregator. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the matter, it’s that the industry is keeping its lips zipped.

I contacted both Metacritic and Sega for comment on the matter, but both said they were unhappy to provide a statement for the article. Several other companies failed to respond to repeated emails at all.

The always-willing-to-talk Amnesia devs Frictional Games, however, offered some insightful comments when I pestered them on the issue.

“We have kind of split emotions towards Metacritic,” said Thomas Grip.

“It is a great tool both personally and professionally as you have nice list of reviews from most major sites that we can access easily. If you get good scores it is also a something you can point publishers and press towards to convince them that your game is really worth checking out.

“But then, it is also a bit of a pain. A part of this comes from the system of an average score in general. If you have a niche game like we do, then there is bound to be reviews who do not really care for it and give it low scores. Even if you have a large part of the press that loves the game, these bad reviews really drag down the review. This is especially true for games as there is an extremely narrow range of scores where a game is considered good. Basically anything below 85 gives rise to skepticism in a potential buyer.”

Grip also expressed concern with how Metacritic process their average scores. “They give different weight to different outlets and determine by themselves how much each should have,” he said. And furthermore, Metacritic assigns a hundred-point marking system to reviews which don’t use that scale. “There is all sort of misleading things when you try to convert all scores to a 0 – 100% scale,” said the Frictional founder.

“The thing is that Metacritic has grown a bit too important over the years,” he continued. “Publishers seem to judge the game solely on this, and we have had instances where they have skipped testing games just because of the Meta-score. We even had a contract drawn up (that never went into action though) where we would get a bonus depending on the Metacritic score. So in some instances we are forced to listen to Metacritic whether we like it or not.”

As for Frictional themselves, they try not to pay too much attention, though admit that it’s sometimes difficult not to. “I would say that we actually look too much at Metacritic ourselves. While what gives the most satisfaction is to read when someone experience the game just like intended, there is just something about seeing a big shiny score. For us with Amnesia, it feels like seal of approval that we really managed to make a better game than our previous endeavors. And as I mentioned at the start, if you get good reviews, you can actually do the opposite on press and publishers, and show them Metacritic to make them notice you. Since Metacritic is such a big thing, you can make it work towards your advantage. I am sure some media would not have mentioned Amnesia if it were not for the good Metacritic score. That makes it a quite the double-edged sword.”

http://beefjack.com/news/games-industry-doesnt-like-talking-about-metacritic-except-frictional/