TechRaptor - At one time or another I’m (Andrew Otton) sure we have all found ourselves looking at Metacritic. Sometimes we are only looking for some of the most critically acclaimed games for a particular year, another time we may just be looking at past popular games to get an idea of something we may be interested in, and yet another time we may, hopefully not too often, go to Metacritic so that we can use it as a tool for judging the worthiness of a game.
"While the 20 year anniversary edition of Nordic Game, NG24 Spring's homepage on 21-24 May in Malmö, Sweden, is getting closer, the organizers announced that more than 150 speakers are now lined up for the show." - Nordic Game.
The gaming industry has drifted away from offering full-fledged games to putting unfinished titles that are jam-packed with microtransactions on the market.
It's not the fault of the gaming industry. Gamers were told what was happening, were warned about where this would lead, did nothing, and now are acting like it's the fault of publishers that they kept buying these games and investing in MTX. If only those gamers at that time felt as strongly about these things as they do Helldivers 2.
I don't think MTX target the common gamer but instead predate on the so called "whales". It's gambling pure and simple.
Oh, so it's okay to buy MTX-laden games as long as you don't spend money on MTX, which has led to even more MTX-laden games with even more predatory practices where content that used to be unlocked is now behind paywalls?
C'mon now people. You gave the corporations and inch, and they kept taking and taking. Community members told people that investing in these things alone would only lead to more and more MTX and putting more and more behind paywalls. But it's only the fault of the corporations, not the people who kept supporting it with purchases as more and more was taken away?
@Christopher that's a straw man, I didn't say any of that I just added context.
Well exactly
People stand up for something which seems small to them and they get called whiners or negative. Then years later the shit hits the fan and they all go “why is this happening?” Like they are innocent.
The issue aswell is younger gamers who grew up with all this thinking it’s normal and we all just look like old farts yelling at clouds when we’re trying to help us all, even them.
Who woulda thought that listening to your elders could be a good idea...too late now
It all started with that damn horse armour. Back then I thought nobody was stupid to buy into that crap. How wrong I was....
I like how people move the goal-post. First it’s, f*ck any game with MTX’s, f*ck GaaS games, f*ck this game with “optional” MTX’s (Dragon’s Dogma 2), Helldivers 2 is ok because it’s fun and even though it has Battle Passes or Season Passes and MTX’s it’s ok because… you don’t need to buy them? 🤷♂️
HellDivers 2 is the best selling game this year. Just think about that, games like FF7 Rebirth sold poorly, but a continuous game that lives off recurring revenue sells extraordinarily well. Then we’ll hear everyone b*tch about a GaaS future.
I really wonder what this industry would’ve been like if we never gave into this crap, and yes I’m saying “WE” since I’m guilty of it, but man it’s literally no closing the door once it’s been opened.
This is what amazed me the most when playing hours upon hours of stellar Blade version 1.00.00 no bugs, no crashes, no sudden drops in frames, no screen tear, no falling from the world, just a complete package on a game under 50GB.
I think Korea will play a major role in gaming in the long run , because they're releasing banger after banger.
Still pretty common to find if you stay away from the AAA publishers, in the last 10yrs ive probably only bought like 3 games combined from EA/ACTIVISION/UBISOFT. Even now i still buy games that work right out the box perfectly fine. Just recently got like 6hrs into Alone in the Dark, and not a single sign of any of that bs, really enjoying my time with it.
There's such a misconception about every game needing a patch,this and that when in reality it's not even close. You nailed it isarai
And we as gamers have to accept our role in that. Constantly never being satisfied. Constantly demanding more while paying less. Constantly demanding better frame rates, better graphics, more modes and faster faster faster…. Then review bombing the product when a demand isn’t met. Meanwhile those same demands are making games more difficult, complex and more expensive to create than ever before, on shrinking timelines that burn out employees and make their lives miserable.
You wanna know why so many games get delayed? Cuz the original release dates weren’t realistic to begin with, but you can’t tell a gamer their game is further away than they want to hear. Some dev or game designer will be threatened physically. That builds even more pressure and rushing. We are officially squeezing water out of rocks and still complaining about that how hard you have to squeeze the rock be just waiting for rain. Most of the time we take it out on the developing studio, when it’s the publisher making the calls.
All you need to do is read the comments on most websites and social media to see how toxic, entitled and petty the gaming community at large is, and realize how that transforms into impossible expectations on the parts of game makers.
Nope. Some gamers are to blame. Never demanded anything you mentioned.
A fully finished and functioning product is a standard. It's not demanded. If someone sells you a tv that only works 60% of the time are you going to recommend it OR write a review calling out the obvious problem...it's not a demand...it's a standard.
A standard triple A publishers can't seem to hit consistently.
This is one battle that gamers have never won, hahaha. They were parading recently for their "win" against Sony. Where's the energy for this one, guys? LMAO!
"The most important games event of Latin America, gamescom latam, has unveiled the finalists for its flagship award ceremony, the gamescom latam BIG Festival, which celebrates the best in the global market of games." - Gamescom.
Yes, use Gamerankings instead for more accuracy since it accounts for the two extra decimal places in the store.
While I think the stuff about the averages is interesting, I really doubt as much effort really goes into the average process as the author is suggesting. In a lot of ways I think it's all a lot of PR speak for "we have an advance algorithm that makes our averages a lot more meaningful than they actually are". For sake of argument, I took a look at Flower (PS4) on MC, which has a score of 91 and if you add up the scores and then divide by the number of reviews it comes out to 91.18 or the score that MC displays. Now, I don't have the time to look over every score to make sure they all match, though I doubt they would put a different score on their site if the site had a score in the first place.
In either case, neither of these things are what I consider "wrong" with Metacritic. For me, the biggest problem is that Metacritic is basically a fruit bowl and while the bowl has apples, oranges, bananas, maybe a mango and other things, they're all treated as a pear.By this I mean there is a different stats and figures, which are all changed to conform to new data and can result in skewed figures. To give you an idea, MC has a lot of sites that review games on different ratios. 1 out of 100 / 10 / 5, A - E / F, good or bad and in some cases nothing. Now, there are some people that claim that an 80, 8 and 4 mean different things, even though they're divisibly the same (4/5 or 8/10 or 80/100 is still 80%) and this maybe true. A lot of sites also toy with what exactly is considered "average", which varies from some saying it's 5 out of 10 (median), PSLS considers it a 6, several gamers and outlets consider it a 7 and Metacritic requires a 75/100 average to be "green" (this is like 61+ in every other medium). So, even if all the sites are giving the game "average" scores across the board, it still might be tanked by sites scoring things differently. Another problem I've heard of is letter graders are typically assigned a 1 / 5 score, so a C is 50, A is 100 and E is 0, which can VASTLY change the average, even though I've heard sites that consider an E as a 5/10 by default. Then there is Quarter to Three, which is based off how much the guy likes the game and crap like that shouldn't be on MC in the first place, as I consider it less helpful and relevant than even some troll reviews on Amazon or Best Buy...
Arguably another big issue with MC is that everything is viewed as something of a "snapshot". As the article mentions, they constantly talk about quality, but sites are typically only evaluated once and put on the site from then until the end of time. The problem with that is the site can change a lot in a couple of months and some writers might not meet Metacritic "standards", though they're listed simply because they work for a prestigious site. This is somewhat problematic, since it largely defeats the point of having an approval process in the first place.
I can keep getting into problems with Metacritic, but in the end it's hard to make a system that works without a lot of time and effort, which typically isn't feasible for any site. In the end, "smart" readers should find people that match their beliefs and trust their reviews or simply avoid reviews in the first place. After doing the critic thing for a number of years, there is a lot of backdoor / politics / biases / side factors that come into play and make many reviews questionable at best.
I always like to judge a game myself peoples tastes differ i only use scores of any type as a guideline.
And the world keeps on spinning.
I like to judge a game for myself, 'm currently going through my backlog. Just finished playing Brutal Legends, and now I'm currently playing Kane & Lynch....Literally playing a game released in 2007. Approximately 25 more games to go after I complete this one.