Metacritic in 2014

[zed]

Does high metacrit score translate into high sales?

No theres been a few articles at gamasutra about this and the correlation is weak
WRT metacritic using a weighting, theres always gamerankings.com (which is what I always quote here over the years, Their methods are disclosed )

the problem with gamerankings.com is their site sux

 

[joker454]

I far prefer Steam's rating system personally. With Metacritic you don't know if someone actually bought the game and how much they really played it. With Steam you have to purchase the game to be allowed to rate it, and most importantly it shows how many hours this person actually played the game. That's so useful for when someone craps on a game and you see they only played it an hour, compared to someone who has put 20+ hours into a game and is criticizing it. I find that far more useful than Metacritic which I stopped using long ago once Steam implemented their rating and comments system. They can be viewed by anyone as well on their website, you don't even need a Steam account or even be a pc gamer to read peoples comments and ratings. As such for me Metacritic died some time ago.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Though I agree somewhat with your sentiments, Joker, this bit doesn't quite hold -

That's so useful for when someone craps on a game and you see they only played it an hour, compared to someone who has put 20+ hours into a game and is criticizing it.

If a game is that bad that someone gives up after 1 hour, that's still legitimate opinion. There's no refund policy for disliked games, so there's nothing for someone to gain by abandoning a game early and posting a rant. If that's what they do, that's a fair assessment for that individual. Those reviews should be coupled with longer-played reviews to get an overview of whether one wants to buy the game and plug through the opening hours to unlock to good bits.

 

[Cjail]

@Shifty Geezer

I have nothing against demos.
I bought my favorite game after playing a short non-representative demo actually.

As for reviews and scores I simply never trusted them or used them.
Gameplay videos on the other hand are very useful to me.

 

[joker454]

Though I agree somewhat with your sentiments, Joker, this bit doesn't quite hold - If a game is that bad that someone gives up after 1 hour, that's still legitimate opinion.

Yeah I agree it's still a legitimate opinion of course, they just tend to hold less weight with me. At least someone that put 15+ hours into a game can really tell me about the ins and outs of it, rather than some 1 hour guys that are pissed for example that a series has run in a different direction and they have to just crap on the game without even playing it much (like the new Thief, DMC, etc), or some guys that 1 star any game just because you can't configure fov, etc... For example I took a quick peek at some reviews on Steam for Assassin's Creed Unity. Here's one:

"Worst Assassins Creed yet in my opinion."

...and here's another:

"I'm a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed Series. Sadly though in the last few years the games (well, more likely Ubisoft) has let me down."

Ok, two people that don't like the game. The first guy though has 0.2 hours of gameplay shown by Steam, and the second guy has 53.0 hours shown. So to me the first guy's opinion doesn't hold much weight whereas the second guy played the heck out of the game so I trust his opinion more. He doesn't come across as a hater, or someone from a competing company trying to spoil a game, etc, he comes across as a legitimate fan of the series that played the game through perhaps multiple times. Those types of reviews are invaluable to me and something you just can't get from Metacritic. Additionally it tells me that ok he was disappointed in the game but he still got 53.0 hours of gameplay out of it, that must count for something positive!

So legitimate? Sure both are legitimate reviews of people expressing their opinions, but Steam gives me that extra safety net. It lets me know that oh yeah that first guy only played the game for 0.2 hours, so make of that what you will.

 

[Nesh]

Sorry, but a Eurogamer review is as purely subjective as a Maxim review, but often pared with ignorance. This is true for all so-called professional game reviewers.

Didn't know that Metacrit is so bad and weighs reviews differently...

Subjective it may be but I totally disagree that all reviews are equal

 

[Billy Idol]

Subjective it may be but I totally disagree that all reviews are equal

For me, they really are. Nowadays, I care much more what my fellow B3D gamers say about a game than any review out there.

It really is my personal opinion that a review is also only a single opinion, as every other www opinion out there and hence why should I care. There are no objective criterium used in game reviewing, reviewers are either hyped as hell or downright wrong with their observations...it is ugly!

Again, no reviewer mentioned back than that BF4 is a broken game.

I like Joker's approach...unfortunately I am not sure if there is such a system for the new consoles?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

For me, they really are. Nowadays, I care much more what my fellow B3D gamers say about a game than any review out there.

Really? Over long reading exposure I've found that in terms of what games I am going to like and which game mechanics will excite/irritate me that Marty Silva on IGN, Ellie Gibson (retired) on Eurogamer and Jim Trinca on VideoGamer are pretty spot on. Other reviewers not so much but then it's entirely subjective. These three are most alligned with my subjective views.

Again, no reviewer mentioned back than that BF4 is a broken game.

Wasn't that because reviews played on a private server prior to release? BF4 caused a lot of review sites to change their method of assessing multiplayer games - many sites will now only provide an 'impressions' article with the main review appearing a week (or more) after release on live servers.

 

[Nesh]

For me, they really are. Nowadays, I care much more what my fellow B3D gamers say about a game than any review out there.

The fact that you may find more helpful the opinions of your fellow B3D is irrelevant to the argument that one review is better than an other.

The subject of the discussion isnt "Why you should listen only to reviews and avoid other opinions"

It really is my personal opinion that a review is also only a single opinion, as every other www opinion out there and hence why should I care. There are no objective criterium used in game reviewing, reviewers are either hyped as hell or downright wrong with their observations...it is ugly!

A review is not 100% objective but there are elements that can be objective such as a description of the gameplay mechanics (i.e a reviewer who knows what he is talking about, such as a long time Tekken player who analyzes the gameplay changes/mechanics of the next Tekken release).
Hype and wrong observations is a common phenomenon in public opinion too but that I wont talk about as it is irrelevant to my quoted post.
This argument still doesnt support why all reviews are equal. Its a generic assumption

 

[Billy Idol]

Gaming reviews are subjective...all of them. Hence, how can something subjective be objectively better than another subjective review?

But I understand that for you personally, some reviews are better than others.

I also understand that some of you guys have a favorite reviewer which is pretty much in line with the personal opinion.

But back to my first post: all these observations demonstrate that especially Metacrot's way of giving one review more weight than another is plainly wrong. The personal opinion of the Maxim reviewer is as valid as the perdonal opinion of the Eurogamer reviewer.

As long as there are no standards and no objective measurements, there is imo no reason to distinguish game reviews.

And even the seasoned Tekken player may rate gameplay changes highly subjective if they either fit his playstyle or not.

PS: when reading the bio's of reviewers their most important qualification seems to be 'played games since he was a kid'...

 

[Nesh]

Gaming reviews are subjective...all of them. Hence, how can something subjective be objectively better than another subjective review?

There are two opinions. One says the earth is round, the other says the earth is flat.
The first is subjective the second is subjective based on perspective but factually completely wrong.
The fact is that the earth is not flat and neither completely round. But as you can see the former is the closest to the truth. Therefore as you can see there are subjective opinions that are closer to the truth than others.
The same logic can be applied to the opinions you get from B3D. All are subjective. Therefore under your own logic all opinions you get from your fellow B3D posters are just as bad as every other review because all are subjective. So? You are basically claiming without knowing that all opinions expressed are completely and equally worthless

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And even the seasoned Tekken player may rate gameplay changes highly subjective if they either fit his playstyle or not.

Absolutely. In fact, you could see a seasoned Tekken veteran down-rating a new game for deviating too much from the formula they love, while the mainstream rates the game as a new high thanks to not being prejudiced to a particular recipe and so more open to the new experience. Prior experience can go both ways, making the results just as subjective as anyone else's.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There are two opinions. One says the earth is round, the other says the earth is flat.
The first is subjective the second is subjective based on perspective but factually completely wrong...

You're measuring the two views against an objective scientific fact. That's very different to personal taste. Marmite is not scientifically nice or nasty, and we can't rate those who like Marmite as being correct and those who dislike it as being wrong (or vice versa). Likewise, a game is not scientifically good or bad, and we can't rate one person's view of a game being good as being correct. The most we can say is someone shares one's own view, that their subjective criteria are evaluate to the same conclusion.

The same logic can be applied to the opinions you get from B3D. All are subjective. Therefore under your own logic all opinions you get from your fellow B3D posters are just as bad as every other review because all are subjective. So? You are basically claiming without knowing that all opinions expressed are completely and equally worthless

Billy wasn't saying that. He acknowledges all reviews are subjective as there are no objective measures to be applied (we could find some and award scores on measurable criteria like framerate and pixel count. Ugh!) - he just finds the personal opinions of B3D gamers more reasonable than gaming website reviews.

 

[Nesh]

You're measuring the two views against an objective scientific fact. That's very different to personal taste. Marmite is not scientifically nice or nasty, and we can't rate those who like Marmite as being correct and those who dislike it as being wrong (or vice versa). Likewise, a game is not scientifically good or bad, and we can't rate one person's view of a game being good as being correct. The most we can say is someone shares one's own view, that their subjective criteria are evaluate to the same conclusion.

This is why we read and check multiple reviews

Reviews arent white or black, simply "good" or "bad" or just numbers. They contain an analysis of the reviewers personal view. This is why we read reviews, this is why we check more than one or check averages in order to connect the dots. We know they are subjective. I did not say otherwise

One review can score a game low for good reasons and another may score the same game high for good reasons while some other reviews may score a game low or high for wrong reasons.

Its irrational to claim that all reviews are equal simply because they involve subjectivity. Some are closer to reflecting the experience of the targeted audience than others.

Billy wasn't saying that. He acknowledges all reviews are subjective as there are no objective measures to be applied (we could find some and award scores on measurable criteria like framerate and pixel count. Ugh!) - he just finds the personal opinions of B3D gamers more reasonable than gaming website reviews.

I suggest you go back and see what part he quoted
As I said earlier the subject of the discussion wasnt whether its better to rely on reviews instead of B3D opinions or vise versa.His argument was trying to support that all reviews are equal because they are just subjective opinions. His argument is inadequate. Everyone's opinion is subjective anyways. He is not making any point. Under this logic he shouldnt have found B3D gamers' personal opinions any more reasonable. According to that logic they should be equal to reviews. But if on the other hand we accept that B3D gamers opinions are more reasonable it suggests that indeed some opinions are not equal to others. Which should suggest also that reviews are not equal either. His argument commits suicide

Its a different case than yours were you brought the argument that some outlets favor some publishers. In that case it is not even a matter of opinion. Its a matter of bias due to business and ties irrelevant to the quality of the game

 

[Billy Idol]

Um, Shifty's interpretation of my post is spot on...at least wrt my subjective opinion

I never said that B3D's opinions are more reasonable (this would be the last thing I'd ever suggest!!! ) and less subjective than others?!?

That is actually my whole point why it is wrong to give more weights to certain reviews...because all are subjective!...?

Nesh, you are confusing me. Maybe you can explain to me, why certain reviews should get higher weight than others as Metacrit does?!

 

[Nesh]

Um, Shifty's interpretation of my post is spot on...at least wrt my subjective opinion

I never said that B3D's opinions are more reasonable (this would be the last thing I'd ever suggest!!! ) and less subjective than others?!?

That is actually my whole point why it is wrong to give more weights to certain reviews...because all are subjective!...?

Nesh, you are confusing me. Maybe you can explain to me, why certain reviews should get higher weight than others as Metacrit does?!

First of all we dont know how metacritic weights and therefore we dont know if metacritic's weighting method is good. I simply stated that I understand the logic and is reasonable.
Secondly as for why reviews are better than others this can be observed only by reading them regardless of personal preference. Some reviews are often atrocious, inadequate due to inadequate playthrough or their reasons for praising or criticizing a game has no relation to the game itself (i.e criticizing a game for something it misses while its present or confusing learning curve with fun factor, comparing it with games that are too different, praising it for great gameplay that it lacks etc)

I never said that B3D's opinions are more reasonable (this would be the last thing I'd ever suggest!!! )

Ahm...yeah you claim Shifty's post is spot on yet it's Shifty who interpreted this from you

and less subjective than others?!?

No you didnt say its less subjective.
This is why you are contradicting yourself even if you did say they are less subjective.
You claim that all reviews are equal because they are subjective opinions
Hence you prefer B3D's opinions more than reviews for the above reason
You then imply that B3D's opinions are just as subjective as every other opinion.
Your arguments are an oxymoron.

 

[Billy Idol]

I say: reviews are subjective. All are equal in this regard. Hence, no reason to weigh them differently as Metacrit does, which should provide an objective representation of reviews. That was my argument. You said, all reviews are obviously subjective so my argument is no argument....

This is my last words on this part of the discussion, there is nothing I can add...either you agree or you don't or you bring an argument.

The second part, which you somehow blow out of proportion and don't even realize when I am joking:

Some people prefer reviews from certain reviewers, as they observed that those reviewers fit their personal subjective opinions best. I understand this and I do the same. Often, I listen to some B3Ders opinion which I learned fit well with my subjective opinion (RenegadeRocks comes to mind). Nothing more, nothing less?!? I never meant to say that they are less subjective and that this is the reason I follow them more than other reviews! That is no contradiction to my original argument that weighing reviews differently makes no sense: someone at MetaCrit decides subjectively which reviews he likes more than others and weigh them accordingly. It is impossible to objectively weigh reviews that fits for everyone...there might be weights that fit to your personal perception of reviews, there might be weights that fit my personal perception of reviews...but I doubt that those are the same. I hope I could make this point clear.

Btw, the statement about 'reasonable B3D' was meant to be a joke...but I see that you are somehow quite serious about this part, while ignoring others?!?

Anyway, up to now, you did not bring a real argument why one should objectively treat reviews different (I am not talking about personal preference of certain reviewers, which I understand and is due to the lack of objective reviews the only thing we can do!) but you only misinterpreted and dissect my argument to make me look hilarious!?!

 

[Nesh]

I say: reviews are subjective. All are equal in this regard. Hence, no reason to weigh them differently as Metacrit does, which should provide an objective representation of reviews. That was my argument. You said, all reviews are obviously subjective so my argument is no argument....

This is my last words on this part of the discussion, there is nothing I can add...either you agree or you don't or you bring an argument.

The second part, which you somehow blow out of proportion and don't even realize when I am joking:

Some people prefer reviews from certain reviewers, as they observed that those reviewers fit their personal subjective opinions best. I understand this and I do the same. Often, I listen to some B3Ders opinion which I learned fit well with my subjective opinion (RenegadeRocks comes to mind). Nothing more, nothing less?!? I never meant to say that they are less subjective and that this is the reason I follow them more than other reviews! That is no contradiction to my original argument that weighing reviews differently makes no sense: someone at MetaCrit decides subjectively which reviews he likes more than others and weigh them accordingly. It is impossible to objectively weigh reviews that fits for everyone...there might be weights that fit to your personal perception of reviews, there might be weights that fit my personal perception of reviews...but I doubt that those are the same. I hope I could make this point clear.

Btw, the statement about 'reasonable B3D' was meant to be a joke...but I see that you are somehow quite serious about this part, while ignoring others?!?

Anyway, up to now, you did not bring a real argument why one should objectively treat reviews different (I am not talking about personal preference of certain reviewers, which I understand and is due to the lack of objective reviews the only thing we can do!) but you only misinterpreted and dissect my argument to make me look hilarious!?!

I am not trying to make you look hilarious. This is your own assumption.

All reviews can be described with a level of subjectivity. The difference is how well supported they are (has he played the game thoroughly?) and the level of bias (i.e a PS fanboy will write an even worse review about an AAA XBox game if he lets his partisan emotions get in the way). Hence some are less representative than others.

Your contradiction isnt based on the fact that you believe reviews are more subjective than B3D opinions.

The contradiction is in the fact that you criticize reviews for being subjective and all equal in the information they pprovide, while at the same time you acknowledge the subjectivity of opinions in B3D yet you find them more valuable as information. This means that not all subjective opinions are equal for you. There lies the oxymoron.

Now if choosing B3D opinions is just your preference, your own way of doing things, this is undestandable, but as I said numerous times this does not contribute to the discussion which revolves around the question if reviews can help us form approximate ideas about the suitability of a game for us. You just mentioned an alternative as an argument that n truth says nothing about the nature of reviews

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This is why we read and check multiple reviews

Reviews arent white or black, simply "good" or "bad" or just numbers. They contain an analysis of the reviewers personal view.

But the score doesn't, and Metacritic presumably doesn't factor in analysis unless every article's read and (subjectively) weighted. Chances are they just rate some sources as more important than others without reading the content.

One review can score a game low for good reasons and another may score the same game high for good reasons while some other reviews may score a game low or high for wrong reasons.

Its irrational to claim that all reviews are equal simply because they involve subjectivity. Some are closer to reflecting the experience of the targeted audience than others.

It's not irrational, just a different perspective. I agree with what you're saying, that some reviews are less rational than others. Effectively, sometimes idiots review stuff and make illogical arguments. However, the people that are going to play the game are also going to include the same types of people. One illogical review complaining about Dead Space and giving it a 3/10 is going to resonate with similarly illogical players who'd find the same illogical issues with the game. Therefore, if 2% of reviews rate it 3/10, chances are 2% of players would rate the game 3/10, and so the number used to represent the appeal of the game to the wider audience is going to have to reflect that. And if you don't want to consider outliers, you can filter them out statistically - you don't need to use a weighting system. Point is, without knowing precisely what Metacritic's score is trying to be, we don't whether some reviews are less important than others. If the assumption is that Metacritic's job is just to aggregate public opinions into an average to represent game appeal to the general populace, then it should treat all reviews as equal. IF they are wanting to produce a score representative of a particular subset of the populace, than they should filter their data accordingly to represent that populace.

Furthermore, those professional reviews you speak of are at times nonsense themselves anyway. I've read reviews with a grumbling tone that get a higher score than the wordage describes. I've also read reviews where the reviewer clearly doesn't like the genre or franchise. Or introduces a criteria to a game that others aren't judged by. eg. LBP3 on EG was downrated for being buggy. Probably deserved, but other games like ACU weren't downrated for being buggy. Hence their scores are higher where the scoring isn't objective and equitable.

There are too many variables in play when a review is created, so it's probably best just to run with consensus across all opinions, maybe with some statistical removal of outliers.

 

[London Geezer]

Without demos for everything, horrific. Who'd protect you from making lousy purchases of broken/rubbish software? Either we should have large enough demos that are perfectly representative, or we need the freedom for people to share their opinions and help others form an informed choice. Nothing wrong with that - it's just the monolithic score that's the issue.

Maybe in that world, no game would be released broken as the backlash would be an order of magnitude worse than it is in this dimension.

Here we can discuss about broken releases needing patch after patch, in the safety of our knowledge that we avoided that title.

In that other world, we would be doing a lot more than discussing if we ended up buying the game before knowing it was broken.

The backlash would be much greater and market forces would have punished said developer long ago, if they had a history of releasing sub-par products, or ones that set expectations too high to be met, which is what happens a lot these days.

So maybe things would actually be better and we'd get better quality titles on release date!!