<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Natural Selection 2 offers a promising combination of strategy and first-person shooting, but disappointing execution holds it back. [Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review. Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2024320:date=Nov 15 2012, 03:36 AM:name=dissection)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (dissection @ Nov 15 2012, 03:36 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2024320"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why exactly did gamespot change their rating? That they did is a clear sign of the inability of the site by itself<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because there are so many games released that they would need a massive staff to review everything. Because NS2 is a (relatively) small title compared to something like CoD, they hired an outsider to do it for him; it turns out the guy they hired said a number of things about the game there were just flat out factually incorrect, so they pulled the review.
<!--quoteo(post=2023815:date=Nov 15 2012, 12:49 AM:name=SentrySteve)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SentrySteve @ Nov 15 2012, 12:49 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2023815"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Here's an interesting analysis of review scores vs sales and review scores vs player perception. If anything, people here are underestimating the impact this poor review score will have.
ArgathorJoin Date: 2011-07-18Member: 110942Members, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=2024368:date=Nov 15 2012, 10:23 AM:name=Yuuki)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Yuuki @ Nov 15 2012, 10:23 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2024368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Thanks that's more interesting. Too bad their first plot is kind of crappy, they binned the data and don't show the error bars. Bad science.
I think it is a wasted effort Yuuki, very few people are ever going to understand the world in the way you do.
I enjoyed that link through, it was very interesting. I still think there is probably very little impact on NS2's sales from the metacritic score, but I guess UWE might be far more worried about investors/other organisations using it to judge them in the future. Which is fair enough.
I assume metacritic don't want unscruplous publishers of games/movies forcing blogs to remove ratings in order to boost their profits. It's regretably understandable :(.
Having said that, there's a few problems with their approach: - they are promoting the gamespot review on the front page of their NS2 coverage. That may be automated, but they should be able to do something about it.... - the 'editors note' is missing the point. The note should say "please note this review was removed by gamespot due to concerns about the quality" (or somesuch nonsense).
<!--quoteo(post=2023802:date=Nov 14 2012, 11:39 PM:name=Metal Handkerchief)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Metal Handkerchief @ Nov 14 2012, 11:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2023802"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Metacritic recently raped The Secret World, by counting some ######-ass BLOG with not a shred of professionalism (Quarter to Three) who gave the game a purely troll rating of 4/10. Later "reviews" by this horrible website has made it all too transparent that the "writer" was rooting for Guild Wars 2, I mean seriously, this pile of crap system needs to be torn down.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Tom Chick gave sleeping dogs 4/10 (MC:80%), Forza Horizon 6/10 (MC:85%), Gods and kings 4/10 (MC:80%).
Famously, he does not like the common "70-90" scoring system (designed to offend no-one) and instead tells it as he sees it. If it's below average, then it should get a below average score.
The problem is more that the entire N% system is kindof stupid, and meshing together scores from people with different concepts of what that number means can be misleading.
<!--quoteo(post=2024399:date=Nov 15 2012, 06:55 AM:name=Argathor)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Argathor @ Nov 15 2012, 06:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2024399"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think it is a wasted effort Yuuki, very few people are ever going to understand the world in the way you do.
I enjoyed that link through, it was very interesting. I still think there is probably very little impact on NS2's sales from the metacritic score, but I guess UWE might be far more worried about investors/other organisations using it to judge them in the future. Which is fair enough.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I appreciated that link quite a lot. It's more justification that there's some serious problems with the amount of respect afforded to metacritic by the gaming general public.
Kotaku wrote an article about it: <a href="http://kotaku.com/metacritic/" target="_blank">Metacritic Refuses To Pull Negative Review That GameSpot Admits Was Factually Inaccurate</a>
I actually don't blame metacritic for this. They seem to know how corrupt game reviews often are, hence why this system exists. I blame Gamespot, for being as terrible as they have been for a long time.
Hugh - They said that they tried to contact UWE over the phone? From the Kotaku article:
"We fully respect Gamespot's journalistic processes and are very thankful that they took the time to review NS2. Many critics will not touch smaller indie games with a ten-foot barge pole," Jeremy told me. He said they've reached out to Metacritic for an explanation, but they haven't yet heard back. [Update: After the publication of this piece, Metacritic's Doyle sent me a note to say he had offered to get on the phone with Jeremy, but that Jeremy never got back to him.]"
To be honest, this ###### storm regarding metacritic is free advertising for NS2, plus now everyone will know the 6.0 score is invalid when looking up NS2 scores.
I wonder what metacritics policy would be if a reviewer wrote a glowing review of a new game, 10/10, except the guy typoed the score when he submitted it and so it showed up as 1/10.
Would they say "too bad, the first rating stands, doesn't matter if it was factually incorrect"?
Or if it was later determined that the reviewer didn't even play the game and just cobbled together a review by reading other reviews? Would they insist on standing by that review?
I was of the "sh%t happens" camp, but got a little more pissed when I saw this snippet:
" "And if you're all butt-hurt about not having the same stuff as the kids across the Pacific, I hear you, but please believe me when I say that if you allow that butt-hurtedness to prevent you from buying and playing this game, you fail at life and will never have sex. Yeah, I said it. Because it's true. Don't say I didn't warn you," he wrote in his review of Yakuza 3. "
Butthurt.... really? He used the word "butthurt" in a review? Not once, but twice?
And people still hire this guy? Big websites like gamespot and 1up, to write reviews for big releases like CS:GO?!
And Metacritic actually cares about protecting the integrity of a critic who uses the word "butt-hurt" twice in a single review?
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=2024910:date=Nov 15 2012, 12:15 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Nov 15 2012, 12:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2024910"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I wonder what metacritics policy would be if a reviewer wrote a glowing review of a new game, 10/10, except the guy typoed the score when he submitted it and so it showed up as 1/10.
Would they say "too bad, the first rating stands, doesn't matter if it was factually incorrect"?
Or if it was later determined that the reviewer didn't even play the game and just cobbled together a review by reading other reviews? Would they insist on standing by that review?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Looks like. Its a policy that allows no room for honest mistakes.
<!--quoteo(post=2024910:date=Nov 15 2012, 04:15 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Nov 15 2012, 04:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2024910"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I wonder what metacritics policy would be if a reviewer wrote a glowing review of a new game, 10/10, except the guy typoed the score when he submitted it and so it showed up as 1/10.
Would they say "too bad, the first rating stands, doesn't matter if it was factually incorrect"?
Or if it was later determined that the reviewer didn't even play the game and just cobbled together a review by reading other reviews? Would they insist on standing by that review?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Apparently Metacritic protects critics. It doesn't protect consumers or developers...
The thing is, how is this protecting critics? I'm MOSTLY mad at metacritic for having ridiculous policies, but I'm also reasonably mad at GameSpot for putting the terrible review through in the first place when they full well knew there would be no backing out on the most important review aggregator in the gaming industry.
In this case the policy really just screws over everyone. There's no winner. Eric Neaher gets to have his mistakes examined in glaring detail in the public eye now, Gamespy gets the criticism they didn't do their professional due diligence in the first place, The NS2 team gets a much ######tier Metacritic score than they deserve, Fans of NS2 don't get as much bragging rights as they deserve (or they get involved in the issue and it makes us angry and eats up our time), Generic games purchasers may be manipulated into not picking up a great game, and metacritic gets to be crucified to some degree as well. All because they've chosen to be needlessly hard assed on enforcing a policy that wasn't even designed for this situation. There is absolutely NO ONE who is being protected or benefiting here.
I fully understand their policy for not changing the score. It does make sense in a way. But they should just remove the outdated review entirely, not leave it up. It's a broken link ffs.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I dont understand it. Swift said it perfectly, its a broken policy that only accounts for one scenario. A better would be "If publisher removes review for admittedly erroneous reasons, they may request to have their review removed at the expense of not being able to submit another one in the future." I.e. zero influence on the score.. Now if someone gets bullied into removing their review theres nothing to replace it, and thus if the majority get bullied for poor reviews, there's no reviews.. which is just as bad as a poor score.
I think the best thing to do now is to get all the articles and reviews of NS2 to be submitted to metacritic.. theres quite a few 9/10 scores that metacritic isnt counting..
In case anyone needs more proof about this website, and the "wild west" method of game reviewing we currently use having any impact on reality being a bad thing: <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118745-BioShock-Developer-Hiring-Based-on-Metacritic-Scores" target="_blank">http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/...tacritic-Scores</a>
"oh, a reviewer ###### up your score OR uses a different scoring method than the rest of the reviewers? sorry, you're not hire-able in this industry!"
the game industry is really dumb. thankfully it's a good time to be hipsters and only play indie games
Not sure how long it has been there but Metacritic have added an "editors note" at the bottom of the gamespot review on their site:
[Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review. Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]
<!--quoteo(post=2025073:date=Nov 16 2012, 08:51 AM:name=hartraft)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (hartraft @ Nov 16 2012, 08:51 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2025073"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Not sure how long it has been there but Metacritic have added an "editors note" at the bottom of the gamespot review on their site:
[Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review. Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]
<a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/natural-selection-2/critic-reviews" target="_blank">http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/natural-.../critic-reviews</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--coloro:#FFC0CB--><span style="color:#FFC0CB"><!--/coloro-->Well that's something, at least. The damage is done, but hopefully this will prevent more. :\<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
What if we could get attention from marcus beer, the annoyed gamer from gametrailer? He seems to care about such (i guess he would say) "###### reviews".
I will definetly send him a short email with a link to kotakus article about this. Maybe you should too? The more, the better (and who does not know him: again: he does care about such practises within the industrie and has no problems to talk about it louder)
The only bad thing is this part in kotakus article: Update: After the publication of this piece, Metacritic's Doyle sent me a note to say he had offered to get on the phone with Jeremy, but that Jeremy never got back to him.
To add insult to injury, the Gamespot review is weighted higher then many other reviews, and drags the score down even more then if all were weighted equally. If you just average all the scores you get 80.75 or 81%
Totalbiscuit did a piece on the metacritic NS2 issue. Pretty nice, this show usually averages around 120,000 viewers over a couple weeks.
I'm wondering if we should be requesting that Valve remove the Metacritic score for NS2 from steam. We have legitimate reason to be upset with the way they've handled the score. It's one thing to complain that people reviewed your game badly... it's another thing entirely when a company is knowingly publishing false information about your game.
<!--quoteo(post=2026317:date=Nov 16 2012, 08:30 PM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 16 2012, 08:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2026317"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm wondering if we should be requesting that Valve remove the Metacritic score for NS2 from steam. We have legitimate reason to be upset with the way they've handled the score. It's one thing to complain that people reviewed your game badly... it's another thing entirely when a company is knowingly publishing false information about your game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, I love the damn game so I never even noticed the score till I saw this thread and read up on the issue.
It's absolutely deplorable. I'll be writing a written letter to the parent company, as something physical is often more productive.
Unfortunately they likely assume, to the extent they care, that this is a small potatoes game with a small community. Of course, that would be all the more reason to get their score right as a smaller company is more dependent on good reviews….
This ######storm will help them for now. But if its not changed it will hurt them in the long term when this noise dies off because all that will remain is the garbage score.
Comments
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Natural Selection 2 offers a promising combination of strategy and first-person shooting,
but disappointing execution holds it back.
[Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review.
Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
unce upon a time when piracy was the only real option to get a truly unbiased opinion on a game...
Because there are so many games released that they would need a massive staff to review everything. Because NS2 is a (relatively) small title compared to something like CoD, they hired an outsider to do it for him; it turns out the guy they hired said a number of things about the game there were just flat out factually incorrect, so they pulled the review.
<a href="http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-power-of-review-scores-why-critics-have-more-control-than-we-think1" target="_blank">http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-a...-than-we-think1</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks that's more interesting. Too bad their first plot is kind of crappy, they binned the data and don't show the error bars. Bad science.
Here's a better analysis:
<a href="http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/features/sales_vs_score.php" target="_blank">http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/features/sales_vs_score.php</a>
Here's a better analysis:
<a href="http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/features/sales_vs_score.php" target="_blank">http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/features/sales_vs_score.php</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think it is a wasted effort Yuuki, very few people are ever going to understand the world in the way you do.
I enjoyed that link through, it was very interesting. I still think there is probably very little impact on NS2's sales from the metacritic score, but I guess UWE might be far more worried about investors/other organisations using it to judge them in the future. Which is fair enough.
Having said that, there's a few problems with their approach:
- they are promoting the gamespot review on the front page of their NS2 coverage. That may be automated, but they should be able to do something about it....
- the 'editors note' is missing the point. The note should say "please note this review was removed by gamespot due to concerns about the quality" (or somesuch nonsense).
<!--quoteo(post=2023802:date=Nov 14 2012, 11:39 PM:name=Metal Handkerchief)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Metal Handkerchief @ Nov 14 2012, 11:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2023802"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Metacritic recently raped The Secret World, by counting some ######-ass BLOG with not a shred of professionalism (Quarter to Three) who gave the game a purely troll rating of 4/10. Later "reviews" by this horrible website has made it all too transparent that the "writer" was rooting for Guild Wars 2, I mean seriously, this pile of crap system needs to be torn down.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Tom Chick gave sleeping dogs 4/10 (MC:80%), Forza Horizon 6/10 (MC:85%), Gods and kings 4/10 (MC:80%).
Famously, he does not like the common "70-90" scoring system (designed to offend no-one) and instead tells it as he sees it. If it's below average, then it should get a below average score.
The problem is more that the entire N% system is kindof stupid, and meshing together scores from people with different concepts of what that number means can be misleading.
I enjoyed that link through, it was very interesting. I still think there is probably very little impact on NS2's sales from the metacritic score, but I guess UWE might be far more worried about investors/other organisations using it to judge them in the future. Which is fair enough.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I appreciated that link quite a lot. It's more justification that there's some serious problems with the amount of respect afforded to metacritic by the gaming general public.
<a href="http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/15/metacritic-refuse-to-remove-factually-inaccurate-review-even-after-gamespot-admits-mistake/" target="_blank">http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/15/metacritic...admits-mistake/</a>
I actually don't blame metacritic for this. They seem to know how corrupt game reviews often are, hence why this system exists. I blame Gamespot, for being as terrible as they have been for a long time.
"We fully respect Gamespot's journalistic processes and are very thankful that they took the time to review NS2. Many critics will not touch smaller indie games with a ten-foot barge pole," Jeremy told me. He said they've reached out to Metacritic for an explanation, but they haven't yet heard back. [Update: After the publication of this piece, Metacritic's Doyle sent me a note to say he had offered to get on the phone with Jeremy, but that Jeremy never got back to him.]"
<a href="http://kotaku.com/5960657/metacritic-refuses-to-pull-negative-review-that-gamespot-admits-was-factually-inaccurate?1" target="_blank">http://kotaku.com/5960657/metacritic-refus...ly-inaccurate?1</a>
Oh, WAIT!
Would they say "too bad, the first rating stands, doesn't matter if it was factually incorrect"?
Or if it was later determined that the reviewer didn't even play the game and just cobbled together a review by reading other reviews? Would they insist on standing by that review?
" "And if you're all butt-hurt about not having the same stuff as the kids across the Pacific, I hear you, but please believe me when I say that if you allow that butt-hurtedness to prevent you from buying and playing this game, you fail at life and will never have sex. Yeah, I said it. Because it's true. Don't say I didn't warn you," he wrote in his review of Yakuza 3. "
Butthurt.... really? He used the word "butthurt" in a review? Not once, but twice?
And people still hire this guy? Big websites like gamespot and 1up, to write reviews for big releases like CS:GO?!
And Metacritic actually cares about protecting the integrity of a critic who uses the word "butt-hurt" twice in a single review?
I gotta say, I'm pretty butt-hurt over this...
Would they say "too bad, the first rating stands, doesn't matter if it was factually incorrect"?
Or if it was later determined that the reviewer didn't even play the game and just cobbled together a review by reading other reviews? Would they insist on standing by that review?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Looks like. Its a policy that allows no room for honest mistakes.
Would they say "too bad, the first rating stands, doesn't matter if it was factually incorrect"?
Or if it was later determined that the reviewer didn't even play the game and just cobbled together a review by reading other reviews? Would they insist on standing by that review?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Apparently Metacritic protects critics. It doesn't protect consumers or developers...
The thing is, how is this protecting critics? I'm MOSTLY mad at metacritic for having ridiculous policies, but I'm also reasonably mad at GameSpot for putting the terrible review through in the first place when they full well knew there would be no backing out on the most important review aggregator in the gaming industry.
In this case the policy really just screws over everyone. There's no winner. Eric Neaher gets to have his mistakes examined in glaring detail in the public eye now, Gamespy gets the criticism they didn't do their professional due diligence in the first place, The NS2 team gets a much ######tier Metacritic score than they deserve, Fans of NS2 don't get as much bragging rights as they deserve (or they get involved in the issue and it makes us angry and eats up our time), Generic games purchasers may be manipulated into not picking up a great game, and metacritic gets to be crucified to some degree as well. All because they've chosen to be needlessly hard assed on enforcing a policy that wasn't even designed for this situation. There is absolutely NO ONE who is being protected or benefiting here.
Swift said it perfectly, its a broken policy that only accounts for one scenario.
A better would be "If publisher removes review for admittedly erroneous reasons, they may request to have their review removed at the expense of not being able to submit another one in the future."
I.e. zero influence on the score.. Now if someone gets bullied into removing their review theres nothing to replace it, and thus if the majority get bullied for poor reviews, there's no reviews.. which is just as bad as a poor score.
I think the best thing to do now is to get all the articles and reviews of NS2 to be submitted to metacritic.. theres quite a few 9/10 scores that metacritic isnt counting..
"oh, a reviewer ###### up your score OR uses a different scoring method than the rest of the reviewers? sorry, you're not hire-able in this industry!"
the game industry is really dumb. thankfully it's a good time to be hipsters and only play indie games
[Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review. Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]
<a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/natural-selection-2/critic-reviews" target="_blank">http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/natural-.../critic-reviews</a>
[Editor's Note: this quotation and score are from the original GameSpot review. Metacritic, per long-standing site policy, only accepts a publication's first review/score for a given game.]
<a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/natural-selection-2/critic-reviews" target="_blank">http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/natural-.../critic-reviews</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:#FFC0CB--><span style="color:#FFC0CB"><!--/coloro-->Well that's something, at least. The damage is done, but hopefully this will prevent more. :\<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
I will definetly send him a short email with a link to kotakus article about this. Maybe you should too? The more, the better (and who does not know him: again: he does care about such practises within the industrie and has no problems to talk about it louder)
The only bad thing is this part in kotakus article: Update: After the publication of this piece, Metacritic's Doyle sent
me a note to say he had offered to get on the phone with Jeremy, but that Jeremy never got back to him.
Totalbiscuit did a piece on the metacritic NS2 issue. Pretty nice, this show usually averages around 120,000 viewers over a couple weeks.
I'm wondering if we should be requesting that Valve remove the Metacritic score for NS2 from steam. We have legitimate reason to be upset with the way they've handled the score. It's one thing to complain that people reviewed your game badly... it's another thing entirely when a company is knowingly publishing false information about your game.
I agree, I love the damn game so I never even noticed the score till I saw this thread and read up on the issue.
It's absolutely deplorable. I'll be writing a written letter to the parent company, as something physical is often more productive.
Unfortunately they likely assume, to the extent they care, that this is a small potatoes game with a small community. Of course, that would be all the more reason to get their score right as a smaller company is more dependent on good reviews….