TotalBiscuit's Metacritic Analysis
gio
Join Date: 2012-08-14 Member: 155618Members
Join Date: 2012-08-14 Member: 155618Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Featuring NS2</div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqzqHgvB90" target="_blank">Content Patch: January 3rd, 2013</a>
Starts at 8:43. I think he does a fine job describing the current flaws with Metacritic's non-transparent weighting system. He'll contend it has limited usefulness- it really could do more harm than good to the gaming industry. Steam features their scores too, as we know.
What do you think?
Starts at 8:43. I think he does a fine job describing the current flaws with Metacritic's non-transparent weighting system. He'll contend it has limited usefulness- it really could do more harm than good to the gaming industry. Steam features their scores too, as we know.
What do you think?
Comments
Unfortunately these people also make up the vast majority of the purchasing power in gaming today. They make a lot of their decisions based on arbitrary rating systems made by "trustworthy" sources, and I think metacritic is one of the most consulted sources of such ratings.
sadly, 99% of people care what other people think.
And the 1% is only doing it because they think it makes them look cool.
The problem lays with the perception of if a game gets below a 90 it sucks. The industry has been this 7 - 10 scale for as long as I can remember and it is so dumb, if you look and music and movies, getting a 60/100 isn't a bad thing, lots of movies are considered good and scored this.
Natural Selection 2 has 81/100 which means the game is only 19 points off being perfect..... I'd give the game a 6/10 personally, it has it's moments but has too many flaws. How can you complain about 81/100? Any other form of media this would be amazing but for some reason in the games industry it is 90+ or IT SUCKS!
That Total Biscuit guy is a clueless prick who sucks at games. I often see in his videos where he jumps on some sort of nostalgia bandwagon for a game he hasn't played and has no clue about but yet still pretends he does. I remember one developer for a game asked him if he had any questions and he was stumbling because he clearly didn't know about the original and yet pretended he did. Him and his zerg of mindless followers are just dangerous for the industry, I mean that Warz video is proof enough, he wasn't even attempting to play the game, just wanted to hate on it. At least The Yogscast just plays what they like and don't really give opinions on games, just make videos on what they like.
Also Metacritic is right there have been fewer great games in 2012, it has been the general feeling of every major site and even players on forums. Most of the interesting stuff was pushed back to the first half of 2013.
thank you very much. I was wondering how you do that. But didn't bother enough to research. =)
The problem lays with the perception of if a game gets below a 90 it sucks. The industry has been this 7 - 10 scale for as long as I can remember and it is so dumb, if you look and music and movies, getting a 60/100 isn't a bad thing, lots of movies are considered good and scored this.
Natural Selection 2 has 81/100 which means the game is only 19 points off being perfect..... I'd give the game a 6/10 personally, it has it's moments but has too many flaws. How can you complain about 81/100? Any other form of media this would be amazing but for some reason in the games industry it is 90+ or IT SUCKS!
That Total Biscuit guy is a clueless prick who sucks at games. I often see in his videos where he jumps on some sort of nostalgia bandwagon for a game he hasn't played and has no clue about but yet still pretends he does. I remember one developer for a game asked him if he had any questions and he was stumbling because he clearly didn't know about the original and yet pretended he did. Him and his zerg of mindless followers are just dangerous for the industry, I mean that Warz video is proof enough, he wasn't even attempting to play the game, just wanted to hate on it. At least The Yogscast just plays what they like and don't really give opinions on games, just make videos on what they like.
Also Metacritic is right there have been fewer great games in 2012, it has been the general feeling of every major site and even players on forums. Most of the interesting stuff was pushed back to the first half of 2013.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think it's patently wrong that they don't report their weighting metrics.
It is pretty simple to understand.
5 star system each star is worth 20
10 system each is worth 10
100 system is to scale
There aren't many sites that use something different, the letter grade system is just a case of working out how many letters they use and dividing 100 by it.
If the industry wants to base pay cheques on Metacritic then that is an industry problem, not a Metacritic problem. If people want to say anything below 90 sucks then that is their problem and not Metacritic, it is a good site that shows you all "official" reviews in one place for ease of access.
People need to stop whining, don't take reviews seriously and play the games they like. Developers need to stop looking at these reviews too seriously and just create games they like, as soon as games are made for pure profit and review scores we get boring generic titles like COD.
5 star system each star is worth 20
10 system each is worth 10
100 system is to scale<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think that's what they mean by weighted.
"Metascore is a weighted average in that we assign more importance, or weight, to some critics and publications than others, based on their quality and overall stature."
That's taken right from Metacritic's site. I think most people's problem with this is that lesser known critics might be considered less important because they are less popular. That is unfortunate because nowadays it seems like sometimes it's the well known publications that get lazy or biased. We've all seen huge blunders from IGN, GameSpot, PC Gamer, etc. If Metacritic reads every review before assigning importance then I can understand that I suppose. But somehow I highly doubt they do.
"Metascore is a weighted average in that we assign more importance, or weight, to some critics and publications than others, based on their quality and overall stature."
That's taken right from Metacritic's site. I think most people's problem with this is that lesser known critics might be considered less important because they are less popular. That is unfortunate because nowadays it seems like sometimes it's the well known publications that get lazy or biased. We've all seen huge blunders from IGN, GameSpot, PC Gamer, etc. If Metacritic reads every review before assigning importance then I can understand that I suppose. But somehow I highly doubt they do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think it matters all that much.
Whenever I see a Metacritic score it's always fair, even if one review gives the game like 20/100 because there are so many reviews it'l only take like 5/100 off maximum. Really what is the difference between 81 and 86? I mean whocares? I'm not sitting there playing a game thinking "I would have played this game but it got 5 points too low" lol...
The player reviews is what I have a problem with because they're used to jump on some sort of hate band wagon most of the time. Like COD always gets like 3/10 from players or whatever, you can never trust player reviews though, they're always fanbois and haters.
Google doesn't openly state how it determines page ranking, and nobody really cares, so long as it remains accurate and relevant to the search phrase.
If metacritic's scores are consistently unfair or inconsistent with general consensus, then there is a problem. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
Also, I think its quite understandable that they don't release their weighting, and why they won't undo scores once they are posted. If they released the weightings, developers would know exactly which reviewers to buy. In fact, the metacritic weighting table would basically be like a price list of how much each reviewer should be given. Similarly, reviewers could hold developers to ransom if scores could be undone and replaced with better ones.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqzqHgvB90" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqzqHgvB90</a>
<a href="http://rockpapershotgun.com" target="_blank">Rock Paper Shotgun</a>
These are the only two websites you need. These will help you glean satisfactory information about a game (or to pique your interest on a game you don't know).
Anything else and you are honestly wasting your time.
WTF is >insert title here< isn't a review format, its a first impressions format and he can hardly do that after he's done the indev videos now can he. Also how does one do a first impressions of a game which is arguably more complex the most games, meaning you'd miss out a lot of stuff you simply don't know or have to learn about through play for more then 40 hours :)
Whenever I see a Metacritic score it's always fair, even if one review gives the game like 20/100 because there are so many reviews it'l only take like 5/100 off maximum. Really what is the difference between 81 and 86? I mean whocares? I'm not sitting there playing a game thinking "I would have played this game but it got 5 points too low" lol...
The player reviews is what I have a problem with because they're used to jump on some sort of hate band wagon most of the time. Like COD always gets like 3/10 from players or whatever, you can never trust player reviews though, they're always fanbois and haters.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I guess it just depends on the reader. I always get my information from several sources. I try to find at least 2 or 3 video reviews and maybe other written reviews if the others were insufficient. But other people might depend on Metacritic more. It's not Metacritic's fault people depend on them too much, but accuracy should be at the top of their list and it's hard to acknowledge how accurate they are when they weight the scores without a thorough explanation.
Also, not every game gets a massive amount of reviews on Metacritic. NS2 has only 22 and another game called Forge has only 8. One review there can make a bigger impact especially if it is weighted by Metacritic. Or maybe not. We don't know because we don't really know what Metacritic does.