Exodus Of The Machine Teaser 1

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yeah, I don't like it either. Hence, the "only once" bit of that. I look at metacritic for fun, rather than as an actual assessment of what is good or not. it's like watching zero punctuation without the comedy. Even then, I don't actually go out of my way to visit the place.

[x4000]

Thirded.  As a player and a developer.

[chemical_art]

I view metacritic as a necessary evil. Ignore its existence at your own peril.

[Winge]

I admit, I used the metacritic scores that showed up on Steam.  That will probably change after today...AI War as an 80?  Really?  I have played AI War more than any other Steam game I have...if I can believe the "Hours Played" on Steam, I have played AI War over 3 times as long as the next runner-up...

Edit:  That said, I typically pay more attention to user scores than critic scores.  Which is kind of sad, if you think about it:  I pay more attention to 'amateurs' than people who are payed to write reviews 

[keith.lamothe]

I view metacritic as a necessary evil. Ignore its existence at your own peril.

Oh definitely.  We're extremely serious about doing whatever we can to have good metascores.

Regrettably there's less than you'd think because so many of the reviewers that like our stuff aren't factored in to metascores, but there it is.


And if I'm looking at a steam daily deal, and I see a 50/100 or whatever, I pass it up unless something really grabbed me (if it's a strategy or JRPG or some-other-specific-genres game I take a closer look... but not by much)

[LaughingThesaurus]

@Winge, look at the Diablo 3 user scores and you will know why you shouldn't look at them. It's not that they're necessarily amateurish, but they can just be troll 0-rated reviews to bring down the average.

[chemical_art]

@Winge, look at the Diablo 3 user scores and you will know why you shouldn't look at them. It's not that they're necessarily amateurish, but they can just be troll 0-rated reviews to bring down the average.

Well, as a counterpoint, look at those high dev scores.

It requires some reading between the lines. The disparity in scores should make you think "No one score matters, I need to find some underlining contention"

[Histidine]

The image is no longer online, but I once saw a graph a friend made of Metacritic scores for PC games (x-axis = score, y-axis = number of games). Most of it was a roughly symmetrical bell curve running from 60 to 100... except for a spike at 96-98 which equaled the height of the peak at 80. Same story for Xbox360, except the 97 spike was twice the height of the 80 peak.

And now you know why review scores are of extremely questionable value.

[LaughingThesaurus]

All that really tells me, chemical, is that reviews really don't mean anything at all. Generally I rely on TB's videos or on demos for my opinion on games. I often find that reviews just upset me more than anything.

[Wingflier]

@Winge, look at the Diablo 3 user scores and you will know why you shouldn't look at them. It's not that they're necessarily amateurish, but they can just be troll 0-rated reviews to bring down the average.

Or maybe Diablo 3 just sucked on release?  I mean not being able to play for 2 days was a pretty big downer after like 10 years of waiting. Not to mention all the bugs and issues it had for the first few months. And the fact that it FORCED you to play online in a single-player RPG. What Blizzard did is practically unforgivable, they deserved every negative user review they got.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh it absolutely deserves negative reviews, and I am the last person to go approving of Diablo 3. That being said, it doesn't deserve grades of flat-out 0. There are worse games in the world than something mediocre that had horrible DRM problems. I'd be the guy giving it a 4 or a 5 and saying "Well I mean, the game is okay when you CAN play it." Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but the 0 ratings are a bit out of line.

[Wingflier]

Oh it absolutely deserves negative reviews, and I am the last person to go approving of Diablo 3. That being said, it doesn't deserve grades of flat-out 0. There are worse games in the world than something mediocre that had horrible DRM problems. I'd be the guy giving it a 4 or a 5 and saying "Well I mean, the game is okay when you CAN play it." Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but the 0 ratings are a bit out of line.

Personally I disagree, but that's just because I think you have to put the company's means and reputation into consideration when making a review.

If a small indie company like Arcen Games tried to make an RPG, which forced you to play online...well, let's be honest, nobody would even buy that game. That's the entire point, it's only Blizzard's reputation that lets them get away with that crap in the first place. So if they're going to use their reputation to make games that spit in the customer's face and that nobody would buy otherwise, they better be DAMN GOOD GAMES, and they better WORK PROPERLY RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. Otherwise, you're liable to start a customer shitstorm of Hurricane Katrina proportions, and one that, I'm afraid to say, you rightly deserve.  Let's be completely honest, Blizzard is not hurting for the money.  There was no reason that intrusive DRM even needed to be there other than they're greedy bastages. They got exactly what they deserved. In fact, if anything I think they got off lightly. If those professional reviewers had even an ounce of integrity, they would have given the game a zero too.

Should I mention that the real-money auction house worked correctly right out of the box? Seems like they got the things that were important to them right.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. I like to look at the game and only the game when deciding anything about it. If there were any preference based on background, or any judgments made based on the background of the developer, the review is just not as good as it could be. It really is about the game, and not necessarily the company. Again, looking at it that way, it's a mediocre game that didn't work on launch and has completely unnecessary DRM and auction house systems that detract from what the game encourages by design. It certainly gets a failing grade... but it functions. It's a game you can play. It's a game that some few people actually enjoy.

...actually, this is what makes reviews more useless. We're defining separate meanings for what '0' means. The numbers don't really mean anything, because 10 can range from 'pretty great' to 'perfect in every way'. Likewise, my hypothetical definition of 0 is a game that is a complete failure in every respect... meaning that you can't even call it mediocre. It cannot be played, it does not have a story, or gameplay, or controls that work, or any other critical part of a game. All aspects of it are broken beyond belief. There are no redeeming qualities. Diablo 3 does have redeeming qualities. It's a game that I actually can wish was better, because there was something there. It's just that it was fundamentally flawed out the gate with the DRM and AHs and stuff.

[Aklyon]

This has been interesting to read, sorta. But I'm going to agree with chemical_art here:

My head hurts.

[Vyndicu]

I don't really like the idea of metacritic because it is not a necessary good thing all around. It might be useful as a tool to gauge if something is better than just meh ok.

I heard that some of my favorite video games in my opinion, had some of their "bonus" payment to their respectively game studio reduced because they didn't made "80" metacritic or something crazy.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/15/obsidian-missed-fallout-new-vegas-metacritic-bonus-by-one-point/

Another good analog might be when I read the newspaper for the movie I want to watch the day before I actually go the the movie theater which is not all that often even more rare for an opening day view. I would often disagree with the newspaper reviewer opinion usually in a comical fashion. "You care if it had *insert silly thing* or not?" So I treat metacritic as an aggreation of many reviewer opinion as opposite to if I will like it or not because it is greater than "80".