• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

I think the players are too dependent on Metacritic and Opencritic. And that would be better if this sites will no longer exist.

For you the general trend situation would improve if Metacritic and Opencritic did not exist?

  • Yes

    Votes: 59 43.4%
  • No

    Votes: 77 56.6%

  • Total voters
    136

D.Final

Banned
As the title suggests, this is what I think.

We live in a society that, in a large part of the cases, turns out to be extremely tied to the general opinions of an entertainment product like the video game media.
I think that this attitude has helped to create a status of perpetual violence and war over what should be considered better, and what should be considered worse.
This has done nothing but establish a "relationship" of "guide to the consumer" that must feel called into question to take an interest in something, or that the consumer must be guided towards the "new product of interest".

I find this attitude profoundly wrong and incorrect.
For the creators of the works sold, and also for the consumer.
This "status" of interest is conveyed through an average of numbers that makes it clear to the consumer what needs to be guided to buy, and what he must avoid.
(strongly penalizing all those small productions that do not even have the means to be noticed by the general public)

In conclusion I think that, in this case, it is a situation of strong imbalance of media and monetary value.
And that it would be better if sites like Metacritic and Opencritic ceased to exist, in this market where the war between what is better and what is worse, turns out to be perennial and endless.
And where we have reached the point of seeing some kind of people who despise everything that does not come to be considered as absolute and collective excellence by the whole world.
And people who have the sense of guilt of buying a game that, in the end, turns out to be not particularly loved by the public.
(and therefore not thinking at all about what they really wanted)

My hope is that this situation finds a way to end.
But I already know that, probably, what I desire is something practically impossible.
 

Three

Member
Same can be said about movies on rotten tomatoes, restaurant ratings on google, amazon reviews etc. It's basically like asking for a general opinion of the unknown.
 
Last edited:
Both sites are pretty good as an aggregate, though. If I really need to see a game's critical reception, I open a few tabs of really good review scores and a few tabs of really poor scores. I gloss through those reviews and see what the major pros and cons are.

Otherwise, I ignore reviews entirely.
 

NickFire

Member
I've never tried making an account on the aggregators. Don't know if you can or cannot. But either way, I would advocate for the ability to filter reviewers out before ignoring them altogether. For most games I feel like the aggregate score is worth checking out. My primary concern is partisan (non-gaming) views affecting scores, and if we could weed out outlets with histories of that it would be nice.
 
C

Contica

Unconfirmed Member
I don't give a shit about scores. One of my favorite games this year was Left Alive, a critically shunned game I myself was forced to give a much lower score than I wanted simply because there was too much wrong with it not too.

Likewise with Greedfall. It's one of the best games I've ever played, but it had issues I needed to take into account as a reviewer, and thus I'm forced to reflect in the score.

I hate scores, and wish the site I work for would stop using them. They're an arbitrary and overly simplistic way of redusing something complex into something meaningless.

So many of the best gaming experiences I've had are what amounts to 6/10 - 7/10 games. Highly creative and maybe bold and risky ganes with very interesting ideas that might stumble, have technical issues, but still are more exciting than many superbly polished games.
 

ethomaz

Banned
No.

There are tools that helps a lot.
If you want to blame something then blame the users that didn't understand how to use Metacritic instead to blame the tool.

Metactic is pretty great.
OpenCritic is become more and more relevant too.

I like both... if you look at them the different in aggregation is pretty small... I believe even if a 3rd player enters it won't change the aggregate scores because more reviews you have more stable the aggregated score is.
 
Last edited:

johntown

Banned
I voted no. I need some quick and reliable source to get a good idea about a game. It may not be perfect and can issues due to review bombing but I would rather have it than not have it.
 
Last edited:

Pejo

Gold Member
I only use it for a reference and to link to individual reviews. It's just a time saver to have it aggregated. Regarding reviews, I like to see scores like anybody else, but I usually look at let's plays or reviews of people with similar taste to my own for judging games. I wish GAF was more active in OTs these days, as that's where I'd get a lot of info about a game I was considering buying, but I'm still hopeful that it'll come with time.
 

Fbh

Member
Nah, it's a pretty useful tool.

And ultimately no one is forced to use it and everyone is free to base their purchase decision on what they want. Also, reviews wouldn't go away, they are a part of the entertainment business that's probably always going to be relevant. If there's not Metacritic then people would just look at specific sties or people. The discussion would switch from "This game has an 80 metascore" to "IGN gave it an 8".
 

ethomaz

Banned
I can show some exemples how Metacritic helped me to choose games to play.

I like to play JRPGs but sometimes I'm really out of the news about them and have to find a game to buy going blind... so at that time I just look at the JRPGs on Metacritic for PS3/PS4 (or Vita) and start to read the better scored... that way I found really princeless experiences like NiER, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, The Banner Saga (not JRPJ), Bastion (not JRPJ either), The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, Persona 4: Golden (my first Persona game), etc.

I never had one bad experience using the Metacritic to choose the games I will play.

You will probably say maybe a game with lower score could give you a good or even better experience... yeat that is true but I don't have time to play all games to know that... it is a hobby after all... so playing the highest scored before decrease the change to get something bad and works like a charm for me.

I found the aggregate scores pretty accurate too... it shows what most players will thing about the game... there will be always exception that will love or hate the game but most players will probably lies in the aggregated score and that is enough to show the quality of a game... after all you can't play everything.

The same for movies, series, animes, mangas... I use aggregated scores to choose what to watch, read, play... never got really disappointed... the opposite the good surprises are really common.
 
Last edited:

Rin_Chan

Neo Member
I think they give a pretty good overview of what games are generally good and what are bad. But I don't depend on them and reading reviews from big news outlets makes me cringe. I also like a few games with a Metacritic of < 40 so...
 
What I find funny is when people say that 6/10 or 7/10 is still worth looking at and think that 5/10 is “average.”

Try getting a masters or doctorate degree and scoring a 7/10 - you’re out the fucking door. 7 is a failure, getting straight Bs as a graduate student means barely scraping by, the best schools would put you on academic probation for being a B student.

The doctors that operate on you aren’t allowed to score 7s, the scientists and engineers that design everything you use aren’t allowed to get 7s. And for good reason.

7 = shit
 

Humdinger

Member
I didn't follow your reasoning in the OP, but I voted "yes," with the full understanding that these sites aren't going away anytime soon, and there are legitimate reasons for them to exist. They provide a single number summarizing the general critical opinion on a game.

It's useful as long as you understand 1) how games are graded and the biases of reviewers (e.g., to go along with hype, to over-rate games with AAA production values, etc.), and more importantly 2) don't assume that the score tells you anything about whether or not you, personally, would enjoy the game.
 

Shrap

Member
What I find funny is when people say that 6/10 or 7/10 is still worth looking at and think that 5/10 is “average.”

Try getting a masters or doctorate degree and scoring a 7/10 - you’re out the fucking door. 7 is a failure, getting straight Bs as a graduate student means barely scraping by, the best schools would put you on academic probation for being a B student.

The doctors that operate on you aren’t allowed to score 7s, the scientists and engineers that design everything you use aren’t allowed to get 7s. And for good reason.

7 = shit
This is one of the dumbest analogies I've ever read. Never attempt to do an analogy again until you receive a PhD in analogies. Thank you.
 

junguler

Banned
you can't change or control how other people consume their entertainment, the thing you can do is try to make your own decision and not care about what other people might think.
 

iconmaster

Banned
If MC and OC were to both shut down tomorrow, another review aggregator would arise in their place.

If you convinced every last gaming site to stop using review scores tomorrow, another site would appear and start using them.

I've often thought about putting up reviews of things and I have a four-point review system in mind. Why shouldn't I present my opinions in a format I prefer?
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
What I find funny is when people say that 6/10 or 7/10 is still worth looking at and think that 5/10 is “average.”

Try getting a masters or doctorate degree and scoring a 7/10 - you’re out the fucking door. 7 is a failure, getting straight Bs as a graduate student means barely scraping by, the best schools would put you on academic probation for being a B student.

The doctors that operate on you aren’t allowed to score 7s, the scientists and engineers that design everything you use aren’t allowed to get 7s. And for good reason.

7 = shit
There is so many things wrong with this post. WTF did I just read!!?
 
Last edited:
Film critics and gaming "journalists" have been compromised beyond repair, for the time being. User scores tend to be more accurate, but Metacritic has started purging the negative reviews like they did with Control, and Rotten Tomatoes does with Disney movies under the guise of fighting misogyny, so user reviews are compromised as well.

There's nothing wrong with reviews that actually review the game fairly and as objectively as they can without basing the score on their personal politics.
 

Vawn

Banned
Yeah. For example, Final Fantasy XV has a 77 on Metacritic which is WAY too high.

 

Shifty

Member
On the one hand, if a consumer allows their purchases to be entirely led by a review aggregator and ends up missing out on good stuff (or ends up playing bad stuff) because of it, then that's their own fault.

On the other, there have been a few cases of studios predicating stuff like bonuses or whatever else on metacritic score, and that shit needs to die. It's another mechanism to reinforce the risk-averse homogenization that the AAA industry is so fond of.

Yeah. For example, Final Fantasy XV has a 77 on Metacritic which is WAY too high.

tumblr_mdhrkxJQEN1rof1y9o1_r2_500.gif
 
I think a lot of people are more reliant on metacritic and opencritic then they have been in the past few years. It doesn't help when most of these games that release don't have demos. So the only true knowledge you have is second hand information. That's why metacritic and opencritic have gotten so popular.

I remember reading a long time ago that before Deus ex human revolution came out a third of the game leaked online and because of how good it was word-of-mouth propelled it to really good first week sales. Without a demo to help people make proper and logical decisions they have to rely on reviews.
 
Last edited:

Stuart360

Member
Actually i feel the opposite regarding those aggregate sites, because their 'score' is made up of 50, 80, 100+ reviews.
I would never listen to 1 review, even 2 or maybe 3, but if a site like meta has 50 reviews for a game, and they all say the game sucks, chances are that game sucks.
 
I don't agree because Breakpoint has a terrible score yet its selling like hotcakes.

In the end these sites arent even that important

I think it depends on the game. No system is perfect but honestly, I'd like to see a year of gaming without these sites/critics and see how it would go or change things. Will ppl buy more shit games? Less good games? Viceversa? Who knows.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
I don’t think they need to go away, but the advice I would offer to all players is this:

See if a concept and the thought of playing it excites you. Or see if your friends and peers at a community like this one, or the wider gaming community, really dig something. Investigating further, take a look at a bit of a YouTube playthrough, and see how it resonates with you.

That alone should be enough to cut through most of the crap. If you still have doubts, or want to make sure, then maybe take the DunDunDunpachi DunDunDunpachi method of grabbing a few positive and negative Metacritic reviews, reading them, and seeing what you think.

Don’t just trust arbitrary numbers, especially when the gaming media veers further and further from reality and respectability every year.
 

Zannegan

Member
I don't see how you improve the situation by reducing the information people have access to. If anything, you have the same problem--people just look at scores--only now the power to form their opinions is concentrated into the handfull of top sites that most people visit. Plus, you take user reviews out of the situation altogether.

Bad as Metacritic may be, we're still better off with it than without.
 
At least with Opencritic, you can make custom aggregates with only the sites you trust. Personally, I wouldn't include Polygon, RPS, or VG247 as they're political blogs posing as gaming sites.
 

sol_bad

Member
Today, now more than ever, an aggregate site is required. With publishers trying to screw customers over left and right, it's good to know how you are getting screwed over before purchasing a game. I tend to look at user reviews and not big media reviews. The medias reviews are always a load of bullshit whereas user reviews will generally contain no bullshit.

When I say that publishers are screwing customers over, I don't just mean them cutting up their game content to sell for extra cash or bullshit MTX. I also mean that games are delivered to customers in stunningly poor and unoptimised fashion. They are full of bugs galore. Or even a minor update from last years release.

As for worrying about the creatives vision, they don't count when it comes to Activision, Ubisoft or EA, generally speaking.
It only matters for indies or smaller publishers.
 
I don't really want to pay for mediocrity, I don't want to reward it...in that sense I want to be guided. I want others to make the mistake of buying The Slaughtering Grounds so that I don't have to.
 

ethomaz

Banned
The ideia you can miss a great game because it got lower average reviews is basically less than 1%.

Agregate sites uses both the high and low scores with a good amount of data to make sure you won't miss a gem.

I still have to see a game with I don't agree with the Metacritic score... it is easier do disagree with a single review but not the agregate.
 
Last edited:

Phase

Member
I like user reviews to get a gist of how the game is and its issues, but mostly I find just watching gameplay to be best. Reviews are always subjective and/or paid for so I don't really see any issue if you understand that.
 
Top Bottom