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[cormack12]

Source: https://www.vg247.com/saber-ceo-metacritic-evil-dead

In response, Karch notes that the Saber team is "pleasantly surprised" by the scores to date, which have – to date – exceeded the team's internal targets. "The other thing we've learned," Karch continues, "is that the days of a Metacritic score determining how well a game sells are long gone."

Games these days are sold by "social media, by influencers, and by buzz, per Karch."

"Games are sold by the quality of the product itself, irrespective of how well the game performs. I can name games that scored 8s and 9s that, I can tell you, publishers wished they never released. It's nice to put a plaque on your wall, but if you can't afford the nail to hang the plaque, what's the point, right?"

 

[Wildebeest]

Game reviews are irrelevant? Why didn't anyone send me a message on my fax machine to tell me?

 

[kingfey]

Its best to let the game do the talk.

Reviews are opinion, and shouldn't affect the game sales at all.

Not everyone has the same preference.

 

[Guy_who_thinks_hes_cool]

that's true tho, believe it or not I usually based my sources for gaming review either in youtube videos or even FB

 

[Roufianos]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

 

[Wildebeest]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

In the statistics racket, we call that cherry picking.

 

[Punished Miku]

Elden Ring hitting a new sales milestone after a high metacritic score suggests otherwise.

It's probably true that sales are a mix of what he's listed and metacritic as well.

 

[lh032]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

i think a long well known franchise from a well known dev matters as well.

 

[Ladioss]

It's almost as if the purpose of game reviews in 2022 was to check the political conformity of your game, and no longer to evaluate its objective quality.

 

[Dr. Claus]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

Yes. Most people aren’t fucking retards and listen to the opinions of people who hate games/gamers and barely understand the industry, which is 99% of gaming “journalists” today.

 

[BbMajor7th]

Reviews get people hype. Maybe not salty, cynical fucks on forums, but for sure appeals to more general gaming audiences.

 

[Punished Miku]

Yes. Most people aren’t fucking retards

Spoiler

 

[Dr. Claus]

Reviews get people hype. Maybe not salty, cynical fucks on forums, but for sure appeals to more general gaming audiences.

Most people I know ask their friends opinions and see videos on the games to see if its up their alley. They aren’t gamers. They buy maybe 2-3 games a year at most.

The folks that do tend to put the most stock in “reviews” are console warrior retards.

 

[BbMajor7th]

Most people I know ask their friends opinions and see videos on the games to see if its up their alley. They aren’t gamers. They buy maybe 2-3 games a year at most.

The folks that do tend to put the most stock in “reviews” are console warrior retards.

I don't think publishers would bother putting out accolade videos for well-reviewed titles if it didn't get cut through - and they do, every time, because things that review well grab audience attention.

 

[March Climber]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

Elden Ring hitting a new sales milestone after a high metacritic score suggests otherwise.

It's probably true that sales are a mix of what he's listed and metacritic as well.

Word of mouth, streaming, and FOMO. I've had plenty of casual and non-gaming friends asking about Elden Ring and it wasn't because of a review score.

 

[Pejo]

Steam reviews are a big step in the right direction. They A.) verify that the person actually owns the game, B.) show how many hours the person has in the game, C.) have user feedback on the review itself.

This obviously doesn't take into account idlers and people that want to actively game the system, but it sure helps. Unfortunately, you can't use this system outside of situations like digital stores because it requires access to that data to begin with.

Metacritic is a good idea in theory, but it's mostly used by fans or anti-fans to perfect/zero bomb things. And professional "games """"journalists"""" " have been proven unreliable at best, so that score barely means anything to me.

 

[Punished Miku]

Word of mouth, streaming, and FOMO. I've had plenty of casual and non-gaming friends asking about Elden Ring and it wasn't because of a review score.

Yeah but people know Dark Souls, and that's how Dark Souls spread. The FOMO and word of mouth was certainly enhanced by scores suggesting it's on par or better than Breath of the Wild and one of the best games ever made. I don't doubt what the guy's saying in the OP, but scores can still have an impact sometimes.

 

[K2D]

I think aggregation is still makes up a lot of weight (including steam user score) and social zoomer media has a lot been untapped potential. Overall it's same as before. Streamers and influencers are a given, but not a cloud publishers should chase.

 

[Swift_Star]

Was this guy under a rock or what?

 

[Stuart360]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

Probably as a 88 is still a fantastic score, regardless of what some people say on here.

 

[Swift_Star]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

Elden Ring hitting a new sales milestone after a high metacritic score suggests otherwise.

It's probably true that sales are a mix of what he's listed and metacritic as well.

There are those little things called marketing and word of mouth that influenced this much more than then the high MC scores.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Karch, basically saying to game reviewers:

 

[March Climber]

Yeah but people know Dark Souls, and that's how Dark Souls spread. The FOMO and word of mouth was certainly enhanced by scores suggesting it's on par or better than Breath of the Wild and one of the best games ever made. I don't doubt what the guy's saying in the OP, but scores can still have an impact sometimes.

I'm not trying to argue that one invalidates the other. It's a chicken and egg situation sometimes because games and moments like Among Us exist. I'm merely saying what heightened Elden Ring to sell numbers close to franchise giants comes down to way more than just review scores at that point.

Edit: Quite a few people here are old school thinkers and times have been changing. Gaming-centric journalist websites will be as dead as magazines sometime soon.

 

[K2D]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

I think aggregators are more important for games scoring in the 70-90 range. Higher than that and there's a different beast that determines hype and sales.

 

[Fuz]

hype

Hyped.

Why does everyone gets it wrong? Is it a meme I don't know about?

 

[Fbh]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

I think they still matter in the extremes.
When you have something like Elden Ring with tons of 10/10 reviews and articles like "has become the highest rated game ever" it will definitely attract attention
Likewise if you have a highly anticipated game that unexpectedly ends up getting a 60 metascore it will probably negatively affect sales too.

But for the vast majority of games that are somewhere within a 70-90 I really think it's kinda irrelevant.
Like, for example, Far Cry 6 had a 73 metascore on ps5....I really doubt having an 83 instead would have had any major impact on sales.

 

[Borowski_1]

Hot take:

Game journalists are some of the worst parts of the industry

 

[TidusYuna]

What is the highest scoring game that flopped sales wise?

 

[Fuz]

Metacritic is a good idea in theory, but it's mostly used by fans or anti-fans to perfect/zero bomb things.

Most of the time they even each other out.

The folks that do tend to put the most stock in “reviews” are console warrior retards.

This is true. They only serve a fuel for fans rooting for their team.

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

Yes.

 

[March Climber]

Hyped.

Why does everyone gets it wrong? Is it a meme I don't know about?

It comes from American slang, specifically the phrase "Let's get hype!" Not sure who started it, but from what I can tell it either traces back to hip hop, or sports, or both.

 

[Kacho]

Hyped.

Why does everyone gets it wrong? Is it a meme I don't know about?

It’s just slang I usually see on Twitter. “Man I’m so hype!” “Get hype!”

 

[TintoConCasera]

What is the highest scoring game that flopped sales wise?

My money is on Deathloop.

 

[BbMajor7th]

Hyped.

Why does everyone gets it wrong? Is it a meme I don't know about?

Just the endless flux of garbled internet slang (or a typo that I should probably correct).

 

[Calling 911 Melts Beams]

the only games i play that arent on the atari jaguar cd are games with a metacritic score of 69

 

[DeepEnigma]

I never use metacritic.

But I do use rotten tomatoes to pick the movies opposite of the critic reviews.

 

[Fuz]

slang I usually see on Twitter

One reason more to not tolerate it.

 

[Astral Dog]

Complete BS, you think Elden Ring would have sold the same if it was just an 88?

Absolutely, because From Software has an established fanbase(Dark Souls 3 sold more than 10 million) and George Martin's name helped sell Elden Ring.

A better example would be Demon Souls or Dark Souls.

Sony had little faith on Demon back on PS3, but critical acclaim helped it to gain attention and become a cult hit, then Namco got interested and released Dark Souls to commercial success(though much more modest than today) review scores helped FROM become the monster that its today.

Established series can drop their review scores and still sell, and a good/fun idea can elevate a game to sell far above the 'value' labeled by game critics, but they still serve a purpose, they aren't completely worthless

 

[nikolino840]

Game reviews are irrelevant? Why didn't anyone send me a message on my fax machine to tell me?

Well i Remember the interview by the guy of days gone

 

[Kacho]

Aggregate sites do kinda blow. Rotten Tomatoes became worthless when reviews starting being more about pushing specific messages.

When it comes to games, on the user side it only attracts fanboys. And the media side has been completely taken over by dime a dozen no-name websites with zero credibility. Then you have a small number of reputable gaming sites that hire questionable people these days. I think this is why YouTube personalities are becoming so big. You can find people who genuinely care about specific series or genres, and their opinions hold much more weight than some nobody writing for insertaquarterbro.com.

 

[assurdum]

I don't get it. Most of the times games scored very low on metacritic are definitely horrible. What there is of positive if they can sell well?

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Elden ring sold 14 million off the strength of its metacritic score and word of mouth. A game like bio mutant would have sold better if it was a 9.5 instead of 7. Game reviews do play a factor into sales.

 

[nominedomine]

Back in the day it was hard to even see a trailer for a video game, your best bet was usually a game magazine. Now you can just watch as much as you want of the game on youtube if you are on the fence.

 

[Zeroing]

Game reviews are irrelevant? Why didn't anyone send me a message on my fax machine to tell me?

FAX? U fancy. I still use Morse code!

Aggregate sites do kinda blow. Rotten Tomatoes became worthless when reviews starting being more about pushing specific messages.

Rotten tomatoes is a joke, they will give a high score to anything that try to please Amrican "social things". That is why I think American media is garbage.

Games before the big boom of the internet used to sell depending on how good word to mouth was. I think we are going back to that, maybe. People are getting tired of few imposing their opinions on everyone as it is a law.

 

[Andodalf]

Elden ring sold 14 million off the strength of its metacritic score and word of mouth. A game like bio mutant would have sold better if it was a 9.5 instead of 7. Game reviews do play a factor into sales.

Not always, which is exactly
the point. mid AF games can get crazy word of mouth and great ones can get none

 

[Fredrik]

Steam reviews are a big step in the right direction. They A.) verify that the person actually owns the game, B.) show how many hours the person has in the game, C.) have user feedback on the review itself.



Metacritic is a good idea in theory, but it's mostly used by fans or anti-fans to perfect/zero bomb things. And professional "games """"journalists"""" " have been proven unreliable at best, so that score barely means anything to me.

Yeah, today I only use Metacritic as a first hint of how a game is, since critics are playing unpatched pre-release versions they’re often kinda irrelevant in 2022 when you try to figure out if it’s time to open the wallet. Almost all games get post-release updates now but almost no reviews get post-release updates. It’s a problem.

Steam reviews are great though since they can be updated after patches and you can filter for longer play time.

 

[Krappadizzle]

 

[Wohc]

It's still a factor, just not the most important one. I think it's mostly important to coregamers and casuals are more influenced by marketing and social media. I bet many casuals don't even know what Metacritic is.
And because there are much more casuals out there a well marketed 7/10 game can outsell a not so well marketed 90+ game. I bet if Sony would have marketed Days Gone as much as God of War or Horizon, it would easily have sold 15 million copies and that's a number not too many 9/10 games achieve.

 

[Bragr]

Game reviews and metacritic still matter.

What's up with the insistence on binary viewpoints? it's not an either-or. It depends on the game, it depends on the time, it depends on the place.

A Battlefield hitting 78 on meta and a Battlefield hitting 94 on meta is gonna see drastically different sales based on that hype alone.

 

[proandrad]

Metacritic can only be as good as the reviewers. We have a lot of game reviewers who work for major gaming websites who are most definitely influenced by the marketing teams of big publishers. Flying out reviewers, covering all that cost, giving out press gift baskets should be criticized a lot more than it is. This leads to major sites giving high scores to mediocre big releases because they are friends with the people in marketing.

 

[Hugare]

Works for multiplayer games.

But for singleplayer games? MC matters, a lot

People want to know if they'll have their money worth.