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I agree, but my fear is that a good company (in this case, pds) might turn Metacritic into the center of their attentions, just like it has happened with CA, as Mr. Hayden (if you read my first post in thisthread you will know who he is and wh at he said) implicitly said. A pity i dont have the link to the whole interview. It is somewhere in the CA forums
I wouldn't worry about that. Paradox is not big enough to afford loosing it's core audience (people like you and me who constantly buy their games), and they know what we like. We like developer diaries and gamplay videos of people clicking on maps, not metacritic scores.
Metacritic mostly affects new customers, and a lot of them seem to end up in the steam or paradox forums asking for purchase advice anyway.
Metacritic is not really for users anymore; it's for companies. If a game gets 85+ metascore, investors are happy and sales are theorized to be better (whether they are or not). If the metascore is under 85, then developers are in trouble.
For players Metacritic is irrelevant, specially if the game has not just been released. A great game may get much worse after launch (unfrequent but it happens sometimes), and a game with potential but a catastrophic launch may overcome its problems and turn out to be really good later.
For example, for better or worse, every critic who played EU4 at launch would have a different opinion about EU4 right now. But the metascore will always remain the same, even though the game they're talking about has undergone a radical transformation since then.
We all know how good appeasement is in the long run
I think the problem of metacritic score is not only that i overvalues 5/5 or 10/10 score compared to a 92, but also that even two reviwers/magazines use a diffrent system when they determine their 100% score. for example german magazine GameStar rates from 0-10 in 10 categories and then adds those up to a maximum of a 100, but that will in general cause the total score to be less than in any other review. So comparing scores between reviews is pretty much useless and combining them to a metacritic score is even more retarded. The only way you get a proper review of a game you're interested in is reading reviews of people you know like to play similar titels like you, so you can assume you'd have similar views on a specific title. Same goes the other way round ofc, but looking at scores, any scores, does not really tell you anything.
And as somebody said userscores are generaly on either extreme. Either people only come to rate if the really love or hate the game or just have a too biased view on their title.
I will glance at the metacritic scores when I'm checking out a potential game I want, but I don't put a lot of stock in them. Anymore, if I'm interested in a game I look for "Let's Play" type videos on youtube and base most of my decision off of that. Sometimes demos but I can usually judge whether or not I'll like it by watching someone else play a bit.
I think its pretty messed up that on a scale of 0 to 100 games below 75 are considered to be 'bad' or not worth buying, when anything over 50 should be considered above average. That's the problem with a numerical scoring system - it's so arbitrary and what is considered 'good' is heavily weighted to the top 15 of a 100 scale. This IMO renders the whole scale pretty useless as it rips any possible nuance out of it. Reviews are so quick to award a 85+ score, when the game in a balanced scale would perhaps be an 70 or 75.
I'm much more content reading through a few full length reviews, and watching some gameplay on youtube (or playing a demo for that matter) to decide if I want a game. Unless its paradox. I just love throwing money at paradox
Steam have now released Steam Reviews. They have done a smart thing with their service, since they don't allow userscore's, but rather use a thumbs up and down system, where gamers can say whether they recommend it or not and why. You also actually have to buy the game on steam, before you can review it. So no more spamflod with 1 or 10 stars reviews, like on Metacritic. You can also mark a review as helpfull or not helpfull and even respond to a review, for example if you find that the reviewer is totally wrong about something or you . If a review gets enough upvotes, it will show up at the bottom of the store page.
Edit: The only thing I miss is a bar that shows a percentage of how many people recommended the game and how many did not recommend it.
I think Metacritic and other review sites should only serve as a rough guide, and that should be it. If I want to know whether a game is good or bad in depth, I usually go to one of their online forums as well as other forums in the internet. It gives me clear picture on what is the current state of the game and whether they are worth buying. Granted that few might have time to actually browse through pages of discussions, but the point is, well-educated internet user can inspect game in details before buying if he wants to.
