The Use of Metacritic

Metacritic is becoming more and more the barometer of determining game quality. Is it a great scale to use?

Yes and No.

Using an average does give you a statistically better score than relying on one particular source. However, the review process metacritic does have issues:

* It is suspected by many that review scores are subject to many factors including advertising dollars spent with the publication by the publisher, or even how many free lunches the journalist got. Of course many journos can also get caught up in the hype machine and be swayed simply by that.
* Some reviewers like to be purposely harsh to get noticed, throwing in a contradictary opinion.
* Small scores like out of 5 skew results so 3/5 which is a fairly decent score when considered in that sense become 60% as a score out of 100, which is considered to be bad.
* Reviews without a score are attributed a score by metacritic themselves based on the content of the review, which is extremely subjective.
* Review scores are weighted according to the publication by metacritic themselves. This process is not transparent, and has no feedback to the public lending the sense that this is somewhat arbitrary.

So - is it reliable? Again - I think it does actually produce fairly decent results. The main problem is not from metacritic themselves, but the whole reviewing process. However, for all the corruption and one-up manship it generally does reflect the quality of a game.

Some publishers are now tying developer bonuses to metacritic scores. In a way I like this. It is a way of preserving the chances of a developer being paid that bonus - old style dirty tricks in this case (like purposely reducing the metacritic score) would simply be shooting themselves in the foot.

It's interesting to see that people have been analysing metacritic scores by publisher to show their quality bar:

http://kotaku.com/393104/the-big-publishers-metacritic-averages

MGS 4: 90 minute cutscenes

No thanks.

Stunning Graffiti Animation

Jaw. Hitting. Floor.

Simply gobsmackingly good animation:

http://www.vimeo.com/993998

How long must this have took to do?

Time for a Rant - "Biting Off More Than You Can Chew"

I like to rant, anyone who knows me knows that. In fact there is a type of ranting named after me known as the Markument. But I haven't ranted up on this blog yet, so now it's about time...

Now the subject of this particular rant is budding game developers biting off more than they can chew. Having seen a few game design students' potential projects and having read this:

http://sol.gfxile.net/mmorpg.html

it has solidified my opinion that people are almost universally over ambitious when they try to make their first game. Seriously - I've witnessed a group of 3 students announce they will build a third person action adventure from scratch in less than a year. Then they announce that the story will be much better than several mainstream titles. Firstly you don't stand much hope of finishing what is probably the most complex type of game to produce (aside from RPGs for pure depth and girdth) and secondly you're expecting to make it better than a game that had 60+ professionals working on it for 3 or more years. You need to sniff the reality salts guys. I don't mind the ambition so much as the arrogance!

It just reminds me of Marc Echo - urban clothing designer - and his determined pitch to the games industry that he would show us how it is done. Yeah? That worked didn't it...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/marceckosgettingup?q=getting%20up

Then there was the doorman that decided an MMO was his future and he pumped his (and his family's) life savings into it. Forget trying to get experienced people to help, he'll manage with a few friends and loyal companions!

Unfortunately even those who've been on the perimeter of game development don't always get it right:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/pennyarcadeadventuresepisode1?q=penny%20arcade

I love the cartoon strips (even the lampooning of Heavenly Sword), but there is a slight bit of smug satisfaction when the critics don't get it right themselves.

Just remember - if you're going to start in game development, start small. Build a mod for an existing game. Build a small arcade game. Whatever you do don't start bragging about how you are going to revolutionise the industry - we've heard all that bullshit before.

Haze Gets a Kicking

Well, a while ago I was quite interested by Haze, but the demo served to kick my interest in the face. Now it seems that the game itself isn't setting the world on fire:

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/875/875229p1.html

If IGN give you a kick to the chops, then I can only imagine when the harsh scores take their turn to put the boot in. Place your EDGE score predictions now...

More Interesting Sites

Some more interesting websites for research purposes:

http://www.infiltration.org/
http://www.urban-travel.org/documents/92.html
http://www.simoncornwell.com/urbex/frames.htm
http://www.abandoned.ru/

Can you tell I like urban expoloration sites? ;)

Videogame Tropes

Tropes are to be found in all entertainment forms - some to the point of cliche, but they can be useful as a starting point for ideas.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VideogameTropes

This site contains a number of tropes that will either be useful for a design idea, or at the very least a source of amusement.