What Would Matt Do

As you might know, I’m not big on conspiracy theories. Well, not big on them being true. I love hearing them. I just believe in a healthy dose of skepticism. It keeps me sane and I invest in less shady ponzi type schemes. Win win for me.

This brings us to metacritic.com. I’m not going to say, like others are, that one guy holding the fate of companies and games in his very hands is bad for the industry as a whole…oh wait, I am:

Metacritic is still edited by just one man,‭ ‬Marc Doyle.‭ ‬But his focus remains very much on the reason why it was established in the first place.‭ “‬I really see myself as a kind of gatekeeper to tell people that these are the games you should be paying attention to,‭” ‬he declares.‭ ‬His role is to gather scores and comments for every game released in the‭ ‬US,‭ ‬choosing which publications are included and concocting the formula that‭ ‬combines them into a single number.‭

The original basis was:‭ “‬Who is the most credible,‭ ‬who has the best reputation,‭ ‬the best analysis‭?”

But now,‭ ‬he says:‭ “‬It’s essentially about whether gamers are going to them because they’re reliable for advice on what games they should buy.‭ ‬I really don’t have to do too much research because they just come to me.‭ ‬I check out their scoring methodology,‭ ‬send out a questionnaire asking when they launched,‭ ‬how many reviews they cover a week,‭ ‬total reviews done,‭ ‬about staff‭ – ‬all the things I’ve learned over the years that I have to do.‭”

Not because I suspect foul play, though there easily could be what with one man’s calculations and weighting deciding how well a game scores. And in turn deciding what bonuses and payments game developers are getting. It’s just too much.

The problem isn’t metacritic though, it’s publishers taking the easy way out and letting metacritic decide their results, instead of spending the mula and doing the research themselves. It’s people reading a metacritic score and that’s it about a game.

Others don’t like the whole 1-100 scoring system even and the pressure that comes onto devs with that:

"Personally I think it’s ridiculous," he responded. "In the film industry, four stars is an amazing score. I think it’s a really good idea for a developer to go to a publisher and demand that they get an additional bonus for achieving a certain review score, but it shouldn’t affect their royalties or anything else. If you have a high-selling game, you have a high-selling game.

"We know that some websites score quite high and some quite low, but in general, all websites tend to score between 60 and 100. There’s never a 37. It’s as if that whole section doesn’t exist, so zero starts at 60, so three stars, and goes up to five. It’s just not really an accurate enough measure.

That’s really about translating a three star or four star or B rating into a number. A B rating, for instance, encompasses some range of numbers on the 1-100 scale…but do we really think that when a came is rated a B on an ABCDF scale, that it was meant to get an 80%? Or a C is a 60%?

Basically though, it’s back to the original point. One guy decides the fate of entire companies, because publishers use his data like a weapon. It’s not a good business practice and it’s not good that one guy, who won’t expose his methods, is in charge of it. At least, probably not.

What Would Matt Do: I’d hope and pray we’re talking about a true SC MMO (I’d like directly to the WoW forum, but I’m against MMO forums on pure principle).