Metacritic: Games Are Getting Better

[StarStruckStrumpets]

Somehow I feel this is the only appropriate response: ORLY?

If anything, games have been steadying off. You can only do something so much before revolutionaries are very difficult to come across. Considering all I've been stormed with is FPS titles, I'm inclined to believe this comment isn't valid. However, my cynicism isn't pessimism. I'm quite sure that many great titles will appear in the near future, hopefully something a little fresh.

I'm quite sick of using guns to dispose of my enemies now, whether it be 1st Person or otherwise.

 

[Omegatronacles]

Is this a case of games increasing, or is it a case of our expectations getting lower?

Given the general quality of the games that I have played recently, I expect it is the latter

 

[Azhrarn-101]

I imagine that the games themselves may have gotten a little better, however the pressure from publishers and developers on game-reviewers has increased a whole lot more.
With game development cost going through the roof, I can imagine that at least part of the marketing budget goes towards buying favourable reviews for certain big name titles to make sure they can recover most of the cost of development.

Yes there was a lot of controversy about this, but I'm pretty sure that for the large review sites and magazines, that is still the reality.

 

[The Last Nomad]

Well it makes sense that games are improving... Technology is improving and therfore the ability to make bigger and better games is impoving...
At least thats they way I've always seen it...

But then again... ideas are important... and ideas don't depend on technology...

 

[nipsen]

"unless you're very good at mental mathematics"

..yes... adding all the numbers, and then dividing on the time you added numbers, then putting it on a function set over an interval. Almost like magic.

Also, it could just mean that game-review scores have become more random lately, and tend to be higher than usual. Which means the games would actually have become worse, if the score stayed the same.

Meanwhile the best reviews don't have scores.. so Metacritic still is a completely idiotic site, like most things on the intertron.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Just in light of the recent 1984 article by Peter Parrish, maybe games are staying about the same maybe reviewer standards are just lowering.

My thought's exactly.

These days, people see a 5 or a 6 and think "this game is bad".

 

[Giest4life]

Or maybe that we are becoming so used to shitty games that we have subconsciously lowered the bar for a "good" game. I never go by critic scores. Ever.

EDIT: Unless it has been trashed/praised by Yahtzee. I'm such a Fanboy.

 

[Loonerinoes]

Or maybe reviewers are getting even MORE afraid of genuine criticism and prefer to just go through the motions of sucking up to anyone with any decent level of monetary support behind them?

Therein lies the fallacy of scores. The motive behind issuing them can be so wonderfully ubiquitus that it's no wonder that I recall a recent developers conference, where they all agreed that metacritic scores can really DIAF. Because they are hardly indicative of actual quality since it cannot be determined via a mathematical equation that isn't nearly as objective as metacritic likes to tell other people it is.

 

[Jared]

Games are getting better, people are becoming easier to please...or reviewers are getting worse...could be any number of factors..

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I agree, the first half of 09 was fairly mehtastic.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, I think part of it is simply that the industry is catering more to the mainstream which leads to more mainstream reviewers giving positive reviews.

I suppose that's good if your a "casual" type gamer, but not so good if your a "serious" gamer.

 

[Rayansaki]

The values have been inflated over time. Once upon a time, a game with 50 out of 100 was an average game. Nowadays a 50 out of 100 is reserved for shitty games while the average is closer to 70~75. Really, how often do you see a game scored bellow 50?

A perfect scoring method should have an unlimited cap. sure, Metal Gear Solid 4 deserved a solid 100, but better games were released since, and by today's standards, if it were released today, it wouldn't be at the top of the chain anymore.

This already happens, sequels that were better than previous games usually get a higher score (Solid example is Army of Two, scores increased but with the added expectations for a more recent game, it's just as average as the first one) but as standards increase, so should the score limit to compensate, or else we will see this inflation every year.

This is why a score of 1 to 100 is flawed.

 

[Ravek]

Reviewers are getting better and better bribes.

 

[Deacon Cole]

It does seem to suggest that the average quality of games has increased over this time last year.

That's a lie.

All it really says is the average review scores have gotten better. The actual quality of the games is independent from this. Reviews are hardly a metric anyway as reviews are a form of entertainment in their own right these days and, at best, serve as advertising for the subject of the review, regardless of the score given. Any pretense at actual criticism had been soundly beaten to death in its bed years ago when reviewer learned they need to pander to the same slack-jawed audience the awful things they review are also pandering.

It that article has given us the most relevant details, what it means is this year we have several high-profile releases which we did not have last year.

And saying "games are getting better" over a two year period is irresponsible. Let's see the graph from now back to the 70's. Then you can tell me if games are getting better or not.

 

[Logan Westbrook]

*snip*

It's unfair to accuse me of being irresponsible when you're misrepresenting what I said. The very next sentence after the one you quoted said that the numbers were subjective, so you couldn't draw any real conclusions from them.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Just in light of the recent 1984 article by Peter Parrish, maybe games are staying about the same maybe reviewer standards are just lowering.

I think there was an article about that here on the Esapist. They took for example the Japanese magazine Famitsu, which didn't easily give high scores to games in the past but in recent times they started giving perfect 40/40 scores much more often. If you look at their list of games with a perfect score, almost half of them came out in 2008 or later.

I don't remember what the conclusion was... But how can you even know that? It's just statistics, it's fun, but not worth much anyways. I do my own aggregation, read up on several reviews and than "calculate" my own average and whether i should buy it. Works most of the time.

 

[Nimbus]

Hrm... What this seems to say is that as the numbers systematically increase, the value of the numbers systematically decreases

 

[Blind Sight]

Of course, what this could just mean is that people are giving higher scores to games, not that games are getting 'better'. I hate it when people use averages to determine a root score, I prefer medians myself.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Or maybe publishers are getting better at manipulating metacritic scores. Which is what they do these days, imposing review embargoes for scores depending on what they will do to the metacritic average.

Videogame reviews are all but entirely guaranteed to be worthless these days, because the reviewers are simply used as part of the marketing apparatus by the publisher.