9 Crippling Problems With The Gaming Industry’s Future

4. Metacritic

The press is important to the gaming industry, reviews can make or break a game and some can even consign a game to the bargain bin from it's first week on sale. Think of it; if you were looking forward to a game and your favourite gaming site reviewed and gave it a 4/10, you wouldn't be inclined to buy it would you? Metacritic is becoming an issue for developers in a big way as it is being used more and more as a gauge for success over traditional sales figures. If you don't know, Metacritic is a website which aggregates the reviews for games (as well as Film, TV and music among others) and gives you a handy instant mean result out of 100. The reasons why publishers like Metacritic is simple, the leg-work is done for them and those who sign the cheques can just log on, search for the game and have an instant view of the critical reception it has received. The problem is though, some publishers are using Metacritic to affect developer behaviour and try to guarantee hits. There was a famous incident where Obdsidian lost out on millions in royalty and bonus payments from publisher Bethesda because they had agreed a quality threshold of an 85 on Metacritic for Fallout: New Vegas. The final score came in at 84 and Obsidian were left out to dry because it had been written into their contracts. Publishers want the easy view, they want to know instantly what is happening with their game and what the world's press thinks of it, whereas developers would much rather look down the traditional route of seeing how well it sells before they address the critical reception. The disparity between the two sides is guaranteed to cause some friction in meetings ahead of a game's release, and the effects can be felt in the end product.