Dansen said:
I tend to cut mainstream "auteurs" some slack when it come to interviews. I'm sure anyone in this thread would end up with egg on their face if they were subjected to constant interviews.
I can see where he is coming from in regards to metacritc. Metacritic is a bad site and its bad for critically analyzing games. It boils down the games to an arbitrary number which is used as some arbitrary indicator of quality. All it tells you is if the game had some sort of controversy because brigading has become such a common way to express frustration. I appreciate the research you did but these metrics are almost meaningless. Unless the same exact reviewers and users participated you can't compare the different metacritic performances.
The general audience that Kojima seems to be targeting(for some bizarre reason...pressure from Sony?) aren't going to see the nuanced opinions for and against his game, they will see the user score and base most of their purchasing decision on that.
I personally don't use it. My favorite Critic is ACG [https://www.youtube.com/user/AngryCentaurGaming/videos] as his reviews are usually personally in line with my own tastes.
But never the less, the site is a collection of reviews with a semi-questionably moderated user review side. And even with all of that, Death Stranding still managed to do better than most of the AAA lot. I personally count User Reviews for video games lower than most other critical reviews, but in the efforts of fairness I collected that data as well.
My personal views of the sites that Metacritic collected, the User audience on the site, or the very site itself all aside... Death Stranding's reviews are all still positive. All your qualms are probably justified, but it still is just a site linking other people's reviews. And if we're talking about the broad spectrum of feelings for Death Stranding the game, it's just literally a portal to professional critics reviews.
What it is supposed to do is take the average of reviews and puts that number up. That's not arbitrary. That's just math. It would be another thing if they simply made up the scores. Like if Breath of the Wild got 90s and 100s across the board and then Metacritic put up a score of 78. That's arbitrary. But barring some controversy I haven't heard about, they simply don't do that.
But to your argument of if potential consumers will do what you suggested, that's a different topic. And one that maybe does bare weighing out. But that situation is different than just lumping a population to be mainly only interested in first person shooters and using that as an excuse.
The Problem here is that you can not Critique Art Objectively. There are people who look at Mark Rothko's No. 10 [http://cf.c.ooyala.com/RrdmZrdDoNGRNqTQqtsb-1RCikgvOV4k/3Gduepif0T1UGY8H4xMDoxOjA4MTsiGN] or Untitled (Yellow and Blue) [https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-IJ894_SOTHEB_P_20150512224421.jpg] and will have a myriad of feelings. Some will think their 10 year old not only could have done that, but has. Some will see it and be moved for a moment, and be glad for the experience. Some others will feel that these pieces are worth millions of dollars. And those people will have paid $81.9 miillion [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-rothko-painting-christies-auction-20150514-story.html] and 46.5 million dollars [http://news.bitofnews.com/rothko-painting-yellow-and-blue-sold-for-46-5-million/amp/] for a grand total of 128.4 million dollars.
No one here is wrong.
Art is what it is to you.
Yes. Not everyone will vibe with what Kojima is putting out. That is the very substance of Art. But to be that guy suggesting "More refined Palate will resonate with it" makes me roll my eyes.
My favorite Group of All Times is "A Tribe Called Quest [https://atribecalledquest.com/home/]". It isn't even a race. Flat out the hands down winner. And I don't like all of their songs. That doesn't make me a poser. That doesn't mean if I didn't love the musical genre of Drum and Bass as much as I do, I would have more appreciation for the Wonderfully Jazzy Blend of Hip-Hop that is the Tribe's sound. It means some songs missed it for me.
And it's unfair and quite absurd to even suggest that my love of Drum and Bass will prevent me from completely accepting every bit of A Tribe Called Quest discography. And that's what I feel Kojima is hinting at here. I can't stress enough that I'm not saying that this is what he outright said. But what the sense of Kojima's overall message (as it reads with the current translations) is thus to me: "If the West wasn't so in love with FPSs, they could possibly embrace this more".
That's a cop out.
