Metacritic Begins Aggregating Individual Developer Scores

[AceAngel]

As a junior level artist in the game industry who has come into contact with many people from many places in life, I myself am not void of some fuming occasionally when people try to say 'this and that is art' or when people berate a game for very small reasons, but this takes the cake for me.

Review score aggregator Metacritic has begun offering listings for individual game developers, providing something of a profile page with an aggregate score for all the work on which one has been credited.

Although aggregates for the work of prominent developers, like Ken Levine, Peter Molyneux and Cliff Bleszinski (89, 82 and 86, respectively) are available, all developers with credits on Metacritic-ranked games can find their profile through the first name-hyphen-last name format in the URL.

The data pulls from GameFAQs, with which Metacritic shares a parent. As such, info is far from complete; numerous industry veterans have told Gamasutra that their Metacritic page represents only a partial profile of games they've shipped.

Under its frequently-asked questions, Metacritic recommends that developers submit additions and changes in their crediting directly to GameFAQs.

A developer's Metacritic profile shows his or her highest-scored title, his or her lowest-scored title, and an average score, along with a list of the individual games on which they've worked and the role they played therein.

"Man, it's bad enough games are judged by Metacritic," quips one multiplayer designer with six years in the industry anonymously to Gamasutra. "Now I'm going to be, too?"

Metacritic has ranked companies as a whole for some time; in 2010 Take-Two was the company with the highest overall portfolio score.

Link: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=33682

So basically, as if it's not bad enough that some developers get flak for no reason or get a free pass because their fanbase if a rabbid blossom of mushrooms, developers are now getting rated on their games.

Let us no forget that between mergers, tax cuts, and other publisher struggles (as well internal struggles between usually entry leads and veteran leads) we have much going on. While rating a company as a whole is understandable, rating an individual as if they were the sole person behind the game is going to far.

However, on one hand, this can improve some people's standing on how they make game, but if that is to happen, they would need to rate everyone that worked on the game and the leads who made the changes in the game, not simply that one guy that had the idea for a Chainsaw Gun.

So what do you guys think? Fair game? Could improve the industry, or is it uncalled for making developers lead pinata's for not getting hired at their next job because they have a low rating?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

That's a terribly badly thought out acronym...

 

[Jack and Calumon]

That's a terribly badly thought out acronym...

I lol'd.

OT: Okay. If we're judging directors, actors and musicians then why not Game Designers? Well, there are usually alot more people working on a game than a song, I guess, but yeah. I approve of this idea. Let them face the meaningless judgement of Metacritic's inaccurate score piling system.

Calumon: So people get rated? What about me? Am I cool?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I worry for Obsidian, if the haters are anything to go by. If publishers take developer reviews as seriously as they do game scores, this could destroy companies.

 

[Karma168]

I cant see how that would work; you cant really blame the art director if the voice acting is atrocious. You'd have to rate each person on their part in the project and with the huge number of people working on a game you could never be sure what they actually did.

By all means have a review of the development company but it's almost impossible to meaningfully rate an individual developer

 

[Zaik]

At least the acronym appropriately represents metacritic.

My guess is once these start rolling out properly, rich white guys who have no idea how to relate to anything but numbers start flipping a shit and using metacritic as a hard guide on how to invest.

And the rest of the world sighs.

 

[Freechoice]

Calumon: So people get rated? What about me? Am I cool?

With that avatar? Absolutely.

Said with a completely straight face. I swear on Day9 Daily #276.

 

[Zhukov]

That's a terribly badly thought out acronym...

What? Where? I see no acronyms.

 

[Chibz]

What? Where? I see no acronyms.

Aggregating Individual Developer Scores. A.I.D.S. It is rather poorly thought out.

 

[Zhukov]

What? Where? I see no acronyms.

Aggregating Individual Developer Scores. A.I.D.S. It is rather poorly thought out.

Oh.

I see.

Oh dear.

 

[sir.rutthed]

You know who this is going to benefit? Nobody. It'll only serve to make it harder for these hard working people to find a job and move up in the world. On the other hand, if we started doing this for movies that would have meant no more Star Wars prequels after the first one, and no more Michael Bay movies ever.