Metacritic: Games Are Getting Better

[lolmynamewastaken]

wait, did the average of averages get averaged?

 

[FinalHeart95]

That's incredible! Obviously an average game would get a 5 out of 10, seeing how that's the middle number between 0 and 10, so over a 7 is great!

...*sigh*

 

[DustyDrB]

People look at game scores as they would a school grade. That would explain things a lot better than this theory of lowered standards. A lot of reviewers use an ABCDF system anyway. It's not hard to figure this out.

 

[Yureina]

I think its score inflation rather than any increase in quality. Those scoring websites all seem to give the same overly high scores to everything. >_<

 

[Cody211282]

I don't think games are getting better I just think reviewers are giving better scores then they should be(almost nothing gets below a 7).

 

[pyrus7]

I'm going to have to agree with everyone in this thread that the games released this year so far were greatly inferior to the games released last year, which in turn were far more mediocre than the games released in 2008.

 

[Irridium]

While I have no doubt that we are seeing more polished games, that doesn't mean their getting better. Lately I've been finding fewer and fewer games that I actually want to buy. And I'm finding review scores are far too generous, often giving praise to games or aspect that don't deserve it (graphics and overhyped games) and shunning certain aspects and games more than others (games like Alpha Protocol, where the graphics were the primary thing while the best choice system in this generation was overlooked for the most part).

Plus add in the fact that a good amount of reviews are probably influenced by a certain publisher's wallet, and you have yourself a bad, self perpetuating circle.

People do realise that this is because and average game garners 70's right?

Which is strange, because the "average" of 100 and 10 is 50 and 5, respectively. This is also why I fucking hate the number system.

I'd replace it with this:

10 - Fucking amazing. Buy it or else.
9 - Damn near perfect
8 - Really great game
7 - Its a good game
6 - Perfect if you want to kill some time
5 - Average, give it a rent and buy it if you like it.
4 - Eh, a rent is good, but thats it.
3 - How did this game get released?
2 - To quote the TF2 Scout: "What the hell is this crap?!"
1 - Buying a turd would be a better investment.

 

[Benefactor]

Which is strange, because the "average" of 100 and 10 is 50 and 5, respectively. This is also why I fucking hate the number system.

That's generally why I like reviews that don't use a number system, or simply take the word of my friends over a magazine or website's score.

Then again, renting the game for a short time also solves that problem, and also saves me money by not spending money to own something with a short story or little replayability.

 

[pyrus7]

Which is strange, because the "average" of 100 and 10 is 50 and 5, respectively. This is also why I fucking hate the number system.

However if you look at it from a school grading perspective, then 50% is a failing mark while 70% is indeed the average. The other way to view it is that there are very few games in the 10-30 (or 1-3) range, thus raising the average score anyways.

 

[Luke Cartner]

Given that such scores reflect relative achievement compared to the other games wouldn't a more correct statement be, reviewers give games higher scores than they did in the past.

For example systemshock was a better game than bioshock (in alot of peoples minds, I'm sure some may disagree with this) yet gamespot gave systemshock an 8.5 and bioshock a 9.0.

This would indicate in to the scores against relative quality that are increasing not the quality.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Games aren't getting better, critics are getting richer.

 

[Mysnomer]

Which is strange, because the "average" of 100 and 10 is 50 and 5, respectively. This is also why I fucking hate the number system.

However if you look at it from a school grading perspective, then 50% is a failing mark while 70% is indeed the average. The other way to view it is that there are very few games in the 10-30 (or 1-3) range, thus raising the average score anyways.

But this is a bad idea, because it reduces the ability to differentiate between a lifeless mediocre game and creative and fun but if somewhat flawed game. If reviewers would expand their actual grade scale [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPointScale] it would only be to the benefit of consumers...so naturally it will never happen.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

..., maybe games are staying about the same maybe reviewer standards are just lowering.

EXACTYL my thought!

 

[Nouw]

According to the Reviews. We'll be the Judge of that

 

[Ponchponcho]

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.

My strategy usually is to comb through reviews until I find one or a couple that parallel my opinion on games that both I and the reviewer have played. Then I see what they think of the game I'm researching. Understanding no 2 gamers are alike it won't be perfect but at least I can try and safeguard myself from buying a game I would regret. As for Famitsu's trend of giving more games perfect scores in recent years, I think they are free to rate games as they see fit, and if they honestly believe that a game deserves a 39-40 score that's fine.

However, when review websites/magazines have been around a while and as their scores become more highly regarded and touted I suspect they feel a greater temptation to lavish a game they simply "like" with a perfect score in an attempt to influence the gaming industry as a whole. Call me cynical, but I think as ones opinion of an industry becomes more influential among its consumers, the greater the temptation to use that opinion to cause the consumers to influence the industry.

 

[Kross]

I'd replace it with this:

10 - Fucking amazing. Buy it or else.
9 - Damn near perfect
8 - Really great game
7 - Its a good game
6 - Perfect if you want to kill some time
5 - Average, give it a rent and buy it if you like it.
4 - Eh, a rent is good, but thats it.
3 - How did this game get released?
2 - To quote the TF2 Scout: "What the hell is this crap?!"
1 - Buying a turd would be a better investment.

What's the difference between "Really great" and "Near perfect"? How about "How did this game get released" and "What the hell is this crap?"

I've always been an advocate of 5 point systems:

5 - Perfect
4 - Good, but not perfect
3 - Average: Didn't like it, didn't hate it
2 - Bad, but playable
1 - Unplayable crap

People who score percentages, or a 10 point system with decimal points make me want to hurt something 84.7% of the time.

 

[Irridium]

I'd replace it with this:

10 - Fucking amazing. Buy it or else.
9 - Damn near perfect
8 - Really great game
7 - Its a good game
6 - Perfect if you want to kill some time
5 - Average, give it a rent and buy it if you like it.
4 - Eh, a rent is good, but thats it.
3 - How did this game get released?
2 - To quote the TF2 Scout: "What the hell is this crap?!"
1 - Buying a turd would be a better investment.

What's the difference between "Really great" and "Near perfect"? How about "How did this game get released" and "What the hell is this crap?"

I've always been an advocate of 5 point systems:

5 - Perfect
4 - Good, but not perfect
3 - Average: Didn't like it, didn't hate it
2 - Bad, but playable
1 - Unplayable crap

People who score percentages, or a 10 point system with decimal points make me want to hurt something 84.7% of the time.

Well to be honest I was just going off the top of my head when I wrote that. But I think the whole 10 point system in any way is flawed.

But I suppose I should answer your question. For the differences, a near perfect is when there's only one or two things wrong that stick out, while really great has about 3-5 things, maybe 6. As for the lower scores, they can be interchangeable, since anything less than a 4 is basically crap. Most of the time anyway, some people like crap games after all.

Disappointing? Perhaps.

And I agree about the percentages and decimal points. They're very, very annoying.

 

[LordWalter]

Metacritic: Games Are Getting Better

2010 has been a very good year for gaming so far, says review aggregator Metacritic.

Metacritic isn't that hard to understand: Reviews go in, averaged score comes out. But what's trickier to spot, unless you're very good at mental mathematics, is that the average of the averages is on the rise, at least according to Metacritic's midyear report.

Scores rose by an average of 3.9 for each platform, with the PC seeing the highest increase at 5.1 points, closely followed by PSP and DS, which both saw a 4.0 point increase. The smallest increase was for Xbox 360 games, which only increased by 2.9 points. However, the difference in total scores between platforms is very small, with the highest being the PC at 73.7 points and the lowest being the PSP at 70.3. Oh, and if you were wondering, the average of the averaged averages is 71.8%

The number of "bad" games - games with Metacritic scores of 49 or lower - has gone down against last year, with only 16 versus 2009's 25. On the other end of the spectrum, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 all scored highest than Street Fighter IV, which was the highest rated game of the first half of 2009.

So what do these numbers actually mean? Well, that depends on what you think of review scores. It does seem to suggest that the average quality of games has increased over this time last year. The numbers are based on opinion, however, and there are so many factors that shape an opinion, any conclusion you might draw has a lot of ifs and buts and other qualifiers attached to it.

Source: MCV [http://www.mcvuk.com/news/39858/Metacritic-report-suggests-quality-increase]







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Nothing to do with games being better, everything to do with reviewers not doing their damn jobs and actually using critical analysis and constructive criticism.

Thank Zeus for Ben Yahtzee Crowshaw.