MW3 Dev Manipulates MetaCritic, Gets Flamed to Death

[Warforger]

HURR DURR IT'S COD IT SUCKS DURR

OT: Who actualy listens to metacritic anyway, it just seems to be fileld with people who spend their time downrating things for fun.

Believe it or not, I had to keep telling someone that people constantly zero bomb things on there just for some stupid reason and pointed out Portal 2 when it got zero bombed.

 

[Baresark]

People just go rate games a zero to be dicks. But the bigger dicks are the people like this guy who care way too much about metascores. Get over it. Why don't you instead concentrate on making good games and not worrying about metacritic.

I've said it time and time again. The out of 100 metric is completely broken.

 

[Xannieros]

People actually care about metacritic?

I don't see too much of an issue with his request. Most people appalled by this either would've voted very low or not at all. I didn't like the game, but it deserves more. Maybe a 5.

 

[Loonyyy]

So you first in another post you basically say that Metacritic is pointless and irrelevant for a different reason and then say it is irrelevant for people expressing their opinion? That doesn't really make sense to me and also you are accusing me of doing so in the way you write your post just saying you aren't and then phrasing it the way you do makes about as much sense as saying "No offence but you are the biggest and most arrogant **** on the planet nay the whole of the great expanse of time and space." You could have easily said that they are idiots for review bombing and them, they are, their opinion are all acceptable instead of the you which does look like an accusation.

First: Metacritic is useless, because it aggregates subjective opinions. I did not like Black Ops for instance. It appears you did not either. Some people did. One of my friends loved the game to death. To put my view of the game as a 5/10 and his view of a 9/10 together does not tell us what the game is: it compromises both of our tastes.

To find out if I would like the game, I would find a reviewer with similar tastes to mine, and read his review. For instance, I often read "Wot I think" on Rock Paper Shotgun, or the reviews (and watch, of course) by Susan Arendt and Yahtzee on the escapist. By averaging all reviews, we end up with a mess, a compromise of the worst sort. I don't have a problem with people expressing their opinion. I question opinions, and I welcome you to question mine. That's not the point. Opinions are individual and subjective, you can't average them out to say what the average person will think: artistic tastes are wildly subjective, with a great deviance to their spread.

Just putting that out there before I properly reply to your post.

Why do people still pay attention to Metacritic? It's crowdsourcing of the worst kind, and while, as a nerdy maths sort, taking averages and polling aggregates seems like a good idea, trying to objectively scale subjective ratings of a subjective subject is pointless and stupid.

I really have no idea what you mean by BO going with old style play it was just CoD 4 in Vietnam with some slight additions that were no more than an expansion of old lean should even need to be mentioned as it should have never come out. Community features that we already have through other better means in the game does not justify it as a sequel or a spin off why would it? They weren't exactly ground breaking, unique or highly polished existing ideas.

Here, I would agree. It was very similar to CoD 4. Just like Starcraft 2 was just Starcraft with new units and textures. And Age of Empires 2 was just AoE 1 in the middle ages with some new units and "reskined" old ones. I dislike the claims of similarity, because, when it all comes down to it, most games are dreadfully similar, especially AAA ones. And when you start comparing them in genre: It becomes a mess. I could call Battlefield CoD with vehicles, or I could call Shogun 2, Civilisation with instanced tactical fights. I'm not diametrically opposed to your position: I agree, the games are similar. But at the same time, it's not simply a retread, or an expansion, which I'll detail further in a moment.

They've taken the same game and added a couple of killstreaks, weapons, 5ish new weapon types and a short campaign. It did not add to or provide any new experiences or ideas than any of the games that played before it as the last game to have some truly fresh features was WaW as stuff like throwing knives/tomahawks were already mods. All it did was expand slightly on previous concepts like killstreaks and weapons and added new maps. The only really new weapons I can actually think of are the Ballistic knife and Crossbow actually as all others were done before in other games.

No. It was not truly original. Nothing is. Mods are not the game, so the inclusion of throwing knives and what have you is original, but to MW2, while in BO, it is simply a retread of that. The campaign was dreadfully short, and pretty bad, but it was original: A new story, new characters, and cringeworthy voice over from an Australian playing someone from Alaska. Charming. On to the next bit, the maps were all new, and take a significant amount of effort to make. This can't be ignored. I still think the game is overpriced, but claims that nothing was done are wasteful. If you've done, or seen, any graphic design, you'll realise that to create these spaces takes a lot of time. All the other weapons were done in previous games? Nonsense. They were unique and different. But in essence, since they're all just a fire rate, a recoil stat, an ammo counter, and what have you, I'm willing to concede that no weapon in an FPS with a conventional effect is original. The AUG is indistinguishable from the Heavy's machine gun in TF2, bar the stat differences. I don't really care about the originality: A gun that shoots unicorns which turn into butterflies regenerating enemy health is original, but not necessarily fun (Although a gun that shoots unicorns would be funny).

So lets see "new" community features, 2 new weapons, slightly expanded oversaturated concepts and new maps and a campaign. I got more than that in Battle For Middle Earth 2 expansion were I got at least 3 new units for every race, a new race, maps and a new campaign. I don't see why it isn't a big stretch to say I think that BO is a medium-big expansion.

"New"? The series had not used things like the theatre mode, custom icons, or the playercard system previously. That makes them the definition of new. Of course, the only significant task is creating the theatre mode, and the rest is simple, but it is original. New maps, already gone over. I could mention new models for all the characters and weapons, which does take time, but that's pointless.

The real issue is, we have different definitions of expansion. I believe an expansion is a property which can run in-engine of the parent game, without compromising the working of that game, using most of the same resources and adding new features, or campaigns, or whatever. Case in point: Age of Empires expansions. At some point, this becomes technically impossible. Games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Black Ops could not adequately run in their predecessors system, that said, they do cost quite a bit for their content. Now on to my final point: I don't think Black Ops is an expansion pack- but it is overpriced. It took two years to make, it has a short singleplayer campaign, even for a shooter, and the multiplayer is certainly not as difficult to make as the singleplayer. It shouldn't cost the user as much to buy. I'd argue that series like Call of Duty would be a great thing, if they cost half the price. At their current price, they're hard to justify, but if they were priced similarly to an expansion pack, at around half price or less than a AAA release, the gradual improvements to gameplay and additions to the story would add up, and people would not care. Kind of like Valve's plan for episodic gaming (Where is episode 3????). It's the same reason I don't by the DLC for these games: I can't justify paying the amount for the content. These truly are expansion packs, but in this case, their worth is overstated by the price. I've almost reached the same point with the individual games themselves.

But this still doesn't detract from my point: Game reviews review the individual product. In the case of say, Black Ops, it isn't bad because it takes little work to make in comparison with a completely new property, or because it's a sequel, or because it contributes to cash grab sequels. It's bad because it's short, it's a bit ugly, it's not quite as fun as its competitors. For the price it cost, it's quite thin. You can get a specific ideal across in a review, as long as that ideal is pertinent to the quality of the game. If the game is bad, it gets a bad score: Being short, uninteresting, poorly made, etc, all are things which a reviewer should mention. But if say, Activision released Call of Duty 7 (I don't know what the official numbering is up to anymore), and it was actually just Call of Duty 4: Then it should get the same review score as Call of Duty 4-that's how an opinion should be formed. The point is, at the point where you've found a functionally identical product, your written review would also mention that it's the same game. It should be frowned on, and the correct way of protesting these things, is to not buy the game. It still has no bearing on the review score.

 

[Jennacide]

Ahh, the reason why nobody should ever listen to Metacritic. I'm not even a fan of MW3 and I still view the 0 bombing as moronic. No game deserves a 0, no matter how bad, unless it's NOT ACTUALLY A GAME. If you are fundamentally a game, you deserve no lower than a 1, assuming you fail at literally everything.

MW3 isn't awful, it's just nowhere near as great as it's made out to be, especially by critics. I took offense to the claim that it's the "best shooter in over a decade" by GameTrailers. That implies it's better than COD4, which is utter bullshit. For one simple reason even, other than the 5 others I can point out, NO. SENSE. OF. PACING. Not everyone wants a game to start at 11 and stay there for 4 hours. Peaks and valleys goddammit, read up on it new Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer.

 

[Brian Hendershot]

MW3 Dev: You know what would help this fire? MORE FIRE!

 

[Krion_Vark]

That's like the Yankees asking for more money so they can buy more World Series championships.

The Joke ------> (^^)

My Head ------->(-.-)

Not sure if it was answered yet but he is saying that the Yankees never actually WIN the World Series. They just buy the best players in the league so that they can get it. Hence the BUYING and not WINNING. And as a Red Sox fan I found it hilarious.

 

[Creamygoodness]

MW3 Dev Manipulates MetaCritic, Gets Flamed to Death

like the Yankees asking for more money so they can buy more World Series championships.


Permalink

It is more like the Yankees buying the World Series and then asking for people to vote for their team for the Hall of Fame.

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

His tweet makes him sound like a 12 year old who is to lazy to spell out entire words. I hate tweeter for squishing down communication to a 140 character blurb.

 

[Awexsome]

Yeah it does kinda make you look bad if you ask for help like that.

But is he right about the review scores being influenced unfairly? Yes. Obviously. You'd have to be a hater or stupid to not see that. Just gotta take the "haters gonna hate" route and ignore em.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

It's a good thing that no one with an IQ over 40 actually considers the user score even remotely credible, right?

 

[gphjr14]

His tweet makes him sound like a 12 year old who is to lazy to spell out entire words. I hate tweeter for squishing down communication to a 140 character blurb.

It's "too lazy," as in if you're going to insult someone for rallying fans to give honest reviews, it's not too difficult to use proper grammar. However I do find Twitter annoying because it gives life to often uninteresting/annoying thoughts.

The score is low because people who don't have a life think it's not enough to dislike something, they have to go out of their way to besmirch its reputation.

If you've actually played the game enough to make an educated assessment and don't like it that's fine, but to give a low score just to bomb it's ranking is pathetic.

Also I really don't see why metacritic holds so much weight. I've never even visited the site and only know its name from message boards and wikipedia articles.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

So you first in another post you basically say that Metacritic is pointless and irrelevant for a different reason and then say it is irrelevant for people expressing their opinion? That doesn't really make sense to me and also you are accusing me of doing so in the way you write your post just saying you aren't and then phrasing it the way you do makes about as much sense as saying "No offence but you are the biggest and most arrogant **** on the planet nay the whole of the great expanse of time and space." You could have easily said that they are idiots for review bombing and them, they are, their opinion are all acceptable instead of the you which does look like an accusation.

First: Metacritic is useless, because it aggregates subjective opinions. I did not like Black Ops for instance. It appears you did not either. Some people did. One of my friends loved the game to death. To put my view of the game as a 5/10 and his view of a 9/10 together does not tell us what the game is: it compromises both of our tastes.

To find out if I would like the game, I would find a reviewer with similar tastes to mine, and read his review. For instance, I often read "Wot I think" on Rock Paper Shotgun, or the reviews (and watch, of course) by Susan Arendt and Yahtzee on the escapist. By averaging all reviews, we end up with a mess, a compromise of the worst sort. I don't have a problem with people expressing their opinion. I question opinions, and I welcome you to question mine. That's not the point. Opinions are individual and subjective, you can't average them out to say what the average person will think: artistic tastes are wildly subjective, with a great deviance to their spread.

Just putting that out there before I properly reply to your post.

Why do people still pay attention to Metacritic? It's crowdsourcing of the worst kind, and while, as a nerdy maths sort, taking averages and polling aggregates seems like a good idea, trying to objectively scale subjective ratings of a subjective subject is pointless and stupid.

I really have no idea what you mean by BO going with old style play it was just CoD 4 in Vietnam with some slight additions that were no more than an expansion of old lean should even need to be mentioned as it should have never come out. Community features that we already have through other better means in the game does not justify it as a sequel or a spin off why would it? They weren't exactly ground breaking, unique or highly polished existing ideas.

Here, I would agree. It was very similar to CoD 4. Just like Starcraft 2 was just Starcraft with new units and textures. And Age of Empires 2 was just AoE 1 in the middle ages with some new units and "reskined" old ones. I dislike the claims of similarity, because, when it all comes down to it, most games are dreadfully similar, especially AAA ones. And when you start comparing them in genre: It becomes a mess. I could call Battlefield CoD with vehicles, or I could call Shogun 2, Civilisation with instanced tactical fights. I'm not diametrically opposed to your position: I agree, the games are similar. But at the same time, it's not simply a retread, or an expansion, which I'll detail further in a moment.

They've taken the same game and added a couple of killstreaks, weapons, 5ish new weapon types and a short campaign. It did not add to or provide any new experiences or ideas than any of the games that played before it as the last game to have some truly fresh features was WaW as stuff like throwing knives/tomahawks were already mods. All it did was expand slightly on previous concepts like killstreaks and weapons and added new maps. The only really new weapons I can actually think of are the Ballistic knife and Crossbow actually as all others were done before in other games.

No. It was not truly original. Nothing is. Mods are not the game, so the inclusion of throwing knives and what have you is original, but to MW2, while in BO, it is simply a retread of that. The campaign was dreadfully short, and pretty bad, but it was original: A new story, new characters, and cringeworthy voice over from an Australian playing someone from Alaska. Charming. On to the next bit, the maps were all new, and take a significant amount of effort to make. This can't be ignored. I still think the game is overpriced, but claims that nothing was done are wasteful. If you've done, or seen, any graphic design, you'll realise that to create these spaces takes a lot of time. All the other weapons were done in previous games? Nonsense. They were unique and different. But in essence, since they're all just a fire rate, a recoil stat, an ammo counter, and what have you, I'm willing to concede that no weapon in an FPS with a conventional effect is original. The AUG is indistinguishable from the Heavy's machine gun in TF2, bar the stat differences. I don't really care about the originality: A gun that shoots unicorns which turn into butterflies regenerating enemy health is original, but not necessarily fun (Although a gun that shoots unicorns would be funny).

So lets see "new" community features, 2 new weapons, slightly expanded oversaturated concepts and new maps and a campaign. I got more than that in Battle For Middle Earth 2 expansion were I got at least 3 new units for every race, a new race, maps and a new campaign. I don't see why it isn't a big stretch to say I think that BO is a medium-big expansion.

"New"? The series had not used things like the theatre mode, custom icons, or the playercard system previously. That makes them the definition of new. Of course, the only significant task is creating the theatre mode, and the rest is simple, but it is original. New maps, already gone over. I could mention new models for all the characters and weapons, which does take time, but that's pointless.

The real issue is, we have different definitions of expansion. I believe an expansion is a property which can run in-engine of the parent game, without compromising the working of that game, using most of the same resources and adding new features, or campaigns, or whatever. Case in point: Age of Empires expansions. At some point, this becomes technically impossible. Games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Black Ops could not adequately run in their predecessors system, that said, they do cost quite a bit for their content. Now on to my final point: I don't think Black Ops is an expansion pack- but it is overpriced. It took two years to make, it has a short singleplayer campaign, even for a shooter, and the multiplayer is certainly not as difficult to make as the singleplayer. It shouldn't cost the user as much to buy. I'd argue that series like Call of Duty would be a great thing, if they cost half the price. At their current price, they're hard to justify, but if they were priced similarly to an expansion pack, at around half price or less than a AAA release, the gradual improvements to gameplay and additions to the story would add up, and people would not care. Kind of like Valve's plan for episodic gaming (Where is episode 3????). It's the same reason I don't by the DLC for these games: I can't justify paying the amount for the content. These truly are expansion packs, but in this case, their worth is overstated by the price. I've almost reached the same point with the individual games themselves.

But this still doesn't detract from my point: Game reviews review the individual product. In the case of say, Black Ops, it isn't bad because it takes little work to make in comparison with a completely new property, or because it's a sequel, or because it contributes to cash grab sequels. It's bad because it's short, it's a bit ugly, it's not quite as fun as its competitors. For the price it cost, it's quite thin. You can get a specific ideal across in a review, as long as that ideal is pertinent to the quality of the game. If the game is bad, it gets a bad score: Being short, uninteresting, poorly made, etc, all are things which a reviewer should mention. But if say, Activision released Call of Duty 7 (I don't know what the official numbering is up to anymore), and it was actually just Call of Duty 4: Then it should get the same review score as Call of Duty 4-that's how an opinion should be formed. The point is, at the point where you've found a functionally identical product, your written review would also mention that it's the same game. It should be frowned on, and the correct way of protesting these things, is to not buy the game. It still has no bearing on the review score.

There is a big difference between a sequel and an expansion in terms of content. Dawn of War 2 is a sequel and Soulstorm is an expansion once again a couple of new maps, a new campaign and added community features that are already catered for with Steam, Xfire, Fraps is hardly something to shout and rave about. That hardly makes it a sequel. You could call those games such but that would be wrong as they are clearly not they are just games in the same genre(BF and CoD) or similar genres(Total War and Civ). Yes they have a lot of similar things but they have features that set them apart and if you boil anything down enough they are all the same I could say Soccer(Football), American Football, Gaelic Football, Rugby, Golf and Hurling all the same as they involve someone trying to hit a ball to a certain point.

Yes they are "original" in terms of being official but it just shows that they hardly pushed it in terms of adding stuff to the games. Yes the maps were new but once again new maps alone do not make a new game as this stuff is all included in expansions same as new stories with new people. No it is not about adding ridiculous weapons but new concepts that can be expanded on lets look at Halo for example. While they started with 2 grenade types they ended up with 4. Now these different grenade types all add unique strategies to them and different ways of using them eg Frag big splash damage and can bounce around corners, Plasma sticks to enemies but can't bounce, Spike sticks to everything, Fire set shit on fire. So we have 1 for splash damage 2 for instant kills but can be used in different ways and 1 for area denial. This is what is added in a sequel.

Now while some stuff like this can be added in an expansion there is a much larger volume of it in a sequel. You can probably look at the Elder Scroll games to see meaty expansions at their best and compare games as sequels.

Once again something as simple as a theatre mode(fraps) and some custom aesthetics does not make a sequel/spinoff. Bar the slight engine and graphics tweaks there little that BO did at its core that could not have been implement in a CoD 4 expansion United Offensive had more gameplay additions to CoD 1 than BO has too series. All it added in reality were these simple community features that were only needed on consoles. Also I would hardly call the paltry 5 maps an expansion. The DLC available for the CoD games is a complete and utter joke and they didn't even try charge for it in CoD 4 on PC as no one would have bought it due to there being mods which have done more for keeping games alive than DLC has.

Yes reviews do review the product on hand but if the product on hand is nothing more than another product on the market only dearer and slightly more broken ion terms of functionality then its score should reflect that so just because CoD 4 got a 10 or a 9 does not mean that every game that does the same should get a 9 or a 10. If I am reviewing ice cream so lets say Ben and Jerrys brings out a new flavour and it is great. Then a couple of years down the line they bring out another new flavour which is the exact same as the old one just dearer and only added marshmallows then my review should reflect that it is has done little in terms of anything. Using a same base ice cream flavour is fine but other things could be added to make it more new like a dual flavour with nuts and caramel.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Yeah, I was here to bash him, but whatever MW3 is, it doesn't deserve a flurry of 0/10 reviews.
In the end, these people spent years creating something special, and even if it's not perfect, it's not 0/10, and that's just a sign of internet haters, being dicks and actually doing real damage to people's lives.

I know, there's starving kids in the world, but that doesn't mean you can't criticise minor infractions.

For me, that would be like going on Amazon and seeing Chris Addison's new stand up dvd being rated zero stars before it's been released, it would obviously be the work of packs of stupid, hateful people, who just want to destroy something they're not even going to watch. (He's made fun of Big Brother, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's legions of dummies waiting to slam him )

To me, a 0/10 game would be the packs of games on DVD I buy from Verbatim in packs of 25.

If there's any game there at all it has to be worth 1/10.

Now I'm coming from a point of total ignorance, not having played number 3, but if it's anything like the dabble I had with 2, it's entirely competent as a game and engaging and exciting enough to be worth at least 6 or 7 and that's coming from a grumpy, non shooter fan POV.

(Note I'd give it 5, but we all know 7ish is the average now )

EDIT: I've just seen "Modern Warfare 3 Breaks Every Sales Record Known to Man" below where I'm typing and thought 'fuck it, who cares any more, bad reviews seemingly had no effect anyway, I'll just wait for the obvious piracy statement from them now.

"We have our sales figures in, we sold 7 billion copies in the first month, but that's only one for every human being on the planet, we must stamp out piracy, it's affecting sales!"

 

[AstylahAthrys]

I'm no CoD fan, but what he tweeted was no big deal. What he did was just plug something for the fans, where they could give their own honest opinion. It's not like the devs themselves were making multiple accounts and giving reviews.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

i actually got MW3 from a mate and i still hate it i didnt like MW2 but i did like CoD4 i mostly dislike the sequels because it doesnt change
Same Graphics
Same guns
Same boring shitty cold war wank story were america fight the russians instead of some different enemy like i dont know Koreans? like homefront (which i actually liked)
and all we get is the same stuff many may say WHAT ABOUT THE NEW GUNS and i will say Reskins
many will say LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS i will say it looks the same
game developers need criticism or else they will make the same shit look at CoD4 that was brillant then they made the same game but with new maps no criticism and then MW3 the people give it criticism then the dev team cry.
man up Sledgehammer and activision it was going to happen sooner or later

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Oh, who the bloody fuck reads Metacritic for the goddamned user reviews anyway? That would be like me going to a McDonald's for healthy food.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Objectively, if I actually played it, I'd probably give it something like 3/10. Even the multiplayer really bores me for CoD.

And these developers never come across as particularly intelligent or open minded.