Obsidian Lost Bonus for Fallout: New Vegas by One Metacritic Point

[sleeky01]

I'm a little surprised people haven't known about this already. I've posted this clip quite some time ago. I'll do it again.


For another take, Look here:


It's not like Bethesda put a gun to Obsidians collective head. Or perhaps in a manner of speaking they did. Bethesda isn't the only publisher that uses Metacritic to ink a deal.

If you want your game published where are you gonna go?

 

[6SteW6]

Hey don't complain it works out for us as consumers. If the developer hasd to strive for a higher score then they need to make a better, more polished product. Or you know be part of a bigger company that can afford advertising on the reviewers website

This particular deal does sound a bit dodgy to me, but Obsidian agreed to the terms and signed the dotted line. It sucks they lost out on the deal by one point but oh well, Fallout NV was a mess when it first came out and most people couldn't even play it their lucky they got the score they did.

 

[redisforever]

Do you think that there was some backdoor deals to keep the score down to not have to pay the bonuses?

Well, that's certainly possible, but as quite a few people check Metacritic to see if they should buy a game, getting a lower score would probably end up making Bethesda less money, and remember, they got most of it in the end. Obsidian got nothing from the sales.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

That's too bad. It was a great game that one could tell that a LOT of love and care was put into, almost moreso than Fallout 3. It was so rich and detailed and a lot of the complaints about bugs were eventually addressed. I had more glitched and broken questlines in Fallout 3, that's for sure. Overall it was a better game, maybe even more than Skyrim in a lot of ways.

 

[The Random One]

Do you think that there was some backdoor deals to keep the score down to not have to pay the bonuses?

I honestly doubt the benefits of a giant company like Bethesda having to pay for some work outweighs the risk of approaching a tiny computer game fansite and finding out that the owner hates Bethesda and is bringing a bunch of hits to his tiny site with his claim that they offered him money.

But yeah, I agree that this is a stupid way to track things. I guess the idea is that they get paid more if their work is good, but Metacritic is a poor excuse for an objective review.

If I run Metacritic I'd take down the site and replace with a single page reading THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

 

[Laser Priest]

Rather disappointing. I know that they didn't meet the requirement and it's only fair, but...

Metacritic is the biggest ball of awful opinions on the internet, and outside of bugs, Fallout: New Vegas is an amazing game, well-deserving of much more than 85.

Worst part is that - knowing Metacritic - a significant portion of the low scores are probably just people who didn't play it but hate Obsidian.

 

[Nurb]

If so many developers didn't let themselves be owned by major publishers, they COULD have created some sort of loose association or agreement that would let them get better conditions for contracts since they do most of the work and the publishers take such a big chunk of profit.

Oh well, their loss unfortunately, now there's to few independent developers to band together and have the leverage content creators deserve. The only way for things to change is for new and emerging devs to try something over the coming years

 

[Daveman]

God fucking damn it. I fucking loved New Vegas. Paid full price for all their DLC because I literally couldn't wait for the price to drop, and that's saying something. Even Skyrim I had to wait until it went on sale to get.

Well Obsidian, if you do a kickstarter campaign, know that I will gladly pay hundreds of pounds, and I'm a broke-ass student.

 

[KingofMadCows]

I guess Obsidian's desire to work on "their baby" again clouded their judgment because they must have signed a pretty crappy contract.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Quality incentives gives the studio reason to polish and perfect the product to a higher grade.

And if you recall, polishing was something they did a horrid job at with New Vegas.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Quality incentives gives the studio reason to polish and perfect the product to a higher grade.

And if you recall, polishing was something they did a horrid job at with New Vegas.

And suffered for it. Hence the above article.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

It would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that the 'Metacritic dependent bonuses' are just a way for the publishers to cheat developers out of money they should have been paid to make the game in the first place. Pay them less with the vague promise that they'll pay them more should the game preform really well on some hokey internet review site probably means that the publisher shells out less money if, I don't know, the slightly more solid promise to pay them more if the game ships a metric fuck-load of copies more than expected.

Just saying.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Quality incentives gives the studio reason to polish and perfect the product to a higher grade.

And if you recall, polishing was something they did a horrid job at with New Vegas.

And suffered for it. Hence the above article.

Yeah. These things have a way of coming full circle.

 

[Darkmantle]

ugh, this is despicable.

You guys couldn't let that one point slide eh boys? it's bad enough you are using metacritic ffs. now every reviewer won't want to give a game an honest score in case someone is screwed out a a bonus.

 

[Darkmantle]

Quality incentives gives the studio reason to polish and perfect the product to a higher grade.

And if you recall, polishing was something they did a horrid job at with New Vegas.

And suffered for it. Hence the above article.

9 times out of 10, the publisher is in control of QA btw.

 

[kgpspyguy]

HA good fallout new Vegas was the most disappointing piece of crap iv ever sat through.

 

[ResonanceSD]

What kind of backwards bullshit business deal is that? Is this common? For fucks sake gaming industry, forget about Metracritic scores! They are meaningless as many of the publications are bought off anyway (looking at you, Gamespot and IGN). This makes me sick.

Obsidian Lost Bonus for Fallout: New Vegas by One Metacritic Point

If sites like "Armchair Empire" and "Gamekult" had rated the game just a teensy bit higher, Obsidian would have walked away with a financial bonus for its work on New Vegas.

Deals between game publishers and developers are just as varied as one might find in any other production business, though the details that comprise them often never come to light. In the case of Fallout: New Vegas, the community recently got some rare insight from Chris Avellone, the co-owner of Obsidian, as to the nature of their arrangement with publisher Bethesda. According to a recent Tweet, his company's work on the post-apocalyptic RPG was to be a one-time payment unless the game garnered a positive response on review aggregator Metacritic.

"[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't," Avellone wrote. If you're a fan of New Vegas, or of people getting paid well for hard work, this admission is made more poignantly gloomy by the fact that it reached an 84, just one point away from the extra compensation. The bonus was likely a big deal for Obsidian, considering that the developer doesn't see one cent on a per sale basis.

Avellone's disclosure comes just one day after the reported wave of Obsidian staff layoffs, said to include over thirty people, some of who were reportedly just hired between one and seven days before the sweep. The firings came joined with the news that the studio had cancelled development on a next-gen project (codenamed "North Carolina") and its continued progress on the recently announced South Park RPG remains unclear.

Source: Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/15/obsidian-missed-fallout-new-vegas-metacritic-bonus-by-one-point/]

Permalink

Chriiiist. Well if Metacritic is what's driving the developers/publishers these days, ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. Stick to football.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Quality incentives gives the studio reason to polish and perfect the product to a higher grade.

And if you recall, polishing was something they did a horrid job at with New Vegas.

And suffered for it. Hence the above article.

9 times out of 10, the publisher is in control of QA btw.

But the studio is in charge of debugging. And no publisher is going to cancel a project that far along (with the sole exception of Blizzard in one instance, possibly two depending on how far along Ghost got). With the money already invested into a project of that scale, if the product is shipable, you accept it and ship it (and I actually got New Vegas, the game was playable prior to the first patch and the first bugs usually didn't show up till a few hours in). Better to be able to recoup your losses via bad sales then total loss via no sale.

 

[uncanny474]

On the one hand, the fact that people were laid off because of one point on metacritic is sad.

On the other hand, it's OBSIDIAN. Obsidian has NEVER released a quality game (or even a complete game) in the entire time I've followed them. They were the people behind KotOR II, a buggy mess of unfinished quests, and they were the ones behind Fallout: New Vegas which was, let's be honest, a buggy mess of unfinished quests.

If Obsidian collapsed completely, the games industry would be better for it.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Way I see it, F:NV sold farking shedloads, and thirty of the people involved with creating a massive hit are now not around to create more massive cash cows for you, because you decided to hold back on a bonus over a single point.

If only there was some kinda humanity involved in these things "Well, you only made it to 84, but as you've sold five fucking million, here's yer bonus, now, get back to work, we need Fallout 4!"

Who's for hopping on Metacritic and giving Superman 64 that 100 review it so missed first time around?

Off topic, the new captchas, much better, readable now!