3 ms·

I think what surprised me the most is how much Metacritic matters to the gaming industry. You don't get the same issues with music, say, or movie releases. It'

I think what surprised me the most is how much Metacritic matters to the gaming industry. You don't get the same issues with music, say, or movie releases. It's true - Metacritic isn't at fault for THQ's policies, but then that's what you get for coming in and changing the mechanics of the game review world.

henrikschroder 16y ago
I think it's because a lot of gamers treat game reviews as some kind of absolute truth, instead of just the opinion of one guy. People seem to have no problem treating movie reviews like someone's personal opinion, and find a reviewer they like and trust, and ignore the rest. But when a game gets 8/10, it somehow either is an 8/10 game or the game reviewer is wrong. Somewhere along the line people forgot that reviews are subjective, not objective.
- arohner 16y ago
  Yes, but the stakes are higher. A movie takes $10 and 2 hours of your time. (New) Games cost $60, and occupy a variable amount of time. Since I'm bootstrapping my startup i.e. poor, I only buy games with a high expected value. I typically look for $1 / hour of entertainment, or better. This means I buy games that I can expect to play for 50+ hours before getting bored. Modern Warfare 1, for example, I played for hundreds of hours, making it a great bargain. The game review scale is also highly compressed. The difference between 8/10 and 9/10 is often the difference between "good game" and "unplayable".