Obsidian Fallout New Vegas deal with Bethesda meant bonus payment only with 85+ Metac

[MisterBubbles]

They got 84%, discuss, and how widespread is this in the industry , my personal opinion is another reason maybe to self publish, and i can't understand how we got to this situation, people with all the ideas get very little in return , again my opinion i hope publishers die out soon, most of them seem scum of the earth.

[MisterBubbles]

Read the full article here on Eurogamer...http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-85-metacritic

[Daragon]

I wouldn't want Bethesda to die out. EA on the other hand I could very happily live without.

[ETC]

Metacritic is the problem it's weighted like a baboons arse it should be the average full stop not weighted by "trust" (ie who pays for their advertising"

[Profit]

It was only for a bonus anyway; if you were a developer and you were offered that as an additional, you'd probably agree too.

It happens with other awards too, if you get a grammy, bafta you get a bonus.

The benefit of this system for developers is that if the game is a critical success but commercial failure, the developer will still make some money.

[fuse]

So, to play devil's advocate here, what exactly is it that's bad about this? Developers having performance-driven bonuses? Metacritic for agregating scores?

[sj33]

The issue is that Metacritic, whilst theoretically making sense on paper, is a completely arbitrary method of guaging feedback from the consumer. Just taking a collection of reviews from all corners of the internet and trying to come to some kind of 'average' doesn't tell the full story.

Hell, there have always been debates regarding the merits of review scores relative to the review content, and if we should ditch scores entirely. Eurogamer is a good example - their review scores rarely match up with the content of their reviews.

It is only useful if trying to demonstrate extremes i.e. 'this game is extremely good/bad'.

[Profit]

But there's not a better way to get that average, which is why companies use it. It's like sales numbers, they're only estimates, but it's the best there is for companies to rely on. It's incorrect to say Metacritic is arbitrary.

[Brad]

In theory I can see the point. Bonus based on sales is one thing but that means the guys in the team working on generic-guaranteed-to-sell-a-million-game-X will get a bonus nomatter what whereas your niche interest game that you worked really hard on gets universal critical acclaim but doesn't sell well so you get no bonus. So, in theory a nice idea but as others have pointed out you're tied up by whatever scoring scheme adjustments metacritic make along the way.

[Profit]

whereas your niche interest game that you worked really hard on gets universal critical acclaim but doesn't sell well so you get no bonus.

No, under the deal described in the article, the developer would have gotten a bonus for critical acclaim.


Anyway, why would a developer turn down a bonus if they were offered one?

[sj33]

But there's not a better way to get that average, which is why companies use it. It's like sales numbers, they're only estimates, but it's the best there is for companies to rely on. It's incorrect to say Metacritic is arbitrary.

Well, it's arbitrary in the sense that not every review scoring mechanism is the same. Is 5/10 an average, or 7/10? Does 7/10 equal 70/100? What if the review reads like an 8/10, but the final score was 6/10 for some inexplicable reason?

[Flabio]

No idea how common this is to be honest. You hear stories every now and then, but I've never worked on something where the bonus was connected to anything other than sales.

[jimtendo]

Here is one of those questions I don't ask, because, y'know it sounds so simple and should be self explanitory. But, When did Metacritic became the de-facto site for gouging whether game 'X' is good or not?

Because you can some obscure Peruvian website giving game 'X' such and such, therefore artificially lowering (or raising) the total score. Then the children from GAF have cheese & whine about that site and why it's given their game such and such score.

Why is Metacritic the Holy Grail of where a game should be judged? Scorewise that is.

Answers on a postcard, please.

[Brad]

No, under the deal described in the article, the developer would have gotten a bonus for critical acclaim.


Anyway, why would a developer turn down a bonus if they were offered one?

Yes I know. I'm saying that it's a good idea because you get a bonus for critical acclaim even if the game doesn't sell well. The only downside is that unlike sales figures metacritic have a say in whether you get enough critical acclaim based on their weightings.

[chopemon]

I have been at companies that have lost contracts due to metacritic and then closed.

Metacritic is a joke. It is a terrible way to judge a company or people. Games are not made in a vacuum, there are all sorts of pressures applied to the development process that should not be taken into account by a reviewer but should be taken into account by a publisher.

Business people just care about numbers and metacritic has loads of numbers.