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

[Profit]

It doesn't matter what individuals think of metacritic scores, until someone comes up with a more reliable way to average scores, companies will still use metacritics. Perhaps if metacritics applied a standard deviation statistical error to exclude outliers then statistically it will be perceived to be more reliable. But metacritics are clear about how they've calculated their numbers.

[Profit]

The only downside is that unlike sales figures metacritic have a say in whether you get enough critical acclaim based on their weightings.

Afraid to say, sales numbers are weighted based on the retail outlets. Also, metacritics doesn't apply any weightings (edit: to game scores; some film/music reviews get weighted), it's just a pure mean.

[MisterBubbles]

What i find worrying is people's jobs and lifes could depend on an arbitrary score on Metacritic. Plus Obsidian have announced 30 job lay offs, M$ canned a project, but maybe money and reviews seem to matter for some publishers.

[Flabio]

Seriously? People still do that 'M$' thing in 2012? Really?

If that was the royalty deal offered then you have to understand that Obsidian *agreed* to it. You don't ever have that forced on you, there's always a negotiation available.

[ETC]

Critical Acclaim on Metacritic is 90 for games the problem I have is it's unfairly weighted some of the typical websites are very heavily weighted (IGN) whereas more multiformat trusted print does not seem to be Games Tm etc etc

[eastyy]

sounds odd...so if a game sold 100 copies but got a score 85 they would still get a bonus

to be honest i do hope that there will eventually be method where ALL the money goes to the developer and there are no need for publishers .....just seems to be so many good developers closed down or a shadow of there former self

[Dogg Thang]

There is method to the madness, especially when you consider that sales can often say as much if not more about the marketing than the quality of the game. But Metacritic? Hmm... we might say it's the best tool of its type for gathering review scores and that could be true but then I might say that crap is the best thing to eat that comes out of my anus and that would also be true.

I guess we all know just how off many scores can be, how differing score systems don't play by the same rules and how so many reviews are just plain awful. We've even discussed for so long about whether there should even be scores at all that it's hard to take them as any sort of serious marker.

But you know, where Bethesda and Obsidian are concerned, I think a better bonus scheme would have been based on characters not floating into space and stuff like that.

[MisterBubbles]

Yes i know a lot of you disliked the game Split Second, but black rock studios where doing ok, then stupidity they take disney's offer, cause SS dont sell so well and some negative reviews Disney shutter the studio, madness, complete madness. Eastyy talks the truth, and yes Flabio i guess old habits die hard.

[eastyy]

think something similar happend to bizzare creations to

[Flabio]

I'd be very reluctant to take any royalty deal that's tied to review scores myself. Sales is the norm, and sometimes there's bonus based on delivering on time as well. But the most solid deal for any dev is simply to make sure that the development payments (whether they're up front, or tied to milestones) cover your costs so that you're not *requiring* the bonuses to stay in business.

[fishbowlhead]

Dont most internet sites award a mandatory 95% gold award for all games these days anyway?, possibly a 98% if the publisher placed a large advert

[FelixofMars]

It's pretty bad, but I have just thought I don't remember a time where I was ever paid bonuses directly, normally its just lumped in the company pot and divvied out. It sounds like this bonus was important to the company's survival which was a bit worrying if they where banking on it.

[charlesr]

Also, metacritics doesn't apply any weightings (edit: to game scores; some film/music reviews get weighted), it's just a pure mean.

From their site:

a METASCORE is a weighted average of reviews from top critics and publications for a given movie, TV show, video game, or album. Why a weighted average? When selecting our source publications, we noticed that some critics consistently write better (more detailed, more insightful, more articulate) reviews than others. In addition, some critics and/or publications typically have more prestige and respect in their industry than others. To reflect these factors, we have assigned weights to each publication (and, in the case of movies and television, to individual critics as well), thus making some publications count more in the METASCORE calculations than others.

Therein the fundamental flaw. The "popular" sites that churn out reviews as fast as they can to stay popular (because they are "FIRST!!111!!"), often before even having the chance to properly test the multiplayer, their reviews are apparantly better.

This site was dropped from metacritic because "we didn't keep up the level of output" (even though we've always put out reviews at a regular albeit slow rate).

[ETC]

^ this is right Charles the last site I wrote a bit for were not really concerned about the quality of output (as in have you played it "a bit" ok review it), but the speed and the score just so it could hit metacritic fast

[charlesr]

Just Dance 3 = huge seller = money for publishers. Only 74 on metacritic.....

Bonuses should be paid from a pot of money and depend on the size of the pot. If sales are good the pot will be bigger. If the publishers can't track how much money they are getting from each game well enough to pay bonuses based on those sales then the publishers have some serious data and performance tracking issues.

Using arbitrary meters like metacritic for dishing out pots of money is dangerous for the publisher and poor business model in my opinion.