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metacritic
Nicholas Deleon
March 31st, 2011

Metacritic Moves Away From Developer Ratings

Perhaps we’re finally moving toward a world where slapping an 8.2 score on a video game will become a thing of the past. Metacritic says it will do away with its plan to list developer ratings. The system had launched last summer but has generated a bit of controversy in recent days as high-profile developers like Cliff Bleszinski (from Epic Games) began to complain. A few more days go by, and now… → Read More

Nicholas Deleon
March 15th, 2011

Dragon Age II Metacritic User Reviews Padded By BioWare Employees

Yet more evidence that applying a number score to a work of art, be it a movie, a novel, or a video game, is a complete waste of everyone’s time. Well, unless you’re the publisher of that work of art, or otherwise stand to benefit from being able to say, “The critics agree: it’s a ten out of ten!” People associated with BioWare have been caught (if “caught” is the right word) giving Dragon… → Read More

Nicholas Deleon
November 25th, 2009

Study: Nobody pays attention to video game scores (especially Metacritic ones)

I’ve never hidden my disdain for Metacritic (and GameRankings, but mostly Metacritic), the Web site that aggregates review scores for video games (and movies and so forth). It’s an insane concept: let’s round up all of these ostensibly separate opinions, throw ‘em in a blender, and come up with a single, solitary number that conveys a game’s entire worth. Balderdash, I say. Review scores aren’t a… → Read More

Nicholas Deleon
January 21st, 2009

Enemy Territory developer hates Metacritic's influence

Let’s continue now with a thesis developed late last year, that Metacritic is, in so many words, dumb. This Web site magically condense a game’s every review into a single, bite-sized number. In so doing, however, Metacritic disregards the importance of reading individual review from reputable sources—I most value Edge‘s reviews—and makes developing games all the more difficult. It’s… → Read More

Nicholas Deleon
November 26th, 2008

Everyone's a Metacritic: Why aggregating game reviews is absurd

Apparently these few lines have turned the world upside down: Go to Metacritic, which is destroying the video game industry, by the way, and check out the Tomb Raider: Underworld’s metascore. Right now it’s 78. That’s not good enough, apparently. Which is to say that I dislike the practice of aggregating review scores, be it on Metacritic, Game Rankings, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. You can’t… → Read More

Nicholas Deleon
November 25th, 2008

Review scores-gate: Eidos tells reviewers to hold off on Tomb Raider reviews unless they were positive

From, obviously, Penny-Arcade Go to Metacritic, which is destroying the video game industry, by the way, and check out the Tomb Raider: Underworld‘s metascore. Right now it’s 78. That’s not good enough, apparently. It’s like this: Eidos, which publishes the game, instructed its PR firm to ask sites to hold off on publishing Underworld reviews before Monday (yesterday) if… → Read More