A new study of Metacritic data suggests that Ubisoft, aka the Activision of Europe, is the least consistent publisher when it comes to game quality, coming bottom of the pile, while Rockstar triumphed as the best.
The study assigned points values to different Metacritic scoring brackets. Those games avering 90-100 review scores received 2 points, while games with a Metacritic score of 80-89 got 1 point. 70-79 received no points, 60-69 got -1 point and anything under that got -2 points. Not exactly rocket science, and I hate this idea that games rated in the seventies receive nothing (since it's a good score as far as I'm concerned), but you can get a general idea of how each publisher fares.
Rockstar was branded the most consistent publisher with 19 points over 23 titles. By incredibly stark contrast, Ubisoft's 237 games dragged the publisher down to a score of -148. Unsurprisingly, Activision didn't do a lot better, with a shameful -138 points. Looking at this, I don't know if "least consistent" is an accurate description, however. It seems Ubisoft and Activision are consistently crap.
Of course, Ubisoft and Activision make a lot of money despite churning out garbage, so this is hardly going to make them weep with shame. However, this study has merit simply because I get a chance to insult Ubisoft and Activision along with the bargain-bucket, exploitative trash that they dare to call "videogames." That, my friends, is worth more than any Metacritic score.
Contest:
8:30 PM on 03.05.2009
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But seriously, Metacritic bites.
90-100 = 5
80-90 = 4
70-80 = 3
60-70 = 2
50-60 = 1
50 and under = 0
Activision, on the other hand, are just jerks. They buy up devs who make a fantastic game or two, and then just throw as many variations out there as quick as possible. They assume the selling power of the brand, established by the first game, will make the others sell too... and unfortunately, theyre right.
THEY
CAN
DANCE
Also, game scores suck, Metacritic sucks, and the very criteria they used would cause games that Destructoid reviewed and somewhat liked (such as Sacred 2 and Noby Noby Boy) to reflect negatively on the publisher's overall scores.
I fucking loved Ubisoft back then.
I mean seriously, can they be any more arbitrary?
How about this.. why not make a game scoring 93% be worth... 93 points! That way you can just rank a publishers consistency based on their metacritic score.
Whatever.. flawed system based on another flawed system taken as data.
But I,m happy to see people are at least questioning the system here. Back on Kotaku, it was 2 pages of "pffft, Ubisfot never made anything good". And that statement makes me a sad panda :(
The Games Valve directly had a hand in:
Half Life
Counterstrike
Day of Defeat
Half-life 2
HL2 ep1
HL2 ep2
Counterstrike Source
Portal
Team Fortress 2
Day of Defeat Source
The Ship
Garry's Mod
That's 12, but not a single one of those games has a ranking less than 70.
What are we measuring again?