David Braben wants a Metacritic for game reviewers

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Say what you will about Metacritic, it has become a powerful force in the industry. Publishers decide the future of franchises with it, gamers fret over their favorite title’s averages. I think it’s all a bit silly and has a little bit too much power. So what should we do? We should port that silliness over to the game reviewers themselves!

“Most reviewers are excellent at what they do, and it is a very hard job with, frankly, little glory,” said Frontier Developments’ David Braben. “As an industry, there is something we could do to recognise this — effectively a Metacritic for reviewers. The best reviewers give spot-on reviews pretty soon after a game is released. They do not wait to see what others say, but nevertheless consistently come very close to the final average score. There could be a prize for the best each year.

“Don’t forget — this is not intended to influence reviews — just to encourage and reward consistency — as it is not a high reviewer that gets the reward, it is the one that gets the best result. This method could also be used for non-’core’ games, too, with the benchmark being either eventual sales, or eventual average user reviews, as at the moment it is a real lottery for customers buying games for their younger kids — with few trustworthy reviews — which is one of the reasons, I think, so many shovel-ware games sneak under the radar in this sector.”

Wow, that may very well be the worst idea ever.

The trustworthiness of videogame criticism is hard enough to gauge as it is, what with “world exclusive” reviews hinting at backalley deals, and top-heavy scores for AAA games looking like spineless pandering. Adding in a new system where reviewers compete for prizes would make an already dodgy profession look like an absolute joke. 

I don’t understand how this could be intended for anything but the influencing of reviews. You tell someone they might win a prize for scoring a game the same as everybody else, and that could have a definite effect on the writing, even if only on a subconscious level.

Just what is Braben driving at when he says he wants to encourage consistency? I’ve been accused of being inconsistent before, but surely that’s a good thing. Reviews should not all be uniform, and they shouldn’t all be the same. Just because I rate Dragon Quest IX a 9.5, that doesn’t mean I have to give that score to all JRPGs, but some gamers think I should. They think if you give one game in a genre a low score, then giving another in the same genre a high score is “inconsistent.” It’s like the quality of the game doesn’t even come into it. 

Braben’s view of consistency may be even sillier than that. What he seems to want is for a bunch of reviewers to tow the line — to march in step with everybody else. Judging a review score based on sales, or user reviews, is ridiculous. It sends the message that a dissenting opinion is automatically a bad thing, and that underrepresented viewpoints should simply be ignored. 

Not to mention, when you’re judging subjective critics, there is no way to keep it fair. I have seen aborted attempts at “scoring videogame reviewers” in the past, intended to be this “Metacritic” for writers. They invariably become just another outlet for fanboy whining, where reviewers are judged not on their writing ability, but on whether they gave a PS3 exclusive a low score — “low” meaning “anything below a 9/10.” 

Case in point, here’s a comment from a Eurogamer article on Braben’s proposal: “I’d love this. Just to spite IGN. 3/10.”

That is what happens when reviewers get reviewed. A spite party. 

Braben’s intentions may be noble, but there is no way the execution would work. You can’t just take a critic and judge his worth on such shallow criteria as “Did the game sell well despite what he thought?” That’s an inane way of looking at things. It’s argumentum ad populum at its finest — deciding somebody is right based on how many other people agree. History is littered with situations where somebody was wrong and the majority agreed, and I don’t feel I need to list them. 

Ultimately, there is only one way in which a reviewer’s worth can be judged. Read the reviewer’s work, get a feel for the person’s tastes, and use your own personal judgment. Reviews are one person’s opinion, and you have to get to understand that person and figure out if you think similarly to them if you want to truly get the most of the review. No aggregated collection of scores could tell you whether you’ll enjoy a writer. 

The same, of course, could be said for videogames themselves.  


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