Adam Sessler's rant about Metacritic at GDC 09

Part of a multi-guest panel of game journalists ranting about the industry.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• gdc
• adam sessler
• san francisco
• journalism
• rant
• metacritic

[KOICrowz]

@Munkatten "But he's a grown man and can make his own decisions."

1. Do you have any idea how a JOB works? When you work for someone, and they tell you to give a score, you can't just go off on a rant about how giving a numerical score to a piece of art is moronic.

2. If a developer wants better scores, maybe they should, and I know this will be a huge shock, make a better fucking game. It isn't simply the scores that affect sales; it's the opinions of others that the game is not worth buying.

[LordSaber]

@arcantipode No. He's saying the developer was upset because metacritics recalibration of G4's 2/5 into a 40 out of 100 brought down the metacritic average of the game. This made the developer angry because he used metacritic as a gauge of how good the game was being perceived. Metacritic didn't listen to Sessler when he told them that their scale was different, and not suited for the metacritic spin, and they told him he was wrong. Basically, metacritic made it their own score.

[KanadeYagami]

Metacritic is a bunch of garbage. People need to stop taking numbers at face value and actually read reviews to get an idea if the game is something they might enjoy or not.

[blade9871]

If you think that a score defines how good a game is, then why should we even have people actually write why or why not they liked/disliked a game? Just put out a number. Since nobody actually reads anymore. We should either throw away reviews scores all together, or only give a number to show how a person feels about a game.

You realize how fucking stupid that second suggestion sounds?

[KOICrowz]

@Munkatten 1. It isn't the job itself that is the problem. He loves video games and enjoys reviewing them. It's the score that he's told to attach to the reviews that he doesn't like, and the fact that people take the score at face value.

2. A good representation? No, that is why the reviews exist. Did you not even read the part where I pointed out that it isn't simply the superficial score that hurts sales; it's the general consensus that the game is not worth purchasing?

[Munkatten]

@KOICrowz

1: If the problem is his job, then he should blame his job.

2: Now numerical scores are a good representation of opinion? Either that, or you're saying that scores don't affect sales. Your argument is a bit strange here, since it seems to go against what you've been saying earlier.

[UlgarFireMage]

@daKandiman14 X-Play explained their philosophy many times: reviews are supposed to give a ballpark quality of a game, not give you pinpoint accuracy on which game is better than another. Most games will be a 3: if you like the genre, try it out--if you don't, you probably shouldn't bother. If a game's a 1, it's shit and almost no one will enjoy it. At a 5, the game is an example of a quality game even if it's not your taste. 8.8 versus 9.2 is meaningless to judging games.

[daKandiman14]

A 1-5 scale is even dumber than a 1-100 scale. 5 different scores aren't enough. X-Play needs a 1-10 or 1-20 scale.

[discoandherpes]

Adding a numerical value to how much you enjoyed a game is pretty stupid.

[Finky27]

He sounds like the Joker

[ThatBadAssMofo]

@RobertNicholls yes, but i think you missed the point of his rant