Ugh, get this 84-scoring trash out of my sight!
Pretty much anyone who pays any sort of close attention to gaming knows Metacritic is a cancer. It hurts game makers because nobody buys anything without an 85-or-above attached to it anymore. It hurts “games journalists” who are under constant pressure from publishers and fans to give everything that’s halfway decent a 9. It hurts gamers who often deprive themselves of unique, exciting experiences just because that Metacritic number isn’t high enough.
Still not convinced Metacritic’s a scourge? Well, how about this — Obsidian Entertainment has had to lay-off 30 employees and cancel a major upcoming title. The fate of the South Park RPG they’re working on is also in question. Why? Because Fall Out: New Vegas didn’t get an 85 on Metacritic, which they needed to hit in order to collect a major bonus from publisher Bethesda.
Just for the record, New Vegas has sold nearly 6-million copies worldwide and has a Metacritic score of 84 on the Xbox and PC and 82 on the PS3. So in other words, 6-mill in sales and the piles of money that come with that don’t matter because Obsidian fell one point short on f–king Metacritic.
Do the folks running Bethesda understand that they’re running a business? That their goal is to, you know, make money? They must not, because they just hobbled a studio that has made them millions in the past and is working on some of their most important upcoming games, over a single Metacritic point. Gah.