Goichi Suda (Suda51), CEO of Grasshopper, thinks that perhaps too much emphasis is placed on the average score that games (also) receive on the site, based on the average of press reviews…
In an interview with Gamesindustry, Suda and Shinji Mikami (best known as the creator of Resident Evil) talked about the excessive attention that Metacritic gets these days. We think this can be seen from the other side: the site has an annual list of successes and failures, and on the latter you can see how incredibly bad games have received press in the previous year (The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, for example, made it onto this list of shame last year…)
“Everyone pays too much attention and cares too much about Metacritic scores. It’s gotten to the point where there’s almost a set formula – if you want to get a high Metacritic score, make the game like this. If you have a game that doesn’t fit that formula, that marketability range, it loses points on Metacritic. The bigger companies may not want to deal with that. That may not be the main reason, but it’s certainly a reason. Everybody cares too much about the numbers. Personally, I don’t care too much about the Metacritic numbers. I’m not really aware of them. What’s important to us is putting out the games we want to put out and having people play the games we want them to play,” Suda said.
Mikami added that there are many unique games that don’t fit the formula Suda mentioned, but they don’t get as much attention because big-budget games dominate marketing budgets these days. So if something is designed to be a blockbuster, it will get a similar amount of money for advertising. According to Mikami, the games that get the most support are the ones that need to appeal to the widest possible audience, and the more unique games don’t have that advertising potential…
Co-created by Suda and Mikami, Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered will be released on October 31st for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
Source: VGC, Gamesindustry
