GameSpot Publishes then Kills Faulty Review - Metacritic Just Keeps It
Metacritic's dogmatic approach makes fools of Gamespot and throws game reviewing into another dark pool of unprofessional goop.
As you can see - or rather you can't any more - Gamespot gave online FPS/RTS Natural Selection 2 a 6/10 review score. In this day and age, that's basically a critical drubbing from a mainstream site like GS. But the review was riddled with errors.
Even Gamespot admitted that the review "contained several inaccuracies" and pulled it. Metacritic - the game marketeers' bible; the game publishers sop to stockholders - however, did not pull its mention of that 60% score. It appears amid a miasma of 80s and 90s. And this is despite the following occurring yesterday:
The original low review written by a freelancer named Eric Neigher has, as you can't see, been pulled. It's been replaced by the excellent work of the excellent Ashton Raze (here) and a more acceptable to those in the know 8/10.
The Metacritic score of 6/10 remains though. Why?
Kotaku got Metacritic head Marc Doyle to state the case:
"Yes, the critics we track know - and I spoke to the GameSpot team about this this week - that we only accept the first review and first score published for a given game.
"I'm explicit about this policy with every new publication we agree to track. It's a critic-protection measure, instituted in 2003 after I found that many publications had been pressured to raise review scores (or de-publish reviews) to satisfy outside influences. Our policy acted as a disincentive for these outside forces to apply that type of inappropriate pressure."
Both Gamespot and Metacritic are owned by CBS by the way.
So, yet another reason to trust game reviews then? What do you think, tell us in the Forum or in the comments below for a quicker hit of opinion.
Even Gamespot admitted that the review "contained several inaccuracies" and pulled it. Metacritic - the game marketeers' bible; the game publishers sop to stockholders - however, did not pull its mention of that 60% score. It appears amid a miasma of 80s and 90s. And this is despite the following occurring yesterday:
The original low review written by a freelancer named Eric Neigher has, as you can't see, been pulled. It's been replaced by the excellent work of the excellent Ashton Raze (here) and a more acceptable to those in the know 8/10.
The Metacritic score of 6/10 remains though. Why?
Kotaku got Metacritic head Marc Doyle to state the case:
"Yes, the critics we track know - and I spoke to the GameSpot team about this this week - that we only accept the first review and first score published for a given game.
"I'm explicit about this policy with every new publication we agree to track. It's a critic-protection measure, instituted in 2003 after I found that many publications had been pressured to raise review scores (or de-publish reviews) to satisfy outside influences. Our policy acted as a disincentive for these outside forces to apply that type of inappropriate pressure."
Both Gamespot and Metacritic are owned by CBS by the way.
So, yet another reason to trust game reviews then? What do you think, tell us in the Forum or in the comments below for a quicker hit of opinion.
Comments
realvictory 15 Nov 2012 13:20
1/1
I can't wait to see review scores disappear completely. What is a number worth against a creative piece of work?
I think it's a good thing that Metacritic does not accept multiple reviews from a publication. If a game has a numeric score, it shouldn't be influenced by anything that isn't that player's opinion (e.g. external pressure), and is no more than their opinion (which I believe is the valuable aspect of a review).
Even mistakes are valuable information that help describe the reviewer's opinion and reinforce the fact that a review is an opinion (there is no such thing as an objective review - that would be a "description", not a "review").
On the other hand, the most sensible suggestion is to, in the case of doubt, remove Gamespot's review without allowing a replacement.
I think it's a good thing that Metacritic does not accept multiple reviews from a publication. If a game has a numeric score, it shouldn't be influenced by anything that isn't that player's opinion (e.g. external pressure), and is no more than their opinion (which I believe is the valuable aspect of a review).
Even mistakes are valuable information that help describe the reviewer's opinion and reinforce the fact that a review is an opinion (there is no such thing as an objective review - that would be a "description", not a "review").
On the other hand, the most sensible suggestion is to, in the case of doubt, remove Gamespot's review without allowing a replacement.