So it appears that Metacritic, the aggregate review site that collects reviews from different outlets and gives a universal score to games, movies and other media, will be having its scores displayed on Amazon starting today.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, Jason Schreier over at Kotaku seems to think it will be a universally bad idea, whereas I think it could end up doing some favors for Amazon's occasionally awful customer review system. I'm going to go over some of Schreier's points, and then give a few counterpoints.
"Metacritic's system is faulty," Schreier states in his first point. "I've written extensively about the problems with Metacritic-how their scores remove nuance and ambiguity; how game publishers have influenced and tampered with scores; how Metascores affect which game studios stay afloat; how Metacritic culture has actively impacted the way some developers make games. Check out my full report from last year to read just how Metacritic affects the video game industry. It's not comforting."
It's true, Metascores are not always 100 percent reflective of just how good a game is, and take out the "pros and cons" that most reviews offer, opting instead to just give a hard number score.
But look at what this could do for the Amazon review system. So many times, customers go on and just bash whatever game because it didn't meet their exact expectations. The opinions that make up an Amazon star rating aren't from professional and (usually) unbiased reviewers, they're from Joe Schmo who has a bone to pick.
Case in point: Mass Effect 3. If you look at its star rating on Amazon, it has a largely average three stars, because people felt they were "ripped off" with the original ending to the game and went on and panned it with one star ratings. Bioware made up for the ending (which quite frankly wasn't even that awful to begin with) by giving players a ton of free DLC for the game, but those one star ratings still remain, dragging the game down on Amazon.
Now look at the same game on Metacritic: 93/100, which really speaks a lot more to how good Mass Effect 3 actually was. So now, players of the second game who were thinking of getting the third off of Amazon will know that this is definitely more of an "A" game than a "C" game. I think that's a positive. How about another one of Schreier's criticisms?
"Polarizing games are treated as 'average,'" Scheier argues. "Look at Nier, an action-RPG with a 68 on Metacritic. That big yellow is supposed to mean 'average,' but really, despite the collection of 7/10s, it's hard to find people who look at Nier as an 'average' game. Nier is polarizing. People either love it or hate it. Saddling the game with a 68 - a bad score, by most accounts - does a disservice to people who might love the weirdness of a game like this, or many other bizarre titles that sit in the 60s and 70s on Metacritic."
Again, I kind of agree. Metacritic treats anything that averages below a 7/10 as "average," with a yellow circle around the review. But the magic of this new Metacritic/Amazon marriage is that you don't have to believe just one source. Just like the Metascore can negate some negative Amazon user reviews, some good Amazon user reviews can negate a Metascore. Nier got a 68/100 on its Metascore, but Amazon user reviews give it a four out of five stars. This new system will give consumers a checks and balances system when it comes to buying a game. The Metacritic user review score is also listed next to the critic review score, and on the Nier page on Amazon you can see that the game received a 68/100 on its critic score, but also that it received an 8.3/10 from users. That adds just another score for people to base their opinion on.
I'd get into the rest of Scheier's points, but most of them are just criticisms of the overall Metacritic system, which I think have been discussed ad nauseum over the years. I'd definitely encourage reading his entire piece, though. It's interesting, even if it seems like he went in wanting to hate the new system because he himself hates Metacritic.
What do you think of this new marriage of Amazon and Metacritic? Will it lead to more good or bad? Let us know in the comments!
