14 DAY TRIAL // Game developers are under a lot of stress, as when the game is still in the creation phase they need to make sure that deadlines are met, that the whole team is working towards a single goal and that everything will turn out alright and the game will be made. But after the game is launched you would think that all of the pressure disappears; sadly, it isn't so, since now developers need to see if their game gets the review scores they have aimed for and that reviewers praise all of the things that compose it.
But sometimes things don't go so well, and despite the fact that the game is quite good, reviewers don't really appreciate it. As such, the developers receive less money from the publisher of the game because they couldn't reach a certain review average. Such a thing is ridiculous thinks Splash Damage studio director Paul Wedgwood, who has talked with GamesIndustry about the pressure that developers are placed under thanks to review aggregators like Metacritic.
Wedgwood goes on to say that, although sometimes this might seems like a good idea, setting a goal for development teams, the fact that a lot of reviewers use a percentile rating system instead of a five-star one, like the one used with movies, makes it hard to see if a game gets appreciated in general. He also says that, despite the reviewers’ scores, some games become very popular with the fans, which is what counts when it comes to the number of units sold.
“Personally I think it's ridiculous. In the film industry, four stars is an amazing score. I think it's a really good idea for a developer to go to a publisher and demand that they get an additional bonus for achieving a certain review score, but it shouldn't affect their royalties or anything else. If you have a high-selling game, you have a high-selling game. We know that some websites score quite high and some quite low, but in general, all websites tend to score between 60 and 100. There's never a 37. It's as if that whole section doesn't exist, so zero starts at 60, so three stars, and goes up to five. It's just not really an accurate enough measure.”
As a conclusion, it seems that Wedgwood is really keen on the fact that all reviewers need to appreciate a game in a more general way and opt for a different rating system in order to make things easier for them and for developers.