Creative Lead of ‘Dishonored’ and ‘Prey’ Says Metacritic Encourages “Safe and Boring” Games

Some people might call this a “hot take,” but honestly? Raphaël Colantonio, who spearheaded the likes of the first Dishonored game and Prey, has a point! Colantonio brought forward an ongoing conversation among gamers when he took to X (formerly Twitter) to speak his mind about Metacritic’s place in the games industry!

“The Metacritic ecosystem encourages devs to make safe boring games. As long as a game is polished at launch, you’re guaranteed a 80%, no matter how boring the game might be. Meanwhile STALKER 2 gets a 73 because it’s a bit rough on the edges at launch. Unfair, misleading,” Colantonio stated.

The Metacritic ecosystem encourages devs to make safe boring games.
As long as a game is polished at launch, you’re guaranteed a 80%, no matter how boring the game might be.
Meanwhile Stalker2 gets a 73 because it’s a bit rough on the edges at launch.
Unfair, misleading..

— Raphael Colantonio (@rafcolantonio) November 23, 2024

So, let’s talk about it! For my money? Colantonio is 110% spot-on. Not that it’s Metacritic’s fault specifically, mind you. However, Metacritic has certainly accidentally enabled a brand of “stuffy creativity” when it comes to some game releases. That “blame” extends to publishers and games journalists, too, to an extent.

has metacritic poisoned the games industry?

We can break this down one by one. It’s been well-documented that some development teams receive bonuses if their game breaks through an aggregate score threshold on Metacritic. If a game fails to meet the “critical expectation,” it basically boils down to “Whoops, sorry. The money you likely deserve anyway? Game stinks, so you won’t be getting that bonus after all!”

Which ties directly into publishers. Not all of them are guilty of this. But often, games lose their full creative vision as they must concede to publisher expectations. “Well, our market research determined that your single-player immersive sim should actually be a live-service multiplayer game, so get to it!” Additionally, publishers gotta appease shareholders. So, certain games are trotted out to meet fiscal quarter deadlines. “Bugs and glitches? Simple patches. Players ain’t got no standards — they’ll live with it!”

Then, the games journalists come into play! So, what I’m not advocating for is for anyone reviewing a game to “lower their standards because the devs are trying their best.” However, I do think some reviewers can be unnecessarily ruthless when it comes to builds of a game we know will likely contain bugs and glitches before it’s rolled out to the general public. If it’s an unplayable mess, yeah, mark it accordingly! But, since Colantonio brought up Metacritic and STALKER 2, it is rather interesting to see the wildly differing scores solely based (mostly) on the bugs and glitches therein.

There’s not only one villain in this story

Finally, in addition to publishers, games journalists, and Metacritic itself? You, dear reader, also have to catch a few strays here. You see, it would be easy to demonize Metacritic. However, we’re dealing with a website that merely collects scores and dishes out the average. Reviewers dictate what that number ultimately is, yes. However, games journalists can be influenced by the public reaction surrounding a game.

Let’s take a, say, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. If a reviewer dared to give that game less than an 8 (and even an 8/10 would receive foaming-at-the-mouth degrees of anger sometimes), they might receive death threats! Endless harassment! Questions about their “journalistic integrity”! Accusations of just wanting to farm “hate clicks,” as if it’s inconceivable for someone to dislike the thing you’re excited about. And that’s just the external pressure — never mind the internal issues some reviewers go through in terms of trying to give a game a score that won’t piss off publishers and PR folks. Or ruin a website’s sponsorship/advertising opportunities!

Metacritic may be a symptom, yes. But it ain’t the sickness. Every part of this industry can be a terminal disease to art and creativity. Exploitative AAA practices, insane, unrealistic audience expectations, reviewer biases and pressures, Metacritic milestones — there’s not just one factor at play. And that’s why everyone should shut up and support and play indie games!