Legendary Suda51 shares his thoughts on reviews and how he “tries to avoid Metacritic”

Reviews and ratings have become a part of the industry; whether you seek them out or ignore them, they create a conversation within the industry and community. But within the studios behind each game, scores are something that carries more weight. With this in mind, Japanese developer Goichi “Suda51″ Suda has given his perspective on how some companies have given Metacritic great importance, while he “tries to avoid it.”

Suda 51 vs Metacritic

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Suda commented that these ratings have led to video games becoming a formula for achieving a high rating. “Everybody pays too much attention to 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, this is how you make the game,” he explained.”If you’ve got a game that doesn’t fit into that formula, that marketability scope, it loses points on Metacritic. Everyone cares too much about the numbers.”

Suda, for his part, said that he doesn’t really care about these numbers, as he tries to avoid Metacritic, believing that many unconventional titles sometimes lose the public’s attention.

“Personally, I don’t care too much about the Metacritic numbers,” commented Suda. “I’m not really conscious of them. What’s important to us is putting the games out that we want to put out and having people playing the games we want them to be able to play. The kind of games that get the most marketing support are the ones that need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible,” he said. “More unique games don’t really have the same marketability.”

However, Suda also checks the score aggregator site, especially when he releases a game, just to see the results.  “Sometimes a media outlet has given us zero. That makes me feel shitty - why go that far and give us zero? But apart from that I try to avoid Metacritic.”

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