Wii reviewers are the problem - Braben

[wraggster]

Frontier boss David Braben reckons the problem with Wii review scores stems from the type of critic assessing the game.

"Ruling out a source of information is never a good idea," Braben told Eurogamer, responding to Peter Moore's declaration that Metacritic is irrelevant to the success of a Wii game.

"The main problem he is alluding to is that family games tend to get reviewed poorly, if at all, by many mainstream review sites, typically dropping 10 or more percentage points as a result. Anecdotally, this is because most reviewers are what are often called 'core gamers' - and these family-focused games tend to appeal less to them (us!).

"It throws up a difficult dilemma for those reviewers," he adds. "Are they reviewing the game for those people likely to play it, or for those people who form the bulk of their readership? Clearly it has to be the latter, as that is why they are writing the review, why they are getting paid, but it devalues the accuracy of reviews as a measure of quality for family games, as most reviews are targeted at these 'core gamers', despite the fact the core gamer is unlikely to play it whatever the score."

Peter Moore argued that an advert on a website for a woman's magazine drives as much interest and consequently sales as a high review score. Examples are common and frequent: Punch-Out!!, MadWorld, Boom Blox, Okami and No More Heroes all reviewed well but sold badly in the UK. Conversely, Carnival: Funfair Games received 5/10 on Eurogamer but still enjoys a top 40 spot in the UK All-Formats chart one-and-a-half years after release.

"At Frontier we also use review scores as part of a forecasting process, but this is an indication of perceived quality, and this accuracy problem for family games is an issue that has to be allowed for. So, though I agree with Peter Moore that there is an issue here, it is more one with family games - indeed any games that do not include conventional dedicated gamers in their main audience - which are very common on Wii," said Braben.

"If there were an equivalent rating to Metacritic that only indexed family review sites, MetaFamilyCritic say, indexing the 'mommy bloggers' to which he refers, then he is not circumventing review sites - simply using a more appropriate collection that better match the audience.

"It is not really the Wii that Peter Moore is complaining about but reviews of family games in general. 'Core gamer' games on Wii still track forecasts based on Metacritic scores just fine," he concluded.

Yesterday, various industry sources argued on Eurogamer that success on the Wii is dictated by the size of advertising budget available, or the strength of brand in question.

The Wii titles present in the UK All-Formats top 40 this week support that theory.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/wi...problem-braben

[royvedas]

No, most of these family games TRULY are utter crap. Reviewers can easily distinguish between good or bad in the "family games" genre as well. Perhaps casual family gamers accepts more crappy titles, but that doesn't suddenly make the titles uncrappy.

Crap games gets crap reviews.

[WhizzBang]

I agree with David Braben. I have a Wii and a 360 and my most played and enjoyed games are all on the Wii.

Mario Kart Wii is the best online racing experience I have ever had. I have also tried PGR and Forza, but there is too much hanging around, disconnections are frequent, and there is no balance between players enforced so you get people with no chance dropping out all the time, and others go zooming off into the distance).

I have also had a huge amount of fun with Sonic and Mario at the Olympics with myself and my daughter competing against my sister and her son via Wifi. This game got moderate reviews (Metacritic says 67), but any FPS game with flash graphics will always get much higher ratings from reviews than something catering to families like this.

Animal Crossing was hugely popular in my house with everyone playing every day for the first month or so, but again this game is unlikely to appeal to reviewers who prefer adolescent male fantasy type games.

Having said all this, I am sure there is a lot of family rubbish out for the Wii and when I look at the shelves I haven't a clue as to which might be good so I have generally stuck to established game franchises. Some of those games I am ignoring may actually be very good but there is no way for me to determine this with the current bias that exists in reviews against family fun and towards violence and serious driving games.

I am confident that Wii Sports will still be a great evenings entertainment for a family (including grandparents) in 10 years time while every 360 sports game that gets higher reviews will not be considered much fun at all, despite their licensing and realistic graphics.

[sean.aaron]

I think any sites that are trying to be effectively online gaming magazines (as opposed to Nintendo Life, which is fan-driven) should broaden their coverage and hire on reviewers and reporters to cover the more broad-focused titles.

At least that's what I would do if I was running an online publication and was aiming for a bigger readership share...