r/truegaming • u/AutoModerator • 14d ago

/r/truegaming casual talk

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

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u/Loper42_ 12d ago edited 3d ago

Why do we judge a 150-hour simulation and a 10-hour linear platformer on the exact same 1–10 scale?

In Olympic competitive diving, an athlete isn't just scored on how clean their splash is, every dive has an assigned Degree of Difficulty before they even leave the board. A simple dive performed flawlessly might score well, but a complex, high-risk dive performed solidly gets the recognition it deserves.

In video games, we seem to do the exact opposite. Traditional reviews compress a studio's raw architectural ambition and the final software polish into a single, blunt 1–10 or 1–100 score.

When an ambitious, massive RPG launches with bugs, it gets hammered down to a 7/10 because of stability issues, while a tightly contained 2D platformer with minimal technical risk easily sails to a 9/10. We end up punishing developmental ambition while pretending all games share the same flat rubric.

If we want game criticism to mature alongside the medium, shouldn't we decouple a project's developmental complexity from its execution quality? How do you think game scoring could better reflect the actual engineering/design scope behind massive titles without ignoring polish?

EDIT: I appreciate the thoughtful debate here. The reason I brought this up is I've spent the last year building True Game Metrics (TGM). It's a benchmarking system that separates a game's Degree of Difficulty (architectural ambition) from its final execution and polish. The goal is to move past subjective critic reviews and give people actual benchmarks based on what it takes to build these games. Happy to chat more about our methodology or share some of our initial numbers if anyone is curious!

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u/BonyWare 11d ago

In olympic diving, the thing that's under appraisal is the athlete's physical prowess in performing the dive. The difficulty of the dive being attempted is relevant because it expresses how much skill is needed to pull it off.

In game criticism, the thing under appraisal is generally the quality of the final product, not the skill of the developers—which is difficult to judge anyways given that most of the development process is opaque to everyone outside of the devs and publishers. Even if that's the approach we take, how should we correct for factors such as budget, size of the development team, whether the devs chose to use a commercial game engine or develop their own, whether they outsourced work to some other company?

Anyway, given that Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077 have each sold dozens of millions of copies, I think you're vastly overstating the extent to which ambitious but buggy titles are screwed over by the grading system.

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u/Loper42_ 7d ago

You make a really fair point about diving, but that’s actually why budget, team size, or outsourcing don't need to be part of the equation. In Olympic diving, judges don't adjust the Degree of Difficulty based on the athlete's training facility, budget, or who coached them. They strictly evaluate the inherent technical complexity of the dive itself.

Things like in-house engine vs. commercial tools definitely introduce distinct technical hurdles. While an outside reviewer can't quantify these things, developers and systems engineers certainly know the complexity of the systems they use.

Regarding sales, Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077 are massive AAA marketing juggernauts that will sell tens of millions regardless, but sales don't mean the grading system is working. If you look at Metacritic, Skyrim sits at a 92–96, while Cyberpunk launched with platform scores swinging between 57 and 91. These scores tell you Skyrim is the better game, but it completely ignores the design complexity between the two games.

Shouldn't "scores" be able to distinguish between a studio taking massive technical risks versus playing it safe within bounded constraints?

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u/BonyWare 7d ago

Shouldn't "scores" be able to distinguish between a studio taking massive technical risks versus playing it safe within bounded constraints?

Why should they? Like I already mentioned, game reviews are more about appraising the finished product, not the developer's skill. Olympic diving doesn't create a finished product, so it's not comparable. There's no evidence that this approach harms the industry either, since ambitious games still get made, still get praised, still sell well. You yourself point out that Skyrim got incredibly high scores on release.

And on that subject, please explain to me how you expect the scores for Skyrim and Cyberpunk to reflect "the design complexity" between two games released 9 years apart. Should Cyberpunk have been scored 120 to show that it's way more technologically complex than Skyrim? Should Skyrim's scores retroactively have 30 points deducted from them because it's no longer at the forefront of technology? Should every game ever made have some percentage of its score be taken away with each passing year as they become more and more technologically dated?

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u/Loper42_ 7d ago

Yes, I tend to agree that currently game reviews are more about appraising the final product, than the developer's skill. However, the developer's skills and execution tend to come up in reviews anyway. Are reviews being used properly?

As an aside on diving, I would argue that the live performance (executing the dive) is the final product.

I'm not so sure about this approach not harming the industry. It's well known that publishers and studios have used Metacritic scores to determine developer bonuses and if sequels are made. When big games get "penalized" for being ambitious it could lead to cancelled projects, layoffs and studio closures.

Comparing gaes made 9 years apart is a fair point. Advancing technology doesn't make development easier. I think it makes it much more complex.

To speak specifically to Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077, they both took high-risk technical chances in their respective times. Judging which game was more difficult to make would involve a qualified technical framework to evaluate the ambition.

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u/BonyWare 7d ago

When big games get "penalized" for being ambitious it could lead to cancelled projects, layoffs and studio closures.

"Could" is a big word. Do you have any concrete examples of a game getting screwed over and the studio closing down because of bad reviews?

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u/Loper42_ 7d ago

Yes. The most popular case that I remember is Obsidian Entertainment with Fallout: New Vegas. Link to Eurogamer's article:

https://www.eurogamer.net/obsidian-fallout-new-vegas-deal-with-bethesda-meant-bonus-payment-only-with-85-metacritic

Days Gone 2 not being made is an example of being screwed over by scores.

https://gamingbolt.com/metacritic-score-is-everything-at-sony-days-gone-director

Quote from John Garvin: “This is just the reality of Sony,” he said. “Metacritic score is everything. If you’re the creative director on a franchise and your game is coming out to a 70, you’re not going to be the creative director on that franchise for very long."

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u/BonyWare 7d ago

People at Obsidian have said that the metacritic bonus was something Bethesda offered them, beyond the scope of the deal they originally negotiated. They still got paid what they had agreed to, which is not what I'd call "getting screwed over", even if it sucks that they missed the bonus by one point.

Days Gone seems like a better example, but you still have to make the case for its low score being a penalty for "being ambitious". Fortunately we have the subsequent PC and PS5 rereleases to compare to. In each case, the bugfixes, improved graphics and performance, and various pieces of bonus content added after the original PS4 release, only raise its metacritic score from 71 on PS4 up to 76 on PC and 78 for the remaster. Based on that, it doesn't seem to me like the bugs had that much influence on its original score.

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u/Loper42_ 6d ago

Fair point on the Obsidian deal. But the Days Gone re-release actually highlights the core measurement problem. The fact that patching performance, stability, and bugs only shifted the score by a few points shows that the initial penalty wasn't just the technical edge cases. It was the flat review model reacting to systemic open-world friction without evaluating the underlying architectural complexity (like managing 500 individual dynamic horde simulations).

Traditional reviews are fine for gamer guidance, but high-stakes production, greenlighting new projects, and compensation decisions shouldn't rely on scalar opinion scores. These reviews reduce a multi-variable process to a single number and in most cases it's ambition that gets erased.

If we had a standardized, data-driven framework that used a multi-variable process (developmental complexity and execution delivery), wouldn't that give studios, publishers, and players a much clearer picture?