Ori and the Blind Forest and The Evil Dead game director Thomas Mahler launches his own aggregation site video game criticwhich was designed with not only news ratings in mind, but also player opinions. In my opinion, user ratings should have greater weight, and the final outcome of the game may change based on post-launch conditions.
Mahler said he originally created VideoGamesCritic as a personal repository. He often uses Metacritic and OpenCritic, but from a game designer’s perspective, their user interfaces are not very friendly. Over time, the plan evolved and became useful to more than just himself.
The main difference in the new service is the distribution of rating weights. Users here account for at least two-thirds of the final score in each game. The opinions of journalists and game writers are also taken into account, but cannot outweigh the ratings of people who have purchased the game.
“My main problem with existing aggregators is that their ratings show what the media thinks of a game, not how the game is received by players. Twenty years ago, this approach made sense. At the time, the ratings GameSpot gave the game were very important to me. But today, we can actually measure how players feel about the game, which to me will always be more important than how the game is received by the media,” Mahler said.
The second feature of VideoGamesCritic relates to changes in ratings after release. On traditional aggregators, games receive results during launch and remain virtually unchanged thereafter. Mahler considered this approach obsolete because modern plans can be significantly changed through updates.
The author cites the example of No Man’s Sky. Judging from the ratings when it was launched, the game scored 50 points, but after years of updates, the current rating is 82 points. The system gradually deweights early reviews, while ratings posted after major updates are given higher priority. If players’ attitudes toward the game change, the evaluation of the game will also change.
“No Man’s Sky is a clear example. Everyone remembers that extremely problematic release, and Hello Games has been steadily improving the game ever since. Its Metacritic score has never changed. On VideoGamesCritic, where it started at 50, it’s now at 82, because scores here are still relevant: reviews in releases lose weight over time, while reviews written after major updates to the service get stronger consideration.
VideoGamesCritic also evaluates the source itself. For each publication and author, a trust score is calculated based on how well their initial rating matches players’ subsequent opinions. Users can see which reviewers are more likely to be close to the audience and which reviewers are systematically deviating from the audience.
Calculation methods are publicly released. On each game’s page you can see how the final score was formed, and there are no hidden editing factors in the system.
In addition to watching ratings, the service also lets you scour the top-rated games across different platforms, find items that may have been overlooked, and browse the catalog without heavy ad blocks.