• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

OpenCritic - A new game-only review aggregator

Status
Not open for further replies.
A

astonish

Member
OpenCritic, a new game-only review aggregator, has launched (full disclosure my friend helped build it and gave me the heads up that they launched today). It includes some nice features that MetaCritic doesn’t have. Most notably you can exclude publications you don’t usually agree with or build a score using only your favorite publications. Another big feature for me is the crawlers constantly scanning, even for games it’s already seen. As publications have their “x weeks-in” or post-patch review updates the score will update automatically to reflect them.

The “Open” name and the FAQ suggests they are aiming for transparency both in how reviews are scraped and in the formulas used to normalize and calculate scores. They’re also aiming to let community feedback help shape the process.

OpenCritic
 
AgentP

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
At first glance it is very nice. Thanks for the link.
 
B

Blobbers

Member
Does it calculate the average normally, or is it some undisclosed fuckery like Metacritic?
Fake edit: seems like it's normal, based on the NBA 2K16 reviews.

Looks nice.
 
M

Mattenth

Member
o_O You'll have to tell me who you're friends with because I don't recognize you (I'm guessing Aaron?). The two devs are both sleeping atm - we were up brutally late last night squashing some final compat bugs.

Thanks for the post though. Full disclosure, I work on OpenCritic as our content manager (basically, I program all of our spiders/scrapers and automation and check the reviews that come in before they go live).

Looking forward to y'alls feedback.

Blobbers said:
Does it calculate the average normally, or is it some undisclosed fuckery like Metacritic?
Click to expand...

Simple averages. You can click the score orb on any game details page to get a detailed breakdown of all scores/conversions included, but it's fairly straightforward.

11/17 updates:

q1Whzre.jpg
 
N

nortonff

Hi, I'm nortonff. I spend my life going into threads to say that I don't care about the topic of the thread. It's a really good use of my time.
Looks great.
added to favorites...
 
B

bluexy

Member
Absolutely an improvement considering Metacritic's exclusionary practices, but until the focus is on authors and not outlets it just seems like they're trying to undercut Metacritic and not pursuing the ideals they claim.
 
N

NightDriver

Member
I wish these sorts of sites would report the Standard Deviation as well. Without a measure of variability, the average, alone, doesn't tell you a whole lot.

Not that I care what any of these critics think anyway.
 
M

Mattenth

Member
bluexy said:
Absolutely an improvement considering Metacritic's exclusionary practices, but until the focus is on authors and not outlets it just seems like they're trying to undercut Metacritic and not pursuing the ideals they claim.
Click to expand...

How would you want us to focus on authors more next?

One advantage that we have in the interim is that we've set ourselves up to be pretty agile on the tech side. Already today, we've done three deploys since the site went live.

So... what specifically do you want to see?

The platform filters and which platform each game was reviewed on - we started that feature Monday night (for the web hosts out there, if you saw someone loading all your reviews back to November 2013 at 3am on Monday, that was us getting platform data from reviews).
 
S

Sotha_Sil

Member
If I could find a group of reviewers that I see eye to eye with, this would be really nice to use. Unfortunately, I don't know nearly enough about them. Hope it all comes together well, I think it would be best to get away from MC.
 
Golgo 13

Golgo 13

The Man With The Golden Dong
I like this site. A lot. Helps weed out clearly shitty, clickbait critics (Kill screen, NZGAMER, etc many others) and still see an average from respectable sites. Well done, bookmarked!
 
M

Mattenth

Member
NightDriver said:
I wish these sorts of sites would report the Standard Deviation as well. Without a measure of variability, the average, alone, doesn't tell you a whole lot.
Click to expand...

We'll try to add that this week. That's a trivial feature to implement.

You can get some idea of the distribution by clicking the score orb on the game details page.
 
K

KneehighPark

Member
Keyser Soze said:
I found me!

It's weird seeing my name beside super talent writers
Click to expand...

Yeah my reviews just got added for Super Mario Maker and MGS V, it's cool to see my name up there rather than just the publication(s) I write for.

I like this site a lot actually, there are no behind the scenes weightings and there's a good degree of customizability.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
It's not really clear to me that Metacritic's secret formula departs from a simple average by more than a few points in the vast majority of cases. I've very rarely looked at an MC score, said "Wait, what", and then checked the Gamerankings simple average and saw them diverse. And I'm not super troubled if a weighted average that weights down BlogFacts.ru gives a game an 87 instead of an 85 or an 89. So that's not really a criticism I've ever fully understood.

But the ability to exclude reviews from particular publications is probably useful, and it looks clean and pretty, and it runs fast as hell.
 
C

Creaking

He touched the black heart of a mod
Very good. I don't like the way Metacritic dominates over review aggregation, or the way they weigh scores differently.
 
R

Ricky_R

Member
Looks cool. The way the actual reviews are organized would take some time to get used to though. I feel metacritic is easier to follow.
 
V

Visualante2

Member
Has a nicer design than Metacritic, focus on games is appreciated. Edge won't be eligible 'cause they don't post reviews online now.
 
F

FunkyDealer

Banned
Does it remember my choices as to what publications I select for future use?

Would be a bit of a hassle removing ones I don't trust every time.
 
T

Tertullian

Member
Oooh, meta-competition!

EDIT: I hope we get enough metareview sites that someone can seriously make a metametareview site. "I dunno, metacritic gave it an 89, but OpenCritic only gave it an 85, so I'm on the fence..."
 
M

Mattenth

Member
Ricky_R said:
Looks cool. The way the actual reviews are organized would take some time to get used to though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. We're working on a "list" view for both the reviews and browse pages.

FunkyDealer said:
Does it remember my choices as to what publications I select for future use?

Would be a bit of a hassle removing ones I don't trust every time.
Click to expand...

We use cookies for now. Once we get to user accounts, we'll find a way to migrate them over.

Edit: going to get some sleep for a bit - We really are looking for feedback on everything here. So if you see something and think "I don't like (blank)," tell us! but also tell us why, and what you'd want to see instead.
 
P

Primethius

Banned
Like the design and especially how fast it is.

My one suggestion would be a button that opts-out of all publications. I know it's supposed to be an aggregation website but personally, I'd rather enable the few whose reviews I want to use then go through and disable 90% of the list.
 
M

Messofanego

Banned
Oooh looking very nice. I like that best of the year round-up, much easier than clicking through metacritic.

That How Is it Calculated? section is excellent.
 
P

PeskyToaster

Member
We should build a service that lets someone select a favorite list of authors or publications then apply a standard or custom weighted formula to get a final score. That way if the users have someone they really trust they can weigh his or her score higher compared to the others on their list.
 
L

Lego Boss

Member
Blobbers said:
Does it calculate the average normally, or is it some undisclosed fuckery like Metacritic?
Fake edit: seems like it's normal, based on the NBA 2K16 reviews.

Looks nice.
Click to expand...

I contacted MetaCrtic about this years ago and they weight the metrics in favour of 'big' publications. In the UK at least, EDGE and GAMES TM were seen as the scores with the most weight as they traditionally marked lower, so the overall would be pushed up by good marks there.

He didn't comment on IGN
 
K

KillerIsJed

Member
I like the design and how I get to see my name versus Metacritic it just lists outlet.

Currently it lacks a lot of games (old and new), and also includes Totalbiscuit videos w/o giving them a score. Honestly they feel really out of place as the only video reviews, if you can even call his series that.
 
FranXico

FranXico

Member
Mattenth said:
How would you want us to focus on authors more next?

One advantage that we have in the interim is that we've set ourselves up to be pretty agile on the tech side. Already today, we've done three deploys since the site went live.

So... what specifically do you want to see?

The platform filters and which platform each game was reviewed on - we started that feature Monday night (for the web hosts out there, if you saw someone loading all your reviews back to November 2013 at 3am on Monday, that was us getting platform data from reviews).
Click to expand...

So far I really like your site, it focuses on doing one thing right, and succeeds perfectly!

Just one question: what do you do with sites such as Eurogamer that no longer have a numeric score, do you scale it to a percentage anyway? Because their intention behind leaving numbers behind was to also not influence aggregate scores, if memory serves correctly.

PS: I love how you let users configure their cookies to filter outlets as trusted or not. Killer feature in my opinion.
 
H

Hellshingu

Member
FranXico said:
So far I really like your site, it focuses on doing one thing right, and succeeds perfectly!

Just one question: what do you do with sites such as Eurogamer that no longer have a numeric score, do you scale it to 1 to 10 anyway? Because their intention behind leaving numbers behind was to also not influence aggregate scores, if memory serves correctly.
Click to expand...

I was looking through The Taken King reviews and they have Kotaku on there with a simple "Should You Play This Game? Yes" as the headline for the review. Eurogamer is on there as well with "Recommended"

Looks like they are tracking them to me but not adding it into the average score as they are not given a numeric value on the site unlike other reviews.
 
K

K.Sabot

Member
I love the inclusion of non-scores into the review page.

And also how it doesn't try to parse them into numbers.
 
Y

YianGaruga

Banned
Mattenth said:
We'll try to add that this week. That's a trivial feature to implement.

You can get some idea of the distribution by clicking the score orb on the game details page.
Click to expand...

I've wanted this forever. I'll make good use of your site once you add this. In general I think aggregated reviews have a lot of value, but only if you contextualize and analyze them. This looks like a step in that direction.
 
FranXico

FranXico

Member
Hellshingu said:
I was looking through The Taken King reviews and they have Kotaku on there with a simple "Should You Play This Game? Yes" as the headline for the review. Eurogamer is on there as well with "Recommended"

Looks like they are tracking them to me but not adding it into the average score as they are not given a numeric value on the site unlike other reviews.
Click to expand...

That's excellent. Nothing gets excluded, but only numeric scores are taken into account for the average score.
 
A

APZonerunner

Member
This looks/feels great. I'd love to see the requirements made a little more flexible and based on a direct review of a publication's quality (GameRankings does this) since I sometimes think some small publications have quality voices worth acknowledgement, but beyond this, this seems like a great idea that I really hope gets the attention it deserves.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Eternights | Review Thread
Review Hype
10
2K
Thick Thighs Save Lives replied
Foamstars | Review Thread
44
3K
havoc00 replied
Mario vs. Donkey Kong | Review Thread
Analysis Review
15
1K
Chittagong replied
TEVI | Review Thread
Analysis Review
9
1K
Thick Thighs Save Lives replied
2023 has the best-reviewed slate of video games of the last 20 years
2
66
3K
ChoosableOne replied
Top Bottom