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I wish there was a GAFacritic

CosmicQueso said:
The Game of the Year voting thread that timetokill put together was amazing. But the amount of work that would take on an ongoing basis boggles the mind.
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i appreciate the amount of effort timetokill and everyone else who does the gaf essentials or goty threads puts into them, but my problem has always been that they end up being popularity contests. not everyone has played everything, but more people have played mass effect or whatever than have played any one individual indie or small-ish game. i think this would actually avoid that problem since people would presumably only rate games they have played, and thus the result should be an indication of quality or enjoyment rather than popularity.

i am supportive of this, though i have no interest in actually doing the work. basically something where we could rate games (and review if we wanted) and it was then aggregated into a single score. i dont love score based reviews, but since i do feel compelled to use them at times i would prefer this to metacritic itself.
 
Agreed it be impossible.

The only responses you'd get is 0/10 or 10/10. Might as well redo it as a "liked it" or "hated it" survey.
 
It could possibly work if you also prevented any game from being rated until it's been out at least 3 months. That would allow for the initial hype, backlash, and counter to the backlash to have all played out.
 
Maybe it would also lessen "I bought system x what will I buy now?" threads when you could see games that people have liked the most in past.
 
Here's the plan:
  • acquire huge volume of plain for/against ratings
    fuck the text
    fuck interpreting what reviewer XY actually means with an 8.15 score
    actually, fuck all granularity in individual scores
    build granular average score from sheer volume of 1/0 ratings
    No publication of individual scorers' names nor quantity
  • no first-/second-/third-/Nth-hand affiliation with content producers.
    No advertising from within the medium covered.
    Slomo-stealth banning system for identified members of the production industry and their "professional press".
  • ISP mail only, registration required to cast score
    Challenge/response-type verification that registrants are in fact human in irregular, unnanounced intervals.

Basically, the system should aim to be as expensive as possible to game, while being completely non-obvious about when or how plant "contributions" get weeded out. It should also offer as little avenue as technically possible for personal vanity, peer conformity and all that shit.
It would earn cents per month on generic Adwords revenues and be a nightmare to maintain. But it would be super useful.
 
The most beautiful looking game ever is released as a PS4 Exclusive veering near photrealism, with 500 hours of gameplay, amazing to play and touch. Full orchestral score. Has one graphical tear 499 hours in.

GAF-critic score reviews come in and plummet the average

"ZOMG MY DOGS POCKET PC COULD RUN THIS BETTER, 0/10 would not bang"
 
arglebargle said:
i appreciate the amount of effort timetokill and everyone else who does the gaf essentials or goty threads puts into them, but my problem has always been that they end up being popularity contests. not everyone has played everything, but more people have played mass effect or whatever than have played any one individual indie or small-ish game. i think this would actually avoid that problem since people would presumably only rate games they have played, and thus the result should be an indication of quality or enjoyment rather than popularity.

i am supportive of this, though i have no interest in actually doing the work. basically something where we could rate games (and review if we wanted) and it was then aggregated into a single score. i dont love score based reviews, but since i do feel compelled to use them at times i would prefer this to metacritic itself.
Click to expand...

That's true for the main awards, but they usually have a category which sorts by average position per appearance. Which exposes the games that were rated highly by a smaller number of people.

Here's last year's Top 20:
High Quality Award
The top 20 games with at least 10 appearances, ranked by Average Points per Appearance

01. Kid Icarus: Uprising (2.95)
02. Journey (2.89)
03. Dark Souls (2.87)
04. Persona 4: The Golden (2.82)
05. Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland (2.80)
06. Xenoblade Chronicles (2.77)
07. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2.76)
08. The Walking Dead (2.73)
09. World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (2.69)
10. XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2.64)
11. Dragon's Dogma (2.58)
12. Street Fighter X Tekken (2.45)
13. Borderlands 2 (2.394)
14. Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown (2.391)
15. Guild Wars 2 (2.388)
16. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (2.381)
17. Crusader Kings II (2.36)
18. The Pinball Arcade (2.3)
19. Warriors Orochi 3 (2.27)
20. Minecraft (2.25)
Click to expand...
 
I find review aggregates highly inaccurate and always end up as some silly competition, but, if we drop the 0/10 scale and change it to say, four stars ( maximum of 5) and we also give more weight to the scores from the top posters from the OT of said game maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
 
sixghost said:
That's true for the main awards, but they usually have a category which sorts by average position per appearance. Which exposes the games that were rated highly by a smaller number of people.

Here's last year's Top 20:
Click to expand...

That list looks about right (for GAF, not my personal top 20).
 
mantidor said:
I find review aggregates highly inaccurate and always end up as some silly competition, but, if we drop the 0/10 scale and change it to say, four stars (maximum of 5) and we also give more weight to the scores from the top posters from the OT of said game maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
Click to expand...
That's actually not half bad.
 
I can't help but think about MGS4. It's a polarising game, as are quite a few others. I think the 5/10 scores mentioned at the beginning would be about right for a lot of games, but would that be accurate?

GAF OTs are where I go for the word on new games, but it's just that - the word. Not the score.
 
mantidor said:
I find review aggregates highly inaccurate and always end up as some silly competition, but, if we drop the 0/10 scale and change it to say, four stars ( maximum of 5) and we also give more weight to the scores from the top posters from the OT of said game maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
Click to expand...


That's a great idea.

I think too that people are underestimating how many people use GAF for "aye" or "nay" to purchase titles. I don't think it would be as bad as some people think. Certainly it couldn't get any worse than metacritics that has paid reviews? At the very least it would be user reviews coming from one of the largest and most respected gaming communities that exist today.
 
ultron87 said:
So you want GAF to be literally filled with PR plants?
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Pffttt, like they're not already here lol.

Some of them prolific game OT creators have been outed as paid PR plants for the respective publishers/companies they're shilling for. It was very blatant at times, and a number of them have been tagged by the mods as the PR shills that they are and allowed to run free on GAF for our amusement.

You can bet that quite a number of those extravagant, ridiculously polished and crafted OTs has had a shill or two behind them. They read like Press Statements at times, with a nary a negative or balanced slant for the game in question.
 
A Gafacritics might actually have scores of 5 and below as well as the usual 7 and up. And it would be free of the pervasive pr that metacritics suffers from.
 
Here's the problem:

1) Create GAFacritic.
2) GAFacritic gets traction and beats the shit outta Metacritic
3) Stupid publishers now start using GAFacritic instead of Metacritic for performance reviews
4) Congratulations! You've just put the fate of the entire industry into NeoGAF's collective hands.
5) ???
6) Crash!
 
I think y'all are being too hard on yourselves. There is a sizable portion of the community that could write solid reviews.
 
gblues said:
Here's the problem:

1) Create GAFacritic.
2) GAFacritic gets traction and beats the shit outta Metacritic
3) Stupid publishers now start using GAFacritic instead of Metacritic for performance reviews
4) Congratulations! You've just put the fate of the entire industry into NeoGAF's collective hands.
5) ???
6) Crash!
Click to expand...

it's beautiful isn't it.

I just like the idea of putting the power back in the peoples hands.
 
It would honestly be just as bad as metacritic. Many people here are not critical at all and fall into the hype machine just as much as anyone else.
 
gblues said:
Here's the problem:

1) Create GAFacritic.
2) GAFacritic gets traction and beats the shit outta Metacritic
3) Stupid publishers now start using GAFacritic instead of Metacritic for performance reviews
4) Congratulations! You've just put the fate of the entire industry into NeoGAF's collective hands.
5) ???
6) Crash!
Click to expand...

Problem? I'd trust fellow gaffers with the fate of the entire industry than Metacritic.

Perhaps then all games will be as tough and as unforgiving as Dark Souls and as well polished mechanically as a Platinum game after GAFacritic is done tearing the industry down.

Much better than all the focus tested to death for the lowest common denominator drivel we get these days.
 
ambientmystic said:
Problem? I'd trust fellow gaffers with the fate of the entire industry than Metacritic.

Perhaps then all games will be as tough and as unforgiving as Dark Souls and as well polished mechanically as a Platinum game after GAFacritic is done tearing the industry down.

Much better than all the focus tested to death for the lowest common denominator drivel we get these days.
Click to expand...

For the same reason GAF has quality forums I think we would have honest "the average gamers" review scores after the system averages user votes out.

The key is the verified accounts system GAF uses. Maybe have a "must have at least 500 posts on GAF" rule or something too so people can't just make spoof accounts.

lets face it, the dredge of gaming society gets perma banned on GAF fairly quickly.

yeap id trust GAFacritics way before I would trust anything else.
 
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