Is it possible, even a little bit, that people just have a different opinion than you about a video game? Surely if there was flagrant bribery happening, someone would have receipts and a conscience that compelled them to share it.
Comment on Mina The Hollower Is Now Metacritic's Highest-Rated Game Of 2026
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks agoTried it out with Mixtape: This and this both look the same, except Metacritic exposes the brazen astroturf campaigning going on with this mediocre game. I would also expect OpenCritic to have critics that weren’t directly paid by Annapurna Interactive on the list to drag the score down. Instead, the critic score is even higher.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Actual astroturfing often has a paper trail. “Citizens Concerned About the Whatever” publicly listed as funded by companies who directly stand to benefit from Whatever’s opposition. If it was so easy to buy good review scores, why did Microsoft not purchase them for Redfall? Why did Sony not purchase them for that 2D God of War game? Why did AnnaPurna buy them for this game but not the dozens of other games they publish? Why is the Steam user rating for Mixtape also very high if it could only achieve such ratings via bribery? Is the only explanation for Mixtape’s reviews that they were paid off? Or, perhaps, could it be a bunch of people who don’t have to prove that they’ve even played the game leaving 0/10 reviews en masse because they were riled up by Asmongold or some other influencer who traffics in getting their audience mad about “woke”?
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I don’t know. I’ve never heard of the game before this post. I’m just pointing out the ridiculousness of hoping for the astroturfers and shills to out themselves because they’re feeling guilty.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
The point is not that OpenCritic matches your taste or expectations of a game better than Metacritic. The point is that OpenCritic is more fair by giving everyone the same voice (average instead weighting) and allow more people to speak / vote. This does not guarantee a better result for you, it just makes it more fair and even. This way OpenCritic has less control of the result than Metacritic, because Metacritic has a hidden algorithm that weights voices differently.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
My point is that I took a famously overrated game that showed a clear disconnect between paid-off journalist shills and users who actually played the game. One of the sites exposed the disconnect. The other gave it a “80% player rating”.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
But that is a systematic issue of those outlets, not an issue with the aggregator. OpenCritic just collects the ratings and presents an average. It’s not their job to control more. OpenCritic is just a mirror of those ratings. If those sites and outlets gave 10/10 all of them, then it should be reflected in the OpenCritic (and in Metascore for that matter).
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
What I’m hearing is, if I want actual useful critic scores, stick to MC because OC is easier to game.