In reviewing CNET's new list
of the top ten games of the last decade, we thought it might be fun to compare the list with the Metacritic scores of
those same games. The results indicate that reviewers are incapable of discerning greatness because greatness for
today's games is increasingly determined by how well a game takes advantage of the Internet.
To put it another way, reviews fail to consider network externality effects. Network effects explain the tendency of some games to increase in value (and in fun!) as the number of others playing the game increases. The most successful MMORPG in the world (World of Warcraft) would be a significantly less interesting experience if it lacked multiplayer functionality and all that comes with it (the auction house, guilds, raid content, groups, PVP). Similarly, Halo 2 is a fine game in single player mode, but really shines when played on the Xbox Live service.
Yet the gaming press reviews games before those games are released to the public—long before a game's value has been enhanced by the addition of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of other players. Result? Inaccurate reviews for games like Starcraft and Everquest, games that fundamentally changed the landscape of gaming. Starcraft earned an 88 rating on Metacritic but a 9.5 rating from users. That gap is huge compared to typical console games. Madden NFL 06 for the PS2 earned an 89 on Metacritic, but only 7.8 from Metacritic users.
What we're asking for is reviewers who can forecast the greatness of a multiplayer title based on what is essentially a single-player experience. That's impossible. If reviewers were capable of doing that, they wouldn't be in games journalism—they'd be working for Warren Buffet. Still, we'd like to see a little more recognition by reviewers of the fact that the multiplayer experience in many of today's games could potentially dwarf the single-player experience that's under review.
