Goichi “Suda51” Suda says game companies are too obsessed with their games' performance on Metacritic.
Speaking to our sister site, Gaming Industry.bizSuda said that while he will check scores when a game is released — “Sometimes an outlet has given us zero. That makes me feel bad: why go so far as to give us zero?” — but other than that, he “tries to avoid Metacritic.”
“Everyone pays too much attention and cares too much about Metacritic scores. We've reached a point where there's almost a set formula: if you want to get a high Metacritic score, this is how you have to make your game,” Suda said.
“If you have a game that doesn't fit that formula, that marketing space, it loses points on Metacritic. Bigger companies might not want to deal with that kind of stuff. That might not be the main reason, but it's certainly one of them. Everyone cares too much about numbers.
“Personally, I don't care too much about Metacritic numbers,” he added. “I'm not very conscious of them. What's important to us is releasing the games we want to release and having people play the games we want them to be able to play.”
Ed sat down with Suda and fellow Japanese development titan Shinji Mikami at Gamescom to talk about their work together, the importance of remasters as part of game preservation, and whether there are any games from their past they'd like to remake.
The remaster of the 2011 action-adventure game Shadows of the Damned is coming this Halloween to PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s a cult classic demon shooter written by Suda 51 and produced by Mikami.