Suda51: “Everyone cares too much about Metacritic scores”

Meanwhile, Shinji Mikami says big budget titles are drowning out “more unique games”

Industry veteran and No More Heroes creator Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda believes games companies are still putting too much stock in how their games perform on Metacritic.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Suda and his fellow Japanese legend Shinji Mikami discussed the myriad reasons that titles like their own, with their distinct style and flavour, have been somewhat rare over the years – and Suda suggested it’s because many companies are too focused on review scores.

“Everybody pays too much attention to and cares too much about Metacritic scores. It’s gotten to the point where there’s almost a set formula – if you want to get a high Metacritic score, this is how you make the game,” he explained.

“If you’ve got a game that doesn’t fit into that formula, that marketability scope, it loses points on Metacritic. The bigger companies might not want to deal with that kind of thing. That might not be the main reason, but that’s certainly one reason why. Everyone cares too much about the numbers.

“Personally, I don’t care too much about the Metacritic numbers. I’m not really conscious of them. What’s important to us is putting the games out that we want to put out and having people playing the games we want them to be able to play.”

Suda admitted he does occasionally check Metacritic scores, especially when his studio Grasshopper Manufacture has released a game.

“Sometimes a media outlet has given us zero. That makes me feel shitty – why go that far and give us zero?” he laughs. “But apart from that I try to avoid Metacritic.”

Mikami, meanwhile, believes that there are plenty of less conventional titles out there, but they get less attention “because of all the big budget games that are out there and all the power that’s put into the marketing for them.”

“The kind of games that get the most marketing support are the ones that need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible,” he said. “More unique games don’t really have the same marketability.”

You can read our full interview with Suda and Mikami here. The conversation covers the return of their second collaboration, Shadows of the Damned, and the third collaboration that never happened, Zombie Rider.