Sony demands "at least" a 90 Metacritic score from its major studios like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica, says former God Of War art director

John Elden Ring

John Elden Ring

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Sony is very confident in the success of its studios and the Brazilian Rafael Grassetti, former Santa Monica art director on God of War, talked about this in a participation in the Flow Games Podcast. According to him, the company demands “at least” a 90 score on Metacritic from its major studios like Santa Monica and Naughty Dog.

Within the company, there is a whole division that specifically takes care of this topic. Games need to go through deeper analysis to achieve higher scores, as he explained. Grassetti confirmed that these reviews are important to the studios, that he is against random reviewers being allowed on Metacritic and denied the existence of an “extra” payment based on score performances. In fact, bonuses are geared toward sales figures.
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Sony doesn't rush studios on their deadlines

In the same podcast, Grassetti said Sony doesn't rush its studios. The developers themselves are committed to the deadlines and are free to ask for more time to produce the titles.

According to Grassetti, this depends a lot on the game's production phase. For example, in God of War Ragnarok, many contents had to be counted, but not because of pressure from PlayStation, but to meet the pre-established deadlines set by the studio for the release.

Thus, some developers end up, by their own will, staying a few extra hours to ensure that their ideas for the game arrive with the intended quality in the final product and do not run the risk of, if they are not finalized, being left out.
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Here's a link to the podcast (in Portuguese)

 
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ghostz

ghostz

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Interesting. Gran Turismo, Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Forbidden West, TLOU Remastered, Returnal, and Ratchet and Clank all missed the mark, then.
 
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Nhomnhom

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Good, I hope they do.

Most of my favorite games of all time are 90+ on MC.

High quality games are the only games that matter, specially for a platform holder.
 
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FIREK2029

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It's always good to aim for the stars because even if you don't make it you still get very high.

I love the emphasis on quality. It's why their studios are some of the most awarded on the planet and why their output is of such high quality.


It's important to always emphasize quality over quantity in gaming. There are a ton of games out there already that are mediocre, we don't need any more mediocre games.
 
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KnittedKnight

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Don't think that "demand" will apply for their GAAS shit. We'll see. The top crown jewels do compete like this (ND, SSM). The B tier, Insonmiac, Sucker Punch, Guerilla making inroads during the PS4 gen.
 
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Yurinka

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When I was at Ubi, I remember that many years ago at some point they also had during several years the internal target of increasing the quality of their top games to he point of reaching 90 MC. They did what they could and improved a bit, but obviously none of the games achieved it. So some years later they simply did stop mentioning as a goal.

Regarding the bonuses, there were several bonuses like for the revenue of the games you worked on (depending on your job position or the level of profitability was bigger or smaller), for the money that the company made, for seniority and so on. At least when I did work there they never had reviews related bonuses.

Other than for that goal, they only looked at MC to compare the game reception vs previous games of the series or against direct competitors, and to list which specific areas of the games were more liked or disliked and again comparing it against similar games.

AAA studios always aim superhigh in different areas and work very high to achieve it, but often don't achieve some of these goals. And in most cases nothing happens. Maximum maybe this year some middle management folk get a slightly lower score in his yearly salary/promotion appraisal review and that's all.
 
anonpuffs

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Yurinka said:
When I was at Ubi, I remember that many years ago at some point they also had during several years the internal target of increasing the quality of their top games to he point of reaching 90 MC. They did what they could and improved a bit, but obviously none of the games achieved it. So some years later they simply did stop mentioning as a goal.

Regarding the bonuses, there were several bonuses like for the revenue of the games you worked on (depending on your job position or the level of profitability was bigger or smaller), for the money that the company made, for seniority and so on. At least when I did work there they never had reviews related bonuses.

Other than for that goal, they only looked at MC to compare the game reception vs previous games of the series or against direct competitors, and to list which specific areas of the games were more liked or disliked and again comparing it against similar games.
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In order to get a 90+ you usually have to take risks narratively or in presentation or just have very innovative gameplay, Ubi won't sacrifice sales potential for that.
 
Yurinka

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anonpuffs said:
In order to get a 90+ you usually have to take risks narratively or in presentation or just have very innovative gameplay, Ubi won't sacrifice sales potential for that.
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The opposite, most of the 90+ rated games mostly copied what it worked before in several games and polished it a bit more. Look at Nintendo or Forza and their "super innovative" narrative and gameplay.

Sales and reviews almost always reject innovative or different stuff. Ubisoft is maybe the big publisher that takes the biggest creative risks with new IPs and often fail. Look at games like Roller Champions or pretty likely Skull & Bones.

And then comes Zelda with the same narrative than several decades ago, adds to their mix stuff from several open world games like the Ubi ones and The Witcher 3, some extra things from Monster Hunter and people acts as if Zelda now invented the open world and the PS2 Havok physics. xDD
 
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Gods&Monsters

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It's a bad translation. I don't think he said they "demand" a 90 meta. It's too late for me to watch it but the portuguese here will tell us.
 
Cool hand luke

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Yurinka said:
The opposite, most of the 90+ rated games mostly copied what it worked before in several games and polished it a bit more. Look at Nintendo or Forza and their "super innovative" narrative and gameplay.

Sales and reviews almost always reject innovative or different stuff. Ubisoft is maybe the big publisher that takes the biggest creative risks with new IPs and often fail. Look at games like Roller Champions or pretty likely Skull & Bones.

And then comes Zelda with the same narrative than several decades ago, adds to their mix stuff from several open world games like the Ubi ones and The Witcher 3, some extra things from Monster Hunter and people acts as if Zelda now invented the open world and the PS2 Havok physics. xDD
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Yep this is accurate. Rarely does a truly original game get 90+ nowadays.
 
Satoru

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Yurinka said:
Regarding the bonuses, there were several bonuses like for the revenue of the games you worked on (depending on your job position or the level of profitability was bigger or smaller), for the money that the company made, for seniority and so on. At least when I did work there they never had reviews related bonuses.
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I know a massive studio that has review based bonuses for several teams.
 
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