skip to main content
10.1145/2658537.2658694acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pageschi-playConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

The edge of glory: the relationship between metacritic scores and player experience

Authors Info & Claims
Published:19 October 2014Publication History

ABSTRACT

This study sought to examine how measures of player experience used in videogame research relate to Metacritic Professional and User scores. In total, 573 participants completed an online survey, where they responded the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) and the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) in relation to their current favourite videogame. Correlations among the data indicate an overlap between the player experience constructs and the factors informing Metacritic scores. Additionally, differences emerged in the ways professionals and users appear to allocate game ratings. However, the data also provide clear evidence that Metacritic scores do not reflect the full complexity of player experience and may be misleading in some cases.

Skip Supplemental Material Section

Supplemental Material

p141.mp4

References

  1. Al Mahmud, A., et al. Designing and evaluating the tabletop game experience for senior citizens. In Proceedings of the 5th Nordic conference on Humancomputer interaction: building bridges 2008, ACM press (2008), 403--406. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Anderson, C.A., et al., Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: a meta-analytic review. Psychological bulletin 136, 2 (2010), 151--173.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. Birk, M. and R.L. Mandryk. Control your game-self: effects of controller type on enjoyment, motivation, and personality in game. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013, ACM press (2013), 685--694. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Bower, B., Valuing a Video Game: Does Score Determine Value? 2009.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. Brockmyer, J.H., et al., The development of the Game Engagement Questionnaire: A measure of engagement in video game-playing. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45, 4 (2009), 624--634.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  6. Cox, J., What Makes a Blockbuster Video Game? An Empirical Analysis of US Sales Data. Managerial and Decision Economics 35, 3 (2013), 189--198.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Dauphin, B. and G. Heller, Going to other worlds: The relationships between videogaming, psychological absorption, and daydreaming styles. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 13, 2 (2010), 169172.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Everiss, B. Metacritic has changed the games industry. 2008, Available from: http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/06/04/metacritichas-changed-the-games-industry/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. Fang, X., et al., Development of an instrument to measure enjoyment of computer game play. Intl. Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 26, 9 (2010), 868--886.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  10. Ferguson, C.J., The good, the bad and the ugly: A meta-analytic review of positive and negative effects of violent video games. Psychiatric Quarterly 78, 4 (2007), 309--316.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  11. Gajadhar, B., Y. De Kort, and W. Ijsselsteijn. Shared fun is doubled fun: Player enjoyment as a function of social setting. In Fun and Games 2008 (2008), 106--117. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. Greenwood-Ericksen, A., S.R. Poorman, and R. Papp, On the Validity of Metacritic in Assessing Game Value. Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture 7, 1 (2013), 101--127.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. IJsselsteijn, W.A., K. Poels, and Y.A.W. de Kort, The Game Experience Questionnaire: Development of a self-report measure to assess player experiences of digital games. Eindhoven University of Technology: Eindhoven. 2008.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Jennett, C., et al., Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 66, 9 (2008), 641--661. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Johnson, D. and J. Gardner. Personality, motivation and video games. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on ComputerHuman Interaction 2010, ACM press (2010), 276--279. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  16. Johnson, D., et al., Cooperative Play with Avatars and Agents: Differences in Brain Activity and the Experience of Play. Computers in Human Behavior under review, (2014).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. Johnson, D., et al. Personality, genre and videogame play experience. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Fun and Games 2012, ACM press (2012), 117--120. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Jones, C.M., et al., Gaming well: links between videogames and flourishing mental health. Frontiers in psychology 5, (2014), 1--8.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. Lee, M.S. and C. Heeter, What do you mean by believable characters?: The effect of character rating and hostility on the perception of character believability. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 4, 1 (2012), 81--97.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  20. Livingston, I., L. Nacke, and R. Mandryk, Influencing Experience: The Effects of Reading Game Reviews on Player Experience, in Entertainment Computing -- ICEC 2011, J. Anacleto, et al., Editors. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 89--100, 2011. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Livingston, I.J., L.E. Nacke, and R.L. Mandryk. The impact of negative game reviews and user comments on player experience. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2011 Game Papers 2011, ACM press (2011). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. McEwan, M., et al. Videogame control device impact on the play experience. In Proceedings of The 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Playing the System 2012, ACM press (2012), 1--3. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Metacritic. How we create the metascore magic. 2014, Available from: http://www.metacritic.com/about-metascores.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  24. Nacke, L. and C.A. Lindley. Flow and immersion in first-person shooters: measuring the player's gameplay experience. In Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share 2008, ACM press (2008), 81--88. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. Nacke, L.E., M.N. Grimshaw, and C.A. Lindley, More than a feeling: Measurement of sonic user experience and psychophysiology in a first-person shooter game. Interacting with Computers 22, 5 (2010), 336--343. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  26. Norman, K.L., GEQ (Game Engagement/Experience Questionnaire): A Review of Two Papers. Interacting with Computers 25, 4 (2013), 278--283.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  27. Przybylski, A.K., C.S. Rigby, and R.M. Ryan, A motivational model of video game engagement. Review of General Psychology 14, 2 (2010), 154--166.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  28. Przybylski, A.K., R.M. Ryan, and C.S. Rigby, The motivating role of violence in video games. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35, 2 (2009), 243--259.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  29. Przybylski, A.K., et al., The ideal self at play: the appeal of video games that let you be all you can be. Psychological Science 23, 1 (2012), 69--76.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  30. Rigby, C.S. and R.M. Ryan, The Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) Model. Immersyve Inc. 2007.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  31. Rollings, A. and E. Adams, Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on game design. New Riders. 2003. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  32. Ryan, R.M., C.S. Rigby, and A.K. Przybylski, The Motivational Pull of Video Games: A SelfDetermination Theory Approach. Motivation and Emotion 30, 4 (2006), 344--360.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  33. Schreier, J. Metacritic Matters: How Review Scores Hurt Video Games. 2013, Available from: http://kotaku.com/metacritic-matters-how-reviewscores-hurt-video-games-472462218.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  34. Situmeang, F.B.I., M.A.A.M. Leenders, and N.M. Wijnberg, History matters: The impact of reviews and sales of earlier versions of a product on consumer and expert reviews of new editions. European Management Journal 32, 1 (2014), 73--83.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  35. Tamborini, R., et al., Defining media enjoyment as the satisfaction of intrinsic needs. Journal of Communication 60, 4 (2010), 758--777.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  36. Totilo, S. Low Metacritic scores cause game publishers to withhold developer royalties. 2008, Available from: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/05/29/lowmetacritic-costs-developers/.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  37. Vella, K., D. Johnson, and L. Hides. Positively playful: when videogames lead to player wellbeing. In First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research and Applications 2013, ACM press (2013). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  38. Wang, L.C. and M.P. Chen, The effects of game strategy and preferencematching on flow experience and programming performance in gamebased learning. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 47, 1 (2010), 39--52.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  39. Wiebe, E.N., et al., Measuring engagement in video game-based environments: Investigation of the User Engagement Scale. Computers in Human Behavior 32, (2014), 123--132. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  40. Wingfield, N. High scores matter to game makers, too. The Wall Street Journal, 2007.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. The edge of glory: the relationship between metacritic scores and player experience

          Recommendations

          Comments

          Login options

          Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

          Sign in
          • Published in

            cover image ACM Conferences
            CHI PLAY '14: Proceedings of the first ACM SIGCHI annual symposium on Computer-human interaction in play
            October 2014
            492 pages
            ISBN:9781450330145
            DOI:10.1145/2658537

            Copyright © 2014 ACM

            Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

            Publisher

            Association for Computing Machinery

            New York, NY, United States

            Publication History

            • Published: 19 October 2014

            Permissions

            Request permissions about this article.

            Request Permissions

            Check for updates

            Qualifiers

            • research-article

            Acceptance Rates

            CHI PLAY '14 Paper Acceptance Rate30of104submissions,29%Overall Acceptance Rate421of1,386submissions,30%

          PDF Format

          View or Download as a PDF file.

          PDF

          eReader

          View online with eReader.

          eReader