‘Shadows of the Damned’ Co-Creator Suda51 Says Video Game Industry’s Obsession With Review Scores Is Killing Creativity: “There’s Really No Point Being Concerned About Scores Given By The Media, It’s The User Reviews That Are Important”
In the opinion of legendary No More Heroes creator Goichi Suda, the modern video game industry’s growing obsession with making sure their games get widespread praise from the media is not only detrimental to the concept of creativity, but ultimately ignores the more important metric of whether or not actual players enjoyed their time with a given title.
Perhaps better known by his handle of Suda51, the esteemed director behind such games as killer7, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Shadows of the Damned (as well as its recent Hella Remastered release) offered his thoughts on the topic of review scores during a recent interview given to video game news outlet Automaton.
Amidst a lengthy conversation which ranged from his work on Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, his time in the industry, and his favorite The Legend of Zelda game (spoiler: strangely though appropriately, it’s Zelda II: The Adventure of Link), Suda was eventually asked about whether or not he was aware that his prevent comments regarding review scores had become the topic of much debate on social media.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz Editor-in-Chief James Batchelor this past September regarding the production of the then-upcoming Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, Suda observed that the cause for the recent decline in ‘experimental’ or ‘boundary-pushing’ video games like his was the simple fact that “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 told his host. “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,” he added. “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.”
Reflecting on the entire situation to Automaton, Suda recalled, “It… blew up, right? I had no idea at first. We were having a weekly meeting with NetEase Games [who currently owns Suda’s Grasshoper Manufacture studio], and they were like, ‘This is becoming huge,’ and I thought, ‘What is?'”
“It was even becoming a hot topic in Japan, so I thought I’d messed up or something,” he added. “But it wasn’t a big deal, I’m not concerned and no one’s getting mad at me.”
To this end, Automaton further inquired as to whether he felt he “said too much, or maybe too little”, to which Suda asserted, “Well, I do hope that people get the nuance I was going for.”
“What I wanted to say was that there are people who give the games we make scores like 0 or 20,” he explained. “I think 0 can’t possibly be a fair score, but studios like ours, who make games that disregard standard forms of expression and standard mechanics, often fall through the cracks when it comes to reviews.”
“And when things are like that, there’s really no point being concerned about scores given by the media,” he continued. “Instead, it’s the user reviews that are important. I want to know if the gamers who went out of their way to buy our new game had fun playing it, if they thought it was good or not. That’s actually constructive for us. I think it’s no use trying to get a 100 from someone who gave you a zero. That’s what my statement was about.”
Turning to his own experience running up against the industry’s ever-growing worship of review scores, Suda admitted, “I am slightly conscious of it. I have moments when I reconsider things that will obviously result in a score deduction. I don’t think it’s a good thing, though.”
“For example,” he detailed, “when I mention that I want a tough-love kind of save system with no checkpoints and only savepoints, my staff will say, ‘That’s not a good idea, you need to be generous with auto-save in this day and age,’ and in these kinds of situations, I end up compromising.”
Closing out his thoughts on this particular topic, Suda ultimately affirmed, “I want to experiment with some dirtier mechanics, but I think that things like this from back in the day don’t get accepted so easily anymore.”
Suda51’s latest release, the aforementioned Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, is now available on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC platforms.
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