Irrational, the developers behind the BioShock series, are looking for a Design Manager. That’s fine in itself, of course, but one of the requirements seems a little bit thought-provoking, at least.
Alongside needing six years as a game designer and a minimum of three shipped titles, the position also requires that the applicant have “credit on at least one game with an 85+ Average Meta Critic Review Score.”
Wanting the best for your company (and game) isn’t anything new, but does a game’s Metacritic score really reflect a game’s complete critical standing, and would such a limitation exclude amazing talent stuck on a substandard game?
And surely, all things considered, the Metacritic score is a reflection on the game, or the studio, rather than the individual. You can’t extrapolate this further without it seeming odd – TSA has never won any industry awards, for example, but we’ve got some fantastic writers.
And a Metacritic score – as useful as it can be when quickly wanting an overall singular opinion on a game at quick notice, often has little bearing on a game’s commercial success. Not always, anyway.
I personally like Metacritic, I think it’s great, but there’s more and more emphasis being placed on its game scores every year: in some cases bonuses are only paid to developers if a game reaches a certain score, for example, and this takes that one further.
Just thought it was interesting, and hopefully there’ll be some discussion from this.
Via GAF.
jbni
It sounds like they’ve already got someone in mind and have added this requirement to cater towards them.
colmshan1990
They must get a lot of applicants if this the way they’re choosing to narrow down the field.
I’d probably hire this way too- Design Manager is a rather critical role in making a game, and if you mess up the design of a game, you’re not hitting 85% even if everything else if perfect.
It’s a fair measurement in my opinion, but only because the role is so important.
Shakugan
I have bought games under 60-70 % of Metacritic score and i found the games to be better than most of 85% score games.