BioShock developer Irrational spent some time under the flaming eye of the gaming community after they made the mistake of adding a rather interesting requirement to their posted job listing. In particular, it required any candidates to have worked on a game that earned an 85+ Metacritic review score. In other words, to even be considered, you had to have already made a big-name hit game. That’s a steep requirement, and the community called them on it. Quietly, Irrational has dropped the requirement from their listing. At least, in public. Want to make a guess what your chances are there as a first-time hire? CVG has the story.
So if Bioshock: Infinite doesn’t hit at least 85, they’re going to fire the whole studio, right? Seems only fair to me.
This is just one more example of the creeping corruption of Metacritic. Suits want one, easy number to rest their entire business square upon, but that number really doesn’t exist. Metacritic, like any other singular system, can be gamed. It can be wrong. Meanwhile, it’s the weather vane that shows where billions of dollars in game development are going to blow.
This is madness.