Just a few things to clear up.
In terms of some conspiracy to pull down the Metacritic score, that's an impossibility. Note that we posted this review literally as soon as the embargo lifted, just like every site out there. We didn't wait a week, look at the Metacritic score, and tailor our score accordingly to generate outrage. We do care about traffic, but our aim is to generate that traffic by getting the review up right away, not skewing the score for the sake of being contrarian.
In terms of Neal being "tired" of Mario Kart, I think that's being blown out of proportion. I would say "overly familiar" with the series would be more accurate. And you know what cures somebody of familiarity? A surprise. Something that has a fresh feel. Neal has stated quite clearly in this review that Mario Kart 8 has very little of that for series veterans, and I think that's fair. We're all old school Nintendo gamers here at NWR and it takes a lot to impress us, so if we say something's good, it's good. In other words, Nintendo can't give us the same old same old and expect us to give it a pass and an unreserved thumbs up.
In terms of this review affecting sales of the game, understand that our review is but a ripple in the pool. We have a niche audience and limited reach, but our audience really is like our staff: long-term Nintendo fans, extremely knowledgeable, very well-versed in its games and the history of its franchises. For the most part I think they already have a firm grip on what games they're going to buy, but they know that we appreciate Nintendo games the way they do and they like to hear what we think about them and appreciate the opportunity to voice their agreement/disagreement. Couple this with the fact that whatever score we give, high or low, will be evened out by opposingly high/low scores in the Metacritic rollup and I think a real impact on sales is virtually nonexistent. Heck, we aren't even big enough to get mentioned in articles like these:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-05-15-critical-consensus-mario-kart-8-is-a-triumph-of-familiarityhttp://www.joystiq.com/2014/05/15/metareview-mario-kart-8/If we were truly going for clickbait by posting a lower score than than the majority of other sites, then our grand strategy is failing miserably. Or should I cackle malevolently because it brought, what, three new users to our site? If you plan on sticking around and contributing to our little community, please do and judge us in the long term instead of the short term. However, if you came here for the sole purpose of crapping on us, I have some words for you.
For people to come to NWR for the
first time in order to question our integrity as a site and the integrity of our reviewers (Neal especially) is laughable, because you have no context for your statements. You haven't been around and observed how things are done here to have any basis for criticism beyond a knee-jerk reaction to a score that, in your subjective opinion, should be higher than somebody else's subjective opinion. It's not that our reviewers are beyond reproach - we've made mistakes in the past and will make them in the future - it's that over time (and I mean real time, 15 years as we were founded in 1999) I think the track record shows that we always give games a fair shot, and post our legitimate opinions, rather than what Nintendo, our readers, or our advertisers want to hear. We're one of the longest-running independent voices in the Nintendo community and have done nothing but invest our own time and money into giving the company free publicity (nobody gets paid here at NWR, we are all volunteers) for over a decade. I think we've earned the benefit of the doubt.
Topic: Mario Kart 8 Review (Read 97277 times)
