Grasshopper Manufacture CEO Suda51 (real name Goichi Suda) wants players to care more about creativity and less about Metacritic scores. In a recent interview alongside Shinji Mikami with GamesIndustry.biz, Suda stressed that this new obsession with numbers has had a negative impact on originality in gaming.
“Everybody pays too much attention to and cares too much about Metacritic scores,” Suda said. “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. 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.”
Currently, Suda is hard at work on Hotel Barcelona, a collaboration with Deadly Premonition‘s Hidetaka ‘Swery’ Suehiro. Recently, the creator stated his desire to see the No More Heroes series return.
“Personally, I don’t care too much about the Metacritic numbers. I’m not really conscious of them,” Suda continued. “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.”
Shadow of the Damned: Hella Remastered, a remaster of the 2011 title co-created by Suda and Mikami, will be released on October 31.
“The kind of games that get the most marketing support are the ones that need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible,” Mikami said. “More unique games don’t really have the same marketability.”
