God bless Paradox and the devs.

Molyneux's timeframe for all of this, taking the currently reduced team and resource issues into account? "Months and months and months."

Peter is the kind of guy you should never give any money to. He's the kind of guy you should occasionally consult to pick his brain for creative ideas, like the way you sometimes rummage through the garage/basement/attic and stumble upon something really cool you had forgotten about.

"Honestly, it doesn't matter where the[y] put the carrot anymore," a third player, Poor_cReddit, replies. "The problem is that everyone is sick of eating the carrot."

Yay! Well-reasoned debate and agreement in internet comments! You are I are now famous :-)

I'm not sure if you understood me, but you and I agree. Games are art AND product. And of course you can score art. And of course that score is subjective and based on the tastes of the person scoring it, but that score is still a useful basis of measure. If we can score restaurants, hotels, movies...we can score…

I hear you, but these are 2 different problems.

"Complete with balls," Wyld wrote on Steam. "Never neglect the balls." Indeed.

The swinging balls are a nice touch.

Some smaller websites can be influenced in more blatant ways—one writer told me that Sega guaranteed his website an exclusive review of Super Monkey Ball if the score was higher than an 8.0.

Publishers can and will do whatever they can to skew Metacritic scores. One developer told me of the time he hired an infamously-negative-scoring reviewer to write a mock review for his studio's game—not because the developer wanted feedback, but because they wanted to make sure this reviewer would have to disclose…

Metacritic scores are also tied to bonuses; Obsidian lost out on a cool $1 million because Fallout: New Vegas was one point away from 85, according to sources.

Independent studios like Obsidian Entertainment (South Park: The Stick of Truth) and the now-defunct Airtight Games (Murdered: Soul Suspect) are frequently asked to show their Metacritic scores while meeting with publishers about potential deals to make new games.

Over the years, we've come to believe that the influence of Metacritic on the games industry is not a healthy one (and we're not alone in this opinion in the industry, either). This is not the fault of Metacritic itself or the people who made it, who just set out to create a useful resource for readers. It's a problem…

Fallout 4 please please please please please...

I played Sleeping Dogs that way, but that's because it was based in a beautiful city. I don't feel anywhere near the kind of attachment to GTA 5. The city is just too barren, concrete, and ugly.

It will remember that.

Barakamon, hands down. Unless, when they say "Psycho-Pass", they mean the first season. The second season just wasn't anywhere near as cool because two of the best characters from S1 didn't make it into S2.

I think that's Aldnoah.

I never thought I'd say this, but the Wii looks better...