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User Experience Research & Design in Games

You are here: Home / Publications / The Edge of Glory: The Relationship Between Metacritic Scores and Player Experience

The Edge of Glory: The Relationship Between Metacritic Scores and Player Experience

April 21, 2021 by

by Daniel Johnson, Christopher Watling, John Gardner, Lennart E Nacke
Abstract:
This study sought to examine how measures of player experience used in videogame research relate to Metacritic Professional and User scores. In total, 573 participants completed an online survey, where they responded the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) and the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) in relation to their current favourite videogame. Correlations among the data indicate an overlap between the player experience constructs and the factors informing Metacritic scores. Additionally, differences emerged in the ways professionals and users appear to allocate game ratings. However, the data also provide clear evidence that Metacritic scores do not reflect the full complexity of player experience and may be misleading in some cases.
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Reference:
The Edge of Glory: The Relationship Between Metacritic Scores and Player Experience (Daniel Johnson, Christopher Watling, John Gardner, Lennart E Nacke), In Proceedings of CHI PLAY 2014, ACM, 2014.
Bibtex Entry:
@inproceedings{johnson2014edge,
abstract = {This study sought to examine how measures of player experience used in videogame research relate to Metacritic Professional and User scores. In total, 573 participants completed an online survey, where they responded the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) and the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) in relation to their current favourite videogame. Correlations among the data indicate an overlap between the player experience constructs and the factors informing Metacritic scores. Additionally, differences emerged in the ways professionals and users appear to allocate game ratings. However, the data also provide clear evidence that Metacritic scores do not reflect the full complexity of player experience and may be misleading in some cases.},
address = {Toronto, ON, Canada},
author = {Johnson, Daniel and Watling, Christopher and Gardner, John and Nacke, Lennart E},
booktitle = {Proceedings of CHI PLAY 2014},
doi = {10.1145/2658537.2658694},
organization = {ACM},
pages = {141--150},
publisher = {ACM},
title = {{The Edge of Glory: The Relationship Between Metacritic Scores and Player Experience}},
url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2658694},
year = {2014}
}

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