No More Heroes creator Suda51 says everybody ‘cares too much about Metacritic’

Goichi Suda, better known by his pseudonym Suda51, is the iconic creator of cult classics like No More Heroes, Lollipop Chainsaw, Shadows of the Damned and more. In a recent interview, he claimed that developers nowadays put too much of their focus on their games’ Metacritic scores, and that it’s affecting their artistic vision.

Do game developers care too much about Metacritic?

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Suda51 and Shinji Mikami (creator of Resident Evil and producer of Shadows of the Damned) talked about their experience developing video games. At one point, Suda51 expressed his opinion on the popular review aggregator website, Metacritic.

“Everybody pays too much attention to and cares too much about Metacritic scores,” said Suda51. This shouldn’t surprise anybody who is familiar with his works. After all, he has a talent for creating bizarre video games with his unique personal touch, especially when it comes to his sense of humor. Ever since the release of Killer7, Suda51’s games often receive mixed reviews but also manage to become huge cult classics that even spawn passionate fan bases.

This happened with almost every single one of his games, like No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw. Suda51 is one of the very few developers in the industry who has followers that buy his products just because his name is attached to them. He definitely made a name for himself over the years.

He went on to explain how this mentality affects the development of games in general. “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” Suda explained. “If you’ve got a game that doesn’t fit into that formula, that marketability scope, it loses points on Metacritic.”

Suda51 blamed big AAA companies in particular of doing this, saying that they mainly don’t want to deal with the prospect of a negative online reception because “everyone cares too much about the numbers”.

This criticism is far from unexpected from Suda51, since he created the character of Damon Riccitiello – the main antagonist of Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes III – as a very unsubtle parody of John Riccitiello, the former CEO of Electronic Arts; a nod to the frustrations felt during the development of games like Shadows of the Damned.

Suda51 did admit he learned to stop looking at scores the hard way though, after checking Metacritic on some occasions, especially when his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, released a new title. “Sometimes a media outlet has given us zero. That makes me feel shitty. Why go that far and give us zero? But apart from that, I try to avoid Metacritic.” he said while laughing during the interview.