WarThaNemesis2 posted...
Mario 1 missing the bracket because of metacritic was the death of these contests.
Once you decide that GameFAQs doesn't even get to decide what they think great game contenders are it's over.
To be fair, Metascores were only part of the formula for determining 2015's field, and that wasn't the first (or last) game contest in which they presumably played a role in seeding.
2009, from the wiki:
User nominations will count for 1/3 of the bracket seeding; the other 2/3 will be based on professional review scores and GameFAQs user rating and review scores.
v 2015:
On October 15, 2015, the selection committee will seed the games that will battle in the Tournament based on a mixture of editorial decision and audience vote (128 games).
and then:
The games have been seeded by a combination of user nominations, popularity on GameFAQs, and critical and user game ratings
Ironically, it's actually possible this meant that 2009 having divisions by era was responsible for Mario 1 even making its field, and given its seeding formula, that's almost certainly the reason why it had an ample complement of pre-Metascore games.
...that being said, I certainly don't agree with using Metascores as even part of the formula for determining game contest entrants and think they only should've mattered for weeding out games with overly bad critical reception (as distinguished from those lacking reviews) nominated as jokes. Admittedly, League very likely would've made the contest at that point, and I'm guessing Allen wanted an actual metric rather than his own decision to be responsible for its omission. I think he and his committee could've just stuck it as a low seed against something widely beloved and not antivote-susceptible and possibly defrayed the damage that way without having to sacrifice Mario 1, S3&K, etc on its pyre, though.