THQ: Homefront Is Not a 71

THQ Vice President Danny Bilson says you can’t apply math to art but when it comes to Homefront, it’s “clearly” better than a 71.

70. That’s what THQ’s near-future invasion drama Homefront has managed to ring up on Metacritic and while that’s a fairly decent score by most real-world measures, when it comes to videogames it’s, well, not. It’s not an unmitigated disaster by any stretch but it’s definitely not a critical success either, and worse, that distinctly sub-80 number is bound to put it beneath the notice of a lot of score-obsessed gamers.

But Bilson, who’s been the driving force behind the game since he joined THQ in 2008, is pretty happy. “A million units in a week on an original IP coming out of nowhere I think speaks a lot to the concept and the marketing of the game,” he told IGN. “I think we really captured people’s imagination with the IP. I’m very proud [of] what the teams have done with that game.”

The goal, he continued, was not to beat modern shooter behemoths like Call of Duty but just to get THQ “in the conversation” and in that regard, he described it as mission accomplished. “Everybody’s talking about Homefront,” he said.

“Do I prefer that it’s controversial? No, I’d prefer if everybody in the world loved it,” he continued. “But there are 20-plus reviews that are over 80, there are some haters, and there are some mid-range ones. Do I read them all to see what we can do better next time and have every review be 100? Of course, our goal is always that. What I will say pretty clearly is the game is not a 71. You can’t apply math to art.”

I wholeheartedly agree with that last statement, and I think that the fixation with applying scores to everything that moves has ultimately done more harm than good to the usefulness of videogame reviews over the years. So how about a more meaningful measure of success, then: will Homefront get a sequel?

“All I’m allowed to say is we have a lot of plans for the future of Homefront that we’ll be rolling out over the next few months,” Bilson said. “I have a lot of plans; they’re pretty interesting and unique. We intend to grow the online multiplayer over the year with a robust downloadable content plan which we haven’t announced yet. To be honest with you, I see Battlefield 3 on the horizon and the bar is going up. So we need to do some careful thinking on the production side because the competition looks amazing.”

THQ announced that Homefront had broken the one million unit sales mark near the end of March. DLC updates are presumably in the works but no specifics have yet been mentioned.