What’s a “Metacritic”?

Over the past couple of years, Metacritic and the scores it hands out to today’s games have become very important to us as an audience, and like anything that gains a little traction, the website has since become a lightning rod for controversy both within and outside of the industry. 

Some say the website is a blessing and that the simplified verdicts it hands out serve to cut through the crap of the review scene. Some say it’s a curse, that it generalizes without transparency, that its system is fundamentally flawed. Still others know relatively little about it, hearing the many voices of dissent as more of a distant thrum. Up until recently, I belonged to that third group; though I knew of Metacritic and its controversies, I hadn’t done much by way of actually educating myself on the subject. A couple of days ago I set out with the intent to correct that little problem and recorded what I found. For anyone interested, here it is. 

Reviews? Who Needs Reviews?

Reviews are a writer’s expert opinion on game X after they have spent enough time with it to feel confident about their conclusions. Review scores are that little number (or letter, or other symbolic measurement icon) floating next to a game’s review on any given website or in any given magazine, and the system that governs these little numbers is referred to as the numbered review system. Now despite their size, these little digits and symbols are remarkably important and have caused a slew of heated debates throughout our industry’s history with developers, publishers and critics alike all voicing their discontent with the system at some point or other. In fact, some publications are so fed up with the idea that they’ve thrown the system out entirely, opting to try to coerce their readers into actually reading their reviews by not offering a “one sentence sum-up.” 

Developers have sunk or swam by this murky science for years and reviewers have come into conflict or lost their jobs all because of a single digit number at the bottom of a page. Now, if you’re already thinking that this system could use some fool-proofing (though some would suggest the scorched earth approach), you’re probably right. What it doesn’t need is another entirely superfluous and equally flawed system heaped on top of it, right?

Enter Metacritic. 

Big, Broken Tent

To the average person, Metacritic gives the appearance of being an all-inclusive think tank, a repository for every review out there. But this average person might also suspect pulling in every review from the edge of eternity for every game under the sun to be an impossible task, with the latter impression being closer to the truth. Metacritic does not compile scores from every publication, or even close to every publication. Instead, Metacritic claims to pull only the best reviews from the most respected reviewers at the most prestigious publications via an undisclosed algorithm formulated in-house. So just to clarify, who exactly determines the people and places that belong to the aforementioned and flattering adjectives?

Well, Metacritic does. Oh, and they’re not saying how. 

Not only does Metacritic pick and choose which scores to pull, but if it sees a review without any kind of scoring mechanic attached to it, it will attach its own score and pull that review anyway. At the face of it that might not seem like such a bad thing, but when considering the site’s growing influence within the industry and its complete lack of transparency in operation, its terrifying. Metacritic has set itself up in such a way that it can, at any time, directly influence a game’s review score simply by pulling a review that does not conform to the numbered system and assigning one to it anyway. Coming from a website preaching ethics that claims to provide a service to which integrity is invaluable, doesn’t that seem like a rather large loophole? 

The bottom line is that no one but the men and women behind the curtain really know where Metacritic’s loyalties lie, and at this point they are quickly becoming one of the most influential sources of information in a fifty-billion dollar (and growing) industry. So the question is, why isn’t anyone checking up on them? 

I Like Where This is Going…

In any situation, many voices are better than one voice. The numbered review system, as it exists now, is flawed but serviceable. Metacritic is dangerous because it threatens to overburden that system with its own (again, superfluous) weight and silence the many voices of reviews in favor of just one: its own.

Thanks for reading,
End_Boss.