Metacritic making scores for scoreless reviews

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Nate

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#1  Edited By Nate

Hi GB community-- I'm talking with a friend about Metacritic and how messed up it all is. I remember Metacritic used to assign scores to reviews that often didn't even have a score. They would base their score on ... you know, words.  Is that the case anymore?  It looks like Kotaku isn't on metacritic anymore, right? They used to be, didn't they?  Help me out here if you can think of a score Metacritic has assigned to a review that didn't originally have a score. 
 
Sidenote - can you think of any publications that do absolutely no scores for games reviews? Kotaku is the closest I can think of, but even they have the Yes or No verdict on their reviews now.

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StarvingGamer

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#2  Edited By StarvingGamer

No they don't do that.

I think Shacknews does no scores. Also PAR.

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JasonR86

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#3  Edited By JasonR86

@Nate:

Do you have an example of when this happened? Cause I've never heard of this.

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MildMolasses

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#4  Edited By MildMolasses

Yeah, they do. I remember it being a little more transparent than it is now, as I had to do a bit of digging to find it. The gist is that they base that number off the general tone of the review

http://www.metacritic.com/faq#item12

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Nate

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#5  Edited By Nate
@MildMolasses: Oh. Cool, thanks for finding that. That is for movie reviews, but still ... Interesting. 
 
@JasonR86:   Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly. I'm guessing from the responses I received so far that Kotaku reviews were never on Metacritic.
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#6  Edited By YoungFrey

Here is the FAQ quote:

For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review

Also of interest, they give some publications more weight (and for movie and TV, critic) when they make the weighted average.

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ProfessorEss

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#7  Edited By ProfessorEss

@YoungFrey said:

Here is the FAQ quote:

For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review

Also of interest, they give some publications more weight (and for movie and TV, critic) when they make the weighted average.

Example(s)?

(EDIT: Nevermind, seems they specifically note in that FAQ that they do not and will not expose this information)

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Nate

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#8  Edited By Nate
@YoungFrey: Thanks. I just realized that these scores were weighted a few days ago. I always assumed they were the straight up 'mean' (average) or something, but nope.
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#9  Edited By beepmachine

I was under the impression that they would get publications who don't use review scores to discreetly send a number that would only be for metacritic. Interesting that they do it themselves though.

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YoungFrey

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#10  Edited By YoungFrey

@ProfessorEss said:

@YoungFrey said:

Here is the FAQ quote:

For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review

Also of interest, they give some publications more weight (and for movie and TV, critic) when they make the weighted average.

Example(s)?

(EDIT: Nevermind, seems they specifically note in that FAQ that they do not and will not expose this information)

I've thought about the work needed to derive the weights used, but the rounding inherent in the metascore makes that hard to do. If you recorded every average they publish as scores get added, you could probably start to get some idea. But sites that often publish late (like GB) are usually going to be seen with at least a dozen others. So any weight given to them will be very hard to discern.

I always get a little bothered when sites talk about MC, because they either gloss over the details or don't actually know them. While not the people being rated, they do have a vested interest in how MC presents them.

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#11  Edited By HisDudeness

@Nate said:

Sidenote - can you think of any publications that do absolutely no scores for games reviews? Kotaku is the closest I can think of, but even they have the Yes or No verdict on their reviews now.

http://killscreendaily.com/

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YoungFrey

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#12  Edited By YoungFrey

@HisDudeness said:

@Nate said:

Sidenote - can you think of any publications that do absolutely no scores for games reviews? Kotaku is the closest I can think of, but even they have the Yes or No verdict on their reviews now.

http://killscreendaily.com/

And they don't appear to be in Metacritic.