Metacritic Editorials
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Certainly, viewed broadly, the games at the top of the scale are generally the best games around, and the bottom ones certainly aren't. The challenge for Doyle and the main source of controversy is in his selection of publications. The original basis was: (Who is the most credible, who has the best reputation, the best analysis?)Gamernode wonders if this all is detrimental to journalists' tendency to speak their mind.
But now, he says: (It's essentially about whether gamers are going to them because they're reliable for advice on what games they should buy. I really don't have to do too much research because they just come to me. I check out their scoring methodology, send out a questionnaire asking when they launched, how many reviews they cover a week, total reviews done, about staff all the things I've learned over the years that I have to do.)
Metacritic encourages this horrid treatment of videogame journalists, and to quote Tycho of Penny Arcade, reading the comments pages of articles like the CVG Killzone 2 review is like watching "a fully three dimensional image of a stupid person." I've written previews of some seriously poor games, and reviewed some even poorer ones, but if they've got something good, something you know someone might enjoy, then don't leave it out. However, I wish the gaming public would stop taking reviews as gospel. This isn't an advert, or a press release; this is someone telling you about their own experience. It's not an instruction to purchase said title due to said score, it's simply a method of showing you what's on offer that's good, and what's on offer that may be good but someone else happened not to think so.
Personally, if I was Metacritic, I'd publish an average score and nothing else. Don't list sites and their individual scores, just use a big average green number, and that way unless the average outraged fanboy has enough time to scour every gaming site on the web who reviewed the title, there's little chance of the reviewer being abused. Journalists are trained to take a lot of harsh criticism; I've had criticism that I've shown to other people who then shouted angrily about it for hours on end. But they don't deserve to have homophobic labels thrown at them, regardless of sexuality. They don't deserve to be called stupid, because the last time I checked, they were the ones writing professionally, not the abuser.
