And this is why it is stupid:
METASCORE RANGES
____________ Score Movies, Books & Music_____________ Games
Universal Acclaim____________81-100_______________90-100
Generally Favorable Reviews___61-80________________75-89
Mixed or Average Reviews_____40-60________________ 50-74
Generally Unfavorable Reviews__20-39_______________ 20-49
Overwhelming Dislike__________ 0-19________________ 0-19
The reason for this special treatment for games has to do with the games publications themselves. Virtually all of the publications we use as sources for game reviews (a) assign scores on a 0-100 scale (or equivalent) to their reviews, and (b) are very explicit about what those scores mean. And these publications are almost unanimous in indicating that scores below 50 indicate a negative review, while it usually takes a score in the upper 70s or higher to indicate that the game is unequivocally good. This is markedly different from film or music, where a score of, say, 3 stars out of 5 (which translates to a 60 out of 100 on our site) can still indicate that a movie is worth seeing or a CD is worth buying. Thus, we had to adjust our color-coding for games to account for the different meaning of games scores compared to scores for music and film.
You see, according to metacritic, most game sites consider from 50-74 average. Eurogamer seems to be using a film review scale instead of a gaming one, and I'm sure that works out for most of the other low reviews.
