| Veknoid_Outcast said: Well, that's just it. All Metacritic tells us is what a few dozen publications thought of the game in question. It gives us a sense of the critical consensus. It doesn't tell us anything about a game's quality, because that is very much a personal evaluation. Metacritic is a collection of opinions, not unlike this forum. Sure, Metacritic collects opinions from so-called experts and industry veterans, but in the end those opinions are as rooted in subjective truths as our own. They simply have a byline. To collect such opinions and present them as objective facts is misguided. |
I agree, but like i said, that's not really how metacritic should be used. Reviewers are not free of preferences and biases, no one is. But they are (usually) the closest to that we get. If a mass of people think a site or reviewer is letting their bias overwhelm their role as a critic, they stop reading them. That, combined with meta often being a weighted average of 50 to 100 of them (a decent sample size), makes metacritic the most objective data we have. I'd argue that its use is fairly limited when comparing a select number of games, even if you are just looking at their probable generalize quality, but on large scales (such as 2 game libraries) it's a useful source of information.
While it should never be used as proof of an absolute, metacritic is objective enough that it can support statements like "[x] library is objectively more likely to be enjoyed than [y]". A statement doesn't have to be a pure, unquestionable fact for it to have merit.
Of course, none of that will stop people using it as proof that someone is "wrong" for not liking one more than the other :p Damn your opinion, mine is better!
