Exclusive: Critics Admit To Lowering Scores For Attention.

[eva01beserk]

Arkaign said:

Conegamer said:
No surprises here. Such sites should not be included in Metacritic though; particularly if there's evidence.

That's true. But the problem becomes extremely hard to get away from due to the outlier reviews getting the most attention. Take a game that is widely reviewed at 7/10-8/10.  Extreme fans of a series/platform/dev/whatever will point at the review or two that have it as a 10/10. Haters of the same will point at the one or two reviews that have it as a 3/10 or something way out of left field. So essentially those that are corrupt enough to post a completely bogus review can gain huge numbers of clicks, while more honest reviews get overlooked somewhat. This is obviously a very simplified view, and there ARE certainly exceptions to this, but I honestly believe that most 'extreme' outlier reviews are absolutely BS.

But speaking of exceptions, a difference of opinion in what a score means can explain some of them. For example, in modern metarcritic terms, a 5/10 is pure garbage. But someone might view a 5/10 as 'average'. If that person gives 5/10s to most standard fare titles, and very few 8/10 and above or very few 3/10 and below, then they are probably using the entire number scale effectively. Whereas someone who constantly throws out 8/10 and 9/10 scores for generic games might never ever even go below 6/10 in a rating and view that 6/10 as their harshest criticism for a broken game. I still think there are more clickbait bad ratings than there are honest interpretations of 'full-scale' reviewers.

Maybe there should be a standart metacritic rules for the points they assigne. like:

Story _______ __________________________________2/10

Gameplay mechanics  ____________________________3/10

graphics/framerate ______________________________2/10

Fidelity/bugs ___________________________________2/10

Hacked day one dlc/ preorder bonus/ micritransations __1/10

An example only, but sites who submit a review should avide by these scores and show each score and the acumulitative. This would also help in people who mainly buy games for the story, gameplay, graphics or whatever their preference is.