Why is it that every time a game doesn't score well  or scores exceptionally well on Metacritic, everyone starts to blame metacritic. Rather than seeing every single review and see which ones can be considered "wrong", most just post the oh so common quotes Metacritic is not reliable" or "Metacritic is a joke".

I just don't see how this is the case. All metacritic does is take a weighted average if all the scores and gives out the result ( Which according to the scores given is an accurate description of what reviewers thought of the game ).

Because Metacritic excludes arbitrarly somes sites and gives high coefficients to the big US sites, like IGN or Destructoid. Also, Metacritic has never given the coefficients it applies and it was a secret for a long time, until someone debunk'd it.

So, Metacritic doesn't give a correct average.

I'm not sure about this, but some reviewers influence the metascore more than others. I at least know that Yoshi's Wooly World meta is 81-82, but it has a 79 because of GameSpot's low score or some other reviewer.

We live in a world where what others, especially the majority, say, influences us. It is why Bungie would have got paid more by Activision if they got over a 90 for Destiny. It is why famous people, dubbed influencers, are paid money to advertise products.

Of course people are incredibly biased when it comes to metacritic. 343i gets bashed for "ruining halo" by trolls but its metacritic score is an 88. Those are the same people that will praise anything for getting over an 80 but bash something under a 75.

tl:dr people are stupid and other people's opinions matters to them more than they'd like to believe.

- Metacritic often makes errors (giving games a different score than the reviewer actually gave it) and they refuse to adjust it.

- They refuse to adjust scores when a reviewer feels the game is now better and gives it a better score.

- Gaming journalism is a big joke. So it only makes sense that the weighted average of said ,journalism is also a big joke.

- Game sites accept money from the companies whose games they review (in the form of ad revenue and sometimes even direct payment). The reviewer is not neutral in this case and therefor his judgement is worthless.

- People on gaming forums use it as a fact in list wars.

- Metacritic is owned by the same company behind Gamespot. Guess who's critic scores are considered the most important?

- Indie games are not reviewed with the same standards as retail games. Yet they're on the same lists. IOS games must be super good if we believe metacritic.

Because lots of people don't know what it really is or how to use it. Metacritic isn't a metric for quality, it's just a database that collects reviews from selected sites and magazines, and calculates a weighted average of the scores.

I dont like how Metacritic weights the reviews, i dont underestand why a site like IGN has to be more credible than an indie site.

But at the same time, Game Rankings do average the reviews equally, and their scores are always virtually the same as Metacritic, so i guess Meta must be doing something right.

P.D. I dont know for sure if both scores are always similar, i believe there must be cases that the margin of error is way off, but i havent seen it.

What metacritic does is dumb down the individual reviews into a meaningless score. It enables ignorant people to base their opinions on things without putting the effort of research in it.

Metacritic is not at fault but it would be better for everyone if it and its variants would not exist.

It's because morons feel the need to resort to 'Metascores' when comparing games, which is obviously incredibly stupid.

Also it's annoying seeing people who can't form a confident and rational opinion of a game without having to check it against the fucking Metascore to see if the consensus amongst critics aligns with their opinion, this desperate need for reassurance is repellent.

And one last thing, I hate the weighted average system they use and their arbitrarily defined criteria for which sites to accept when coming up with an aggregated score.

I really don't take metacritic too seriously, I just use it as an additional information before buying a game. I hate more the facts that some here are so inconsistent. When a game they like, get a bad score, they start trashing metacritic but when the opposite happens, they use the metascore as a reference that the game is great.