^^@reasonable
people are going nuts over there in metacritics forum,,,,,but the guy who submits the reviews had this to say (before people posted the relation between variety and MS),,,
"I've received a few emails asking why I've started tracking Variety's game reviews, reviews which are not published with scores. I have a couple of thoughts. I've been talking to Variety's Games Editor for over a year now, and have discussed our potential working relationship with their Editor-in-Chief on a couple of occasions. The Variety writing staff is made up of industry veterans who are extremely professional and who take their jobs seriously. I've vetted them and would not have picked them up had it been otherwise.
In other sections of Metacritic, we regularly track publications that do not assign a score to their own reviews (LA Times, NY Times, Hollywood Reporter, Variety), and we've always estimated the scores based on the impression gleaned from the review. I've only very rarely taken this approach in the Games section of Metacritic because gamers and the games industry are so sensitive to our scoring system and process. However, I did track the New York Times game reviews for years - a site which had no scores. In that case, the lead critic from the Times, Charles Herold, emailed me his unpublished scores every time the NYT published a review and I used those numbers on Metacritic. (See the scoreless New York Times review of The Orange Box by Charles Herold which appears on Metacritic's Orange Box page with an 88 score) My argument is that if the score comes from the horse's mouth, from the critic him or herself, so that I know the critic's intent definitively, I am satisfied that I can maintain 100% accuracy. (Incidentally, we stopped tracking the NY Times when they laid off their veteran lead critic a few months back.)
So with respect to Variety, I've come to the same arrangement with their lead editor. Each time a game is reviewed, he sends me the link to the review along with their unpublished 0 - 100 score - a score which I post at Metacritic without alteration or personal input. I've vetted a great many reviews and scores from Variety's team before deciding to pick them up like I do with every website and magazine that I decide to track.
And a further note: I receive hundreds of requests from publications asking to be included in Metacritic's process every year. I take each of them seriously and evaluate them using a host of metrics and standards. I've been doing this since 1999, and I'd doubt that anyone has read many more game reviews than I have over the same period. I would suggest that I'm competent to make such decisions, and I am the last and only word on which publications make it to Metacritic. So if you're disappointed with any publication's review of a particular game, step away from your conspiracy theories and know that I've always been the custodian of Metacritic Games and I take this process extremely seriously. Nobody on my team at Metacritic or our parent companies has ever asked me to add or drop a particular publication or individual reviews. They've also had no part in assigning weights to the individual publications. I alone handle this process.
If you have any further questions about my process, I'd be happy to field them via email.
As always, I thank you for using the site.
Best,
Marc Doyle
co-founder, games editor
metacritic.com
"
now it will be interesting to see his reply after people posted the relation between MS and variety.
(Former) Lead Moderator
