The press has been railing against Metacritic for years. Many game critics are particularly concerned about the amount of attention this particular website gets from developers and publishers who consider it a legitimate measurement of the quality of a title.

Frustration stems from the fact that each outlet grades games differently. Take Tony Hawk: Ride, which got a 2.5/5 over at Gamespy. Now according to their grading chart, that means they consider the game to be ‘Fair’. Metacritic converts this to 50/100, which is the same score that would be assigned to a 1UP grade of ‘F’. As any student would tell you, teachers hardly give out F’s for work they call fair.

But this isn’t about how scores are related, whether they can convert and be comparable, or even whether we should have scores at all. I want to explain the good that Metacritic is doing for our industry.

Some companies use Metacritic as a gauge to decide what the size of the bonus will be for people who worked on the game, as well as whether they should greenlight a sequel. In the past, people based this decision almost solely on sales numbers and whether they thought the franchise could ‘gain market share’ or ‘increase product awareness’.

I believe that the Dead Space franchise would be facing death at this point if it wasn’t for the scores these two games have accumulated over at Metacritic. Sales for the original title were acceptable over time, but the Wii exclusive hasn’t sold enough copies to pay for the meetings it took to decide on the name Extraction.

In the days of old, the people behind this fine but forgotten game could have ended up jobless. But Metacritic has ushered in a new age — one where corporations pay more attention to the press, which means they truly listen when gamers clamor about the quality of a title, even if it doesn’t sell well. Because of the 89 and 82 that the Dead Space’s have garnered, there is no fear of cancellation for Dead Space 2.

The console that benefits the most from this should be the Wii, which also happens to need it the most. Because of what is widely viewed as the target audience for this machine, many critically-acclaimed games do not get the sales they deserve. Titles like Okami, No More Heroes, and Zack and Wiki spring immediately to mind.

In my perfect world, uncles and grandmas who know little Timmy wanted a Nintendo game would stumble across Metacritic during this holiday season. Noticing a game with a high score that Timmy didn’t have on his shelf, they’d buy it and be proud to introduce the young lad to this hidden gem – after ensuring the title was age appropriate, of course.

On the other hand, my perfect world wouldn’t give DJ Hero an 89 so that Activision can continue to cram plastic peripherals down our throats. But today the glass is half full.

What do you think? Is Metacritic the greatest threat our beloved hobby faces? Or can it be a force for good in gaming?

http://beefjack.com/blog/blog/feat/metacritic-bad/

So are theses concerns about Metacritic valid?

Metacritic is neither good or bad; it's simply relatively useless.

For instance, games from a niche genre like a 2D shoot 'em ups tend to get very low scores in general, even though fans (=experts) of the genre may love them. In contrast, mainstream stuff like GTA IV gets awesome review scores, even though most fans consider it a huge let down.

I'm more concerned with the people who use Metacritic to prove that "game X is better than game Y" or "console X has the best games" than I am about it misrepresenting review scores.

Like I said, those meta scores are really quite pointless. They will neither help you decide which game to buy nor do they prove that a game is good or bad.

The big problem isn't Metacritic as it is the reviewers who give scores based on:
1. Bribery.
2. Blackmail.
3. Based on whether the 37:th sequel to a franchise is better than 29:th, which they happened to give a good score, despite the game sucking hard.

What i found funny was the uncle looking for a game with good score with appropriate age rating for little Timmy. These are very rare, whether it's because of devs not making the kind of good games or reviewers not giving good scores for the type of games.

And ok, i get the guys point, his problem was that Metacritic benefits Nintendo?

He's arguing for it as a general indicator of quality, which is the only way you can percieve metacritic to have any use at all. Metacritic's primary application, however, is in fanboy pissing contests, and not really towards consumer choices so much.

Even sales are a better indicator of quality than the opinion of a few dozen elitist, bribed, blackmailed, hyped niche gamers...

Beefjack, nice name.

I like Metacritic.

Unless you agree with them.  There are tons of games i've loved that don't set up the sales chart that are regarded highly by them.  Do I ignore their opinion because the games didn't sell well?  Why not everyone just look at the available info and decide for themselves.

I tend to hunt out game spots reviews because I tend to find their observations generally similar to my own.  Not saying everyone should but use what metric of quality works best for you as quality is also a relative term.

Metacritic is pretty good for music, movies, and television, where it aggregates the opinions of professional critics.

Video games... not so much.