What makes a Metacritic score?

[twmac]

Last year I did a '12 games before Christmas' challenge where I got people to recommend me games and I played them. This year, I had a look at some of the dubious practices exhibited by Metacritic and decided to have a little play around with that.

Anyway I posted this:

http://badgercommander.net/what-makes-a-metacritic-score

And if you could take the time to read it and then vote for game from each bracket by emailing the contact email address I would very much appreciate more input outside the people I work with and some of the other stragglers.

[syntheticgerbil]

The Lord himself.

Non-jokes:

To me, the Metacritic score seems generally inflated by how big the marketing budget for a certain game is. I'm sure some will argue a more fair and balanced world for game reviews, but enough talk of game sites losing advertising dollars for big budget games over bad reviews a few years back is enough for me to always be suspicious (even if it hasn't been reported much lately).

My sister's boyfriend buys all of his games blind based on Metacritic review scores. I don't think he even reads the reviews. He also has smokes pot all day, has dubious hygiene, has no job, and regularly fails to get anything above a C average in college if not failing. That's my perception of the types who use and live by metacritic. But I'm sure those types are the easiest for the big money suits to pander to as well.

But here's my votes for the games you should play. I picked ones I thought would be particularly bad or uninteresting:

100-90:Assassin's Creed II

90-80:Blur

80-70:Mini Ninjas

70-60:Section 8

60-50:X-Blades

50-40:Legendary

[Snooglebum]

The Lord himself.

-- Metacritic.com

[twmac]

The Lord himself.

100-90:Assassin's Creed II

90-80:Blur

80-70:Mini Ninjas

70-60:Section 8

60-50:X-Blades

50-40:Legendary

You are the first to vote for Section 8, I now feel a little sorry for it... From what I heard it isn't a bad game.

Non-jokes:

To me, the Metacritic score seems generally inflated by how big the marketing budget for a certain game is. I'm sure some will argue a more fair and balanced world for game reviews, but enough talk of game sites losing advertising dollars for big budget games over bad reviews a few years back is enough for me to always be suspicious (even if it hasn't been reported much lately).

My sister's boyfriend buys all of his games blind based on Metacritic review scores. I don't think he even reads the reviews. He also has smokes pot all day, has dubious hygiene, has no job, and regularly fails to get anything above a C average in college if not failing. That's my perception of the types who use and live by metacritic. But I'm sure those types are the easiest for the big money suits to pander to as well.

No, I agree. I am not that keen on Metacritic. I just don't want it to become some kind of bitch-fest about Metacritic. It has its place, what concerns me is people's perception of what that place is. The link in my post is really poorly put together and isn't in anyway readible at the moment. When I can make it more presentable it will go live but it demonstrates the fact that they know that they are far from impartial. That, if anything, is respectable.

Thanks for the votes, I am still hoping for some more as there are quite a few that are in dead heats.

Edited January 21, 2011 by twmac

[Scrobbs]

Edit

[twmac]

Vote...?

[miffy495]

I done voted as soon as I saw the thread, but won't post my votes here so as to keep the atmosphere as clear as possible. I tried to pick games that I thought would actually be worth playing, so I hope I wasn't wrong on the ones where I was guessing semi-blindly.

[twmac]

Yeah, I should announce the vote results at the end of next week. It had a pretty good turn out considering the size of my readership.

[twmac]

I have a tie breaker!

http://badgercommander.net/fw

The results should be up by the end of the day, thank you to all who voted. Although it does look like I have some right stinkers to play.