Endzville: Not saying that this is true with you, TC, since you left no opinion on this, but it personally baffles me how anyone takes Metacritic remotely serious as it is - at least when it comes to gaming (although I have no doubt it applies as much to films too) - a complete and utter joke. What a horribly dumb way to rank publishers.
BadDecissions: I have generally found Metacritic to be extremely reliable.
edit: I mean, nothing's perfect, but any review will be written from the point of view of whoever's writing it. You have one person saying he likes a game, who knows that that means? You have a hundred people saying they like it, it probably means something. And it works out in that way in practice, at least for me, so ... not sure what your gripe is. Do you just disagree with them a lot?
Yes, I believe I worded my initial post wrongly as I more specifically disagree very strongly with the kind of influence they have and how the website itself is handled, particularly with gaming (but, as I say, although I don't follow the reviews of films, I'm sure they have problems with it too).
For one, I don't think their scoring is assigned very well according to the reviews they create their average from and I believe several websites have criticized this in the past. Would assume that the same thing applies to various other mediums that they collect an average score of and I expect they too have complained but I, for one, consider it a pretty big flaw when they completely misrepresent the quality of a review.
That they only accept the initial review of a game also greatly annoys me. It's pretty easy to call out a reviewer on having played sod all of a game he was given and sometimes these reviews are removed and / or changed. That they outright refuse to remove reviews that have received overwhelming criticism is ridiculous. If it's spreading misinformation then why should its review influence Metacritic's average for a title and very possibly the title's success?
The reason this annoys me, though, is because of the influence this website actually has on individual titles and the continuation and success of certain franchise's. Activision, in particular, believe the site has a direct influence on their sales and, from how they explained it (pretty sure they gave exact figures in there), I can completely believe that to be true, especially when they and other publishers - including some on this list - actually take the website so seriously that a bad Metacritic score can affect their employee's bonus compensation. Hell, there that was fiasco with Irrational Games posting a job ad that required whoever would apply to have been part of at least one game that score an average of 85(?) or more on Metacritic. That, to me, just isn't right.
How the website affects the reviews that are posted is also an issue I take with but it's a whole other topic altogether that I won't delve deeply into. Needless to say, though, I don't trust many reviewers that seem to contradict themselves between two very similar games by favouring one's mechanics over another, let's say, even if they function exactly the same.
Another point I'd like to throw in here which I think is very important is that games are constantly improving from their initial state. It's the norm these days, particularly on PC, yet reviews don't change from their initial state so one must surely question how accurate certain averages of games are. A game that was bad at release - and conversely good - may well be much better a week later yet the review does not change nor Metacritic's average score along with it.
My points are perhaps moot at the end of the day though as I am fairly biased as someone who wishes to be a games designer or developer in the near future and I furthermore hold some unfavorable opinions towards several websites that write such reviews which are part of the average in the first place. As much as I criticize the site, too, I know it isn't going anywhere anytime soon and fully understand that there's not really a good solution to its many problems, as it were.
But I do believe that the site is far more flawed than people think and trust I've made some fair points that I hope came across quite well. Apologies if it's all quite difficult to read as I was trying to do several things at once so I was rather distracted. Hopefully it's not all a mess though.
