Another plebeian who doesn't understand basic Math.
They choose a random number of reviews from various websites and assign each review a numerical value based on unethical procedures. For example, if Metacritic wanted to spike a review to satisfy business partners (which they have been caught doing before) they will make lets say Gamespot review score worth 20% of the total score while IGN could be worth 70% of the total score. Additionally, if a review from well-known website is bad, they could bolster the amount of positive reviews from uncredible sources to include in the aggregate score thus, presenting a misleading number. What's even more jarring is that they do not assign their values based on pedigree or web traffic which means they consciously assign valuation based on bias. The fact that they didn't fully publicly disclose their use of weights until 2013 shows their shadiness. Do you still not see the problem and why much of the gaming community claim it to be a joke? Need another example lets use Batman Arkham Knight:
In a fair and perfect world each score would have equal value. However Metacrtic once again boosted the score to give a misleading representation about the quality of the game. Out of the 16 scores given, 4 scores are lower than 81. That means as of now the game should be nowhere near 91 which according to Metactitc means Universal Critical Acclaim. In their current pool, 25% believe the game was average at best or good. Yet, Metacritic, with a score of 91 gives the misleading impression that everyone likes the game and it is AAA. What they did is assign lower values to people who ranked the game low and higher values to people who ranked the game high. Moreover, you can guarantee they will omit reviews since not every website meets Metacritic's criteria or they will omit just because they can.
Its an inappropriate way to review games especially when the numerical values for many websites do not have a the same meaning. To be honest, nowadays they kinda do, but in previous years absolutely not. Also, it is ethically wrong to omit scores simply because it may lower the rating or they deem a particular website's review to be worthless.
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