From one standpoint, it might not seem like much of a big deal.
Then again, ratings have been a major part of the videogame landscape almost from the beginning.
Theres long been a sense of drama and entertainment to scoring games, too.
Its like a penalty shoot-out, or a high-stakes gamble at a roulette wheel.
As a reader, its hard not to be entranced by the drama of it all.
Ad content continues below
Gradually, however, things have begun to shift in the games industry.
Games are no longer finished, packaged and delivered as they once were.
They can be fixed up with patches and expanded with additional content over a period of months or years.
Conversely, a perfectly decent MMO could be ruined by a later update which tips its delicate balance.
Then we come to aggregate websites like Metacritic.
For several years, Metacritic has held a worrying amount of sway over the industry.
Some researchers, meanwhile, have even argued that Metacritics means of arriving at its scores areshaky at best.
In short: its meant less interesting and innovative games.
Of course, the changing face of the videogame scene needs to be taken into account.
But criticism is never perfect.
It never has been, and never will be.
Like the games themselves, reviews are written by human beings, and scored by human beings.
Sure, theyre subjective, and imperfect, and you may even think theyre sometimes wrong.
But theyre also part of our discourse and the back-and-forth chatter of our cultural landscape.
A scores value lies not in the score itself, but the thought and human judgement behind it.
