Metascore?

[Latinnus]

What happened to the Metascore? I found it quite useful sometimes as a guideline to discover / play new games. Any chance that a ranking from an external entity (any 0-100 ranking system) could be re-implemented in Steam?

I still use the user comments as a guideline, but I am a "number" person, an that 0-100 was perfect for my "OCD".

[Spawn of Totoro]

It is up to the developer to display the Metascore. Not all games have a Metascore either.

[Latinnus]

Yes... but before it was able to order the steam games in store by metascore. Nowadays we dont even have that option. I found it useful. May be one guy in a million, but that is what I think :)

[Echo Demon]

I feel like, but im not sure, that metascore was attached to an old website that used to conglomerate reviews into a... metascore. over the years I wound up with the impression that it became more or less a clearing house for marketing departments. I may be wrong, if so initialize lawsuit.

[Random Reference #98]

If it's just about the numbers you can see the percentage of positive user reviews if you hover over a game's user rating on its store page and all the different user ratings(very positive, mostly positive, etc) represent different ranges of positive ratings, for example overwhelmingly positive requires 95% or more of user reviews to be positive.

Not really the place for it but Metacritic has taken allot of criticism and for good reason so personally I don't mind it not showing up on a store page, especially since I've found the Steam user review percentages to be a much better indicator of a game's quality.

[Latinnus]

@Random Reference - Dont get me wrong, I do find the user ratings very useful, and I have considered them quite a lot for indi games for instance. However, when it comes to decision making, I like to hear the several sides of it - what people liked, what people hated and what the "experts" of the topic say.

Places where you could find that would be rottentomatos for movies or metacritic.

Sometimes the "experts" overhype things, other times its the community. For instance, I grew up with the 3 first Star Wars movies, and after watching and re-watching them over and over again, I still fail to understand how Boba Fett became such a strong icon.

Gamewise speaking for example, I recall "Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons". The community loved it and sometimes even becomes aggressive when someone says it is not a brilliant master piece, but personally, I think it fails to deliver as a game and storywise it is not anything that we haven't seen before any place else. I saw it as a good bedtime story to tell your grandkids. I even reviewed it, if you are curious to see what I thought of it at it's full extent. This would be one that I would be curious to see the score of an "expert" for instance.

You have Gothic 1 to 3 which doesnt have great reviews due to many technical flaws, but the people loved it (me included).

And more recently you have the GTA V, which received high marks from the critics, but gamers are giving reasonable but not outstanding reviews. My gf got it for PS3 and quoting from her experience "it was more of the same".

Furthermore, people mostly comment on the game when they absolutely hate it or loved it.
When someone finds something "just OK" they often fail to convey that message, and knowing if something is "just OK" is equally important as knowing if it is great or crap.

Critics and users sometimes will have divergent or convergent opinions. I think having both parameters could be helpful to make a decision. Not essential, not the only way to do it, but at least, a nice to have :)