14 DAY TRIAL // Metafuture, a witty gaming blog edited by freelance game writing veteran Matthew J. Gallant, seems set to become an alternative, more accurate Game Rankings. The idea is to adjust the current system by inflating or deflating the review scores of various sites based upon their history of awarding that score multiple times.
The first fruits of Metafuture's undertaking are two graphs detailing the entire history of game review scores on a 1-10 point scale for both IGN and Gamespot. Predictably, the analysis revealed a shift of the bell curve towards the higher end of the scale for both sites. IGN's average review score was 8.0, with a clear preference for whole number scores, and Gamespot, while a little more balanced, has an average score of 7.0 but they give out scores above and below the average a lot more frequently than IGN.
Gamespots description of their rating system reads: "The average rating on GameSpot lies between a high 6 and a low 7, which is fully in line with what we believe is the fairly good quality of the average game on store shelves. Because we do not strictly grade on a curve, we have not set 5.0 as our average rating. We believe the high end of our rating scale (the 8 and 9 range) works suitably well to distinguish truly outstanding games from all the others. However, most games really aren't bad." You draw the conclusions.