I have not been a fan of Metacritic since day one. I have been asked multiple times to join up with Metacritic for our review scores. I kept pushing back because I felt that Metacritic was actually doing an industry a disservice, while never meaning to do that in the first place.

Eventually I stopped putting number scores in our reviews and just let the text speak for itself. I can't remove myself any further from Metacritic than that. The problem is, the industry at large relies very heavily on the numbers that do end up on Metacritic. The average review score does away with any heart and soul that reviewers put into their work. It boils everything down into a single number.

Publishers have become more and more reliant on hitting that 90+ Metacritic score, but it has pushed them into reaching for these goals in some pretty shady ways. Metacritic itself isn't a bad idea, but the power it has gained over the years has surely corrupted the direction the industry is currently going in.