An aggregate review score can be a useful tool for illustrating a game's critical reception at a glance. However, it is important to remember that this number represents just one way of summarizing a large amount of data and the individual sources of that data must be considered as well. First and foremost, review aggregators are gatekeepers; the site webmasters are free to include or ignore any review source they choose. While these sites will typically include major English gaming review sources, they can (and do) also include less reliable sites or exclude reliable ones. If there are significant gaps in the breadth of aggregation or very few reliable reviews for a particular game, consider omitting the aggregate score entirely. Also note that the aggregate score is generally the average of all included reviews, a number which obscures the underlying scores that comprise the average. An aggregate score of 75 may consist of numerous "average" reviews or it may consist of reviews clustering in two groups, around 90 and 60, which would appropriately be called "mixed" or "polarized" reviews. Distinguishing between these two possibilities will influence the way that a Reception section is written and aid in understanding the way a game was received.
Metacritic is the primary video game review aggregator used by the industry to benchmark games. Its metascore is accompanied by a short summary statement—such as "generally favorable reviews"—which can be used as a qualitative description of a game's overall reception. It provides broad coverage of games released after 1998. For a minority of games not found on Metacritic (including older games released before 1998), GameRankings is an adequate substitute. Some games have unusually cohesive or unusually divided reception. In these cases, particularly those that fall into Metacritic's "mixed or average reviews" range, OpenCritic may be used to determine the difference between mixed and average using their "Critics' consensus" metric. In the vast majority of cases, one or at most two aggregate scores are sufficient to illustrate a game's reception.
Should this live here, or on the reviews template? (it already lives at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines#Reception)
editAggregated user-submitted content such as "user scores" and "user polls" is not considered reliable because it is susceptible to vote-stacking and demographic skew. Avoid including user reviews, individual or aggregated, in articles.
Comment
editShould live at the guideline, with the template referring to it. -- ferret (talk) 01:18, 8 November 2017 (UTC)