metacritics

Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of music, movies, television shows, video games, and books. It assigns a weighted average score to each product, called a Metascore, based on reviews from a variety of sources. The Metascore is presented as a number out of 100 and is color-coded to indicate the general sentiment of the reviews: green for generally favorable, yellow for mixed or average, and red for generally unfavorable.

The website was founded in 1999 by Jason Kottke and Marc Doyle. Metacritic's stated mission is to provide a "scorecard for a film, a TV show, a music album, or a video game." They aim to help consumers make informed decisions by summarizing critical opinions. The site features individual review scores from professional critics, along with excerpts from their reviews. In addition to the Metascore, Metacritic also provides a "User Score," which is an average of ratings submitted by registered users of the site.

The weighting of individual critic scores in the Metascore calculation is proprietary and not publicly disclosed. This has led to some debate about the methodology. Critics of Metacritic sometimes argue that the aggregate scores can oversimplify nuanced reviews or that the weighting system may favor certain publications. However, the site remains a popular resource for many seeking an overview of critical reception for various forms of media.