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About the MetaMeter

The MetaMeter is designed to help consumers make purchasing decisions and find games they love. How? VSG aggregates video game reviews from professional critics to produce a measurement of critic consensus, which we call the MetaMeter Score. In short, games receiving more than 70% support from critics, according to defined criteria, receive a VSG recommendation to Play It.
WHAT IS THE METAMETER?​

The MetaMeter Score – based on the opinions of hundreds of professional gaming critics – is gaining prominence as a trusted measurement of critical consensus. A MetaMeter score is calculated for a game after it receives at least fifteen (15) reviews, through a simple, transparent process that involves just four steps.

  • Step One: Collect

    VSG crawls the publications on our Publications List, and collects data (review scores, date, author, snippet) for a game.

  • Step 2: Analyze Scored

    Scored reviews are normalized to a 100-point scale (7.0/10.0 becomes 70/100; 4/5 stars becomes 80/100). Scored reviews greater than or equal to 75/100 are classified as "Recommended."

  • Step Three: Analyze Un-Scored

    Un-scored reviews are analyzed and classified as either "Recommended" or "Not Recommended" under a "general favorability" framework. When the decision involves a judgment call, the game is given the benefit of doubt.

  • Step Four: Calculate Score

    The MetaMeter is calculated by dividing the number of positive reviews by the total number of reviews aggregated.

PLAY IT

When at least 70% of reviews for a game are positive, a red heart is displayed to indicate its PLAY IT status.

SKIP IT

When less than 70% of reviews for a game are positive, a red broken heart is displayed to indicate its SKIP IT status.

WAITING

Games with less than 15 reviews, or where VSG is not yet prepared to issue a recommendation, are indicating by the clock.

WHAT ARE THE RATING TIERS?

The Play It / Skip It dichotomy is analogous to the binary decision consumers face (to buy or not to buy). But this binary scale has its limitations, one of which is that it treats all games above or below the threshold as being the same.

VSG’s Rating Tiers address this issue, helping consumers further differentiate between the good games and the truly great games. A game’s rating tier is determined by its Average Critic Score (ACS) – which is calculated exactly as it sounds.

  • Platinum (>92)

    Games rated Play It with an ACS greater or equal to 92.

  • Gold (86-91.99)

    Games rated Play It and ACS greater or equal to 86 but less than 92.

  • Silver (80-85.99)

    Games rated Play It and ACS greater or equal to 80 but less than 86.

  • Bronze (75-79.99)

    Games rated Play It and ACS greater or equal to 75 but less than 80.

HARD MODE
Description coming soon.
CURATION

VSG analyzes hundreds of game reviews weekly. The MetaMeter collects game reviews from MetaMeter-approved critics and publications every day, generating MetaMeter Scores. VSG carefully analyzes those reviews and chooses a representative pull-quote.

MetaMeter scores are updated and new reviews are added to our database frequently.