To put it simply, a METASCORE is a weighted average of reviews from top critics and publications for a given movie, TV show, video game, or album.

The basic concept is the same for each of the genres currently included in our site. Let's use a fictional movie--'Iron Chef vs. Godzilla'--as an example.

Our staffers will go through every publication on our Movies Publications list (see below) looking for reviews for Iron Chef vs. Godzilla. For each review found, we will take the score given by the critic and convert it to a 0-100 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review.). These individual critic scores are then averaged together to come up with an overall score.

This overall score, or METASCORE, is a weighted average of the individual critic scores. Why a weighted average? When selecting our source publications, we noticed that some critics consistently write better (more detailed, more insightful, more articulate) reviews than others. In addition, some critics and/or publications typically have more prestige and respect in their industry than others. To reflect these factors, we have assigned weights to each publication (and, in the case of movies and television, to individual critics as well), thus making some publications count more in the METASCORE calculations than others.

In addition, for our movie and music sections, all of the weighted averages are normalized before generating the METASCORE. To put it another way that should be familiar to anyone who has taken an exam in high school or college, all of our movies and albums are graded on a curve. Thus the METASCORE may be higher or lower than the true weighted average of the individual reviews, thanks to this normalization calculation. Normalization causes the scores to be spread out over a wider range, instead of being clumped together. Generally, higher scores are pushed higher, and lower scores are pushed lower. Unlike in high school, this is a good thing, since it provides more of a distinction between scores and allows you to better compare scores across movies (or albums).

The resulting METASCORE, then, is a good indication of how a particular movie/game/album/television show was reviewed. The better the reviews, the higher the score will be; the worse the reviews, the lower the score will be. Ideally, if reviews are completely divided between good and bad, the METASCORE should be close to 50.

To help ensure that METASCORES accurately reflect the reviews given by critics for any particular movie, game, television show or album, we do not display a METASCORE for those items that do not have at least four (4) reviews in our database. Once this minimum number of reviews is reached, the METASCORE will display.

Before the first review for a product is entered, we will display an empty gray placeholder box which indicates "no score yet". As the first, second and third reviews are entered for a given movie, album, game, or TV show, we will indicate the whether those first three reviews are good, bad, or average/mixed with green, red, or yellow "stamps" within the gray field to give our users an idea, generally, as to how the METASCORE will likely turn out.

Items that do not have a METASCORE are marked either with this gray box or "tbd" depending on the space available.

METASCORES can change, and in fact can do so frequently. The main culprit behind these changing scores is the addition of new reviews.

In a perfect world, all of our publications would have a review for the movie, game, television show or album prior to its release. However, in our world, this is not the case, and reviews trickle in over a period of time. Thus as we continue to add reviews over time for a particular products, its METASCORE can fluctuate (sometimes many times within a day, as can be the case with new movies and games). Because the METASCORE is basically an average, it will fluctuate more when a new review is added if there are only a few reviews to begin with, and won't change too much if there already are many reviews.

For major-release movies and television shows, scores typically will not change much over time, as most reviews will be published on or before the day of release. (We will usually get all of those reviews posted by late morning of that day.) For a limited release film, reviews trickle in over time as the film is added to new geographic markets. For games and albums, reviews are even less standard and will show up anywhere from one month before to three to six months after the release date.

Note that the number of reviews is listed at the top of every page, so you can tell at a glance when more reviews have been added. (Shameless Plug:) So to make sure you have the most current METASCORES, be sure to check metacritic.com often!

When you tell a computer to compute the average of B+, 45, 5, and *****, it just looks at you funny and gives an error message. When you tell a computer to compute the average of 83, 45, 50, and 10, it is much, much happier. Thus, in order to make our computers happy (and calculate the METASCORES), we must convert all critics' scores to a 0-100 scale. So for the letter grade scale used by Entertainment Weekly, an A represents 100, and F corresponds to zero, with the other letters falling somewhere in between. Similarly, 4- and 5-star scales and other odd grading scales are all converted to the 0-100 scales you see displayed on each of our movie, game, TV, and music pages.

Of course, we could have performed this conversion behind the scenes, and displayed the original grades on our movie, game, TV and music pages; however, we also wanted to provide you with an easy way to compare the individual critic scores against one another. It is much easier to tell the difference between an 80, a 60, and a 20 than it is to tell the difference between a B+, a $5.25, and a *. We believe that this benefit outweighs any loss in precision caused by the conversion.

And remember, if you really want to know the original grade, just click on the quote from that critic and you'll be taken to the full review.

Many critics include some sort of grade for the movie, album, TV show, or game they are reviewing, whether it is on a 5-star scale, a 100-point scale, a letter grade, or other mark. However, plenty of other reviewers choose not to do this. Hey, that's great... they want you to actually read their review rather than just glance at a number. (Personally, we at Metacritic like to read reviews, which is one of the reasons we include a link to every full review on our site....we want you to read them too!)

However, this does pose a problem for our METASCORE computations, which are based on numbers, not qualitative concepts like art and emotions. (If only all of life were like that!) Thus, our staff must assign a numeric score, from 0-100, to each review that is not already scored by the critic. Naturally, there is some discretion involved here, and there will be times when you disagree with the score we assigned. However, our staffers have read a lot of reviews--and we mean a lot--and thus through experience are able to maintain consistency both from film to film and from reviewer to reviewer. When you read over 200 reviews from Manohla Dargis, you begin to develop a decent idea about when she's indicating a 90 and when she's indicating an 80.

Note, however, that our staff will not attempt to assign super-exact scores like 87 or 43, as doing so would be impossible. Typically, we will work in increments of 10 (so a good review will get a 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100), although in some instances we may also fall halfway in-between (such as a 75).

Several times each year, we will reevaluate our publication lists and may make additions and/or deletions.

* denotes print-only publication (with limited or no web-accessible reviews)

Several other websites that provide links to movie reviews have weighed the quantity vs. quality issue and come out in favor of quantity. These sites typically include links to as many reviews as there are available on the net. And lately, with every Joe Schmo posting a movie review both before and after movie releases, there are quite a few reviews for each movie (we're talking 100's of reviews for the more popular titles). True, some of these Joe Schmos--or at least the Harry Knowles--do have quality sites with useful reviews and information. But the quality of many is inconsistent at best. In addition, there is such a thing as too much information, and statistically, once we include a certain number of reviews in our calculations, adding additional reviews will not change the overall METASCORE much in one direction or another.

Thus we felt that selecting a modest number of higher-quality publications would make the pages of the site easier to read and would maximize the quality of our information.

Choosing which publications and critics to track in each genre is a trickier proposition, and it involves a careful research and study. For games and music, we work to identify publications that (1) are well-regarded in the industry and are known for quality reviews; (2) actually seem to produce quality reviews (or, if not, are so influential in the industry that they have to be included); and (3) have published a good quantity of reviews. Although we typically limited our search to domestic publications, we do include a good number of UK publications in our music calculations, since many of the artists reviewed are from Britain. We also include reviews from top publications from around the world in our games section.

We took these same characteristics into effect when selecting the publications to include in our movies and TV calculations. For movies, however, we also made a point of selecting publications from every region of the country, to ensure that local tastes would be taken into account. True, a very small number of movie publications included in our site probably might not have made the cut if it weren't for their geographic location; however, most of the publications included are of a high quality, and those that are not are weighted accordingly in the formula.

We try to include as many new releases as possible, in a variety of genres. Generally, major pop, rock, rap and alternative releases will be included. We also try to include many indie and electronic artists, as well as major releases in other categories (country, etc.). Occasionally, we will also include import-only items (generally, UK releases) if it appears that they will not be released in the United States in the foreseeable future (otherwise, we will typically wait for the U.S. release). Remember, if an album does not show up in at least 3 of the publications we use, it probably will not be included on the site.

The sheer number of music releases each year (over 30,000 unique titles per year in the U.S. alone--and that's not counting reissues, compilations, etc.), compared to movies and video games, makes it virtually impossible to cover every release; thus, our music section is more selective than our games and movie sections.

Regarding our historical coverage, our database currently goes back to the beginning of 2000, with a handful of releases from 1999. Over time, we will add additional older releases, starting with 1999 and working backwards.

If I have designed, programmed, or produced a particular video or computer game in your database but I am not included on the details/credits for that game, how do I add my name? Also, if you are displaying incorrect credit information for me, how can I arrange for it to be fixed?

Metacritic shares a credits database with our sister site GameFAQs. (See Help page here.)  Please make your credit submissions directly to GameFAQs as described in detail below. The additions and changes to GameFAQS will, in turn, be reflected on Metacritic.

What to do in the following scenarios: 

1) I want to add my name to your database as a credit for one or more games.
In this case, please use the following feedback form:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/contribute/submit_credit.php

Navigate to the proper game and submit the credit. Please only submit the form ONCE. The credit will appear after administrative review. It is not necessary to submit the credit more than once.

Keep in mind that we generally only post credits for people who took active participation in the creation of a game. We do not post credits for non-participating members such as "Quality Assurance", "Special Thanks", "CEO of Company", or anything of this nature.

2) I want to remove my name from one or more falsely credited games
In this case, please use the following feedback form:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/contribute/report_problem.php

Navigate to the proper game and find the false credit to report it. It will be removed after administrative review.

3) It appears that there is another person with the same name as me and our credits are merged!
In this case, please use the following feedback form:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/feedback/index.php?type=21

Please identify yourself, the credits that belong to you, the credits that don't, and some way to distinguish yourself from the other individual (such as a middle initial).

If the other person is not in the video game industry, GameFAQs cannot help you as we only store video game credits.

4) There is some other problem with my credits that isn't addressed above:
In this case, please use the following feedback form:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/feedback/index.php?type=21

Identify yourself and explain your situation. We will attempt to help you as best as we can. Keep in mind that GameFAQs solely deals with linking a name with a credit and a game. We do not deal with profiles, biographies, or anything else that MetaCritic adds to your profile.