10 Hugely Influential People In Gaming You Need To Know About

2. Metacritic - The Review Aggregator With The Power To Destroy

No, Metacritic isn't a person. But the review score aggregator has such immense influence within gaming that it needs to be included here all the same. At base level, this is a website which drives people to buy (or ignore) specific games more than any one gaming press source ever could on its own. On a deeper and far more industry-affecting level, Metacritic can make or break a development studio. That's not groundless hyperbole. Right across the board there are examples of publishers putting development bonuses on the line based on Metacritic ratings; decisions made about future franchise instalments being made with Metacritic scores as a primary motivator; studios shut because this one website, this catch-all of critical opinion, determines that a game simply isn't up to scratch. There's nothing wrong with an aggregate review site, and Metacritic is the go-to source for many who don't feel like trawling the internet for reviews when a simple single score will suffice. And that's precisely the problem: it's one score. But you can't flatten opinion into an average. There is so much riding on that rating - remember the story of Obsidian narrowly missing the 85% Metacritic score that Bethesda set as a target, losing out on a reported $1 million bonus in the process - that it has become more important than perhaps it should be.