Not too long ago, I received an e-mail from Shawn Elliott, currently of 2K Boston and formerly of Ziff-Davis, about participating in a big e-mail discussion about reviews with a bunch of other writers, like MTV's Stephen Totilo, Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander, What They Play's John Davison, and more.
We went 'round and 'round for a couple of weeks there, and now the first segment, which covers review scores, is now available for your perusal. As a warning, it's around 16,000 words.
Review scores are certainly an interesting place to start, as they've been the cause of most review-related controversy and Internet message board flame-war nonsense over the last decade. As someone who has, at times, faced the brunt of said message boards, you'd think that I'd be on the "let's eliminate scores" side of things. But that's just madness. The scores themselves aren't the issue. It's how those scores, either alone or in aggregate, are used by the industry that's the problem. It's hearing from PR people that we only gave a game a certain score so that we could appear to be controversial on Metacritic that's the problem. It's getting pleading e-mails from developers who get smaller (or get no) royalty payments for their game because they're on a contract that ties bonuses to review averages that's the problem.
But I won't type your ear off... or... I won't type your eyes off, I guess. This thing is already super long. But if you're in the "fascinated by reviews" camp, you'll probably find it to be pretty interesting.