Fanboys, they approach leisure activities with religious zeal and defend their console of choice with dogmatic ferocity.  Fanboys have had “gentlemanly discussions” with some of the writers here at Ripten, more or less, but no one fought it out with them like X-play’s Adam Sessler. I caught up with Adam to discuss Killzone 2, gaming journalism, and the fanboy plague that corrupts message boards and comment sections like The Flood.  Oops, Halo reference, here they come…

When X-play gave Killzone 2 a sterling five out of five, Xbox 360 fanboys and, inexplicably, PS3 fanboys complained.  The Xbox faithful said it could never be that good and the PS3 faithful somehow accused Sessler of everything from giving out the high score begrudgingly to attributing Killzone 2’s high score to Microsoft payoffs (wha?).  Sessler responded by picking out individual posters and verbally grounding them into paste in his Sessler Soapbox.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, please, clear the children from the room and check out his Samuel L. Jackson-scale rant.

Zungre:  Hey, what’s up Adam, thanks for taking the time to talk to us, man.

Sessler:  No problem at all.

Zungre:  I really enjoy your Sessler’s Soapboxes, especially the recent ones about Killzone 2 and I just wanted to ask you, in your time in game journalism, has fanboy hostility ever been this bad?  Is it really at an all time high?

Sessler:  Oh, I would actually say it’s at an all time high.  I mean, there was always some stuff like that back in the old days, but it seemed to be at least incorporated into a grounded discussion about the merit of the consoles or the games that were exclusive to those consoles.  Where as now it seems to be fully disassociated from that, and it’s kind of, “I bought this and I need to justify it to myself”.  I mean, obviously, all the comments themselves are incredibly obnoxious, but it’s more that how much space it takes up on our message boards and other people’s message boards, that, you know, people who would like to maybe use it to foster an interesting discussion and enlighten themselves really can’t get in there because these people just pop in constantly.

Zungre:  So, it’s almost ruining entire message boards.

Sessler:  Yeah, I mean, I’ve always joked that the Internet serves only to give voice to those I didn’t want to hear from [laughs].  I mean, it’s supposed to be an area where you can have interesting discussions of ideas on topics and you don’t have to use the mainstream media, but unfortunately it does allow for too many voices to get in there and it’s just, so juvenile [laughs].

Sessler opening a can of verbal whoop ass.

Zungre:  I wonder why is it that in most message boards and a lot of comments that you see on youtube, that everything seems so middle school?  Why does that voice or that vibe seem to be dominating instead of logical, normal discussion?

Sessler:  Obviously, there’s the role of anonymity, but I like how you said middle school because what we all don’t know is what age these people are.  I would like to think that they’re ten years old given the lack of intelligence that’s demonstrated.  I think it’s a mixture of young people who think that’s how you voice an argument or they’re not able to carefully construct one and other people who just, you know, I think there’s a lot of people out there that I think are just spoilers.  And I think there’s also some, and they’re definitely on our message boards, who are just borderline pathological.  There’s one guy on our boards who continually posts this conspiracy theory about who owns us, especially from back in the Paul Allen Tech TV days, and somehow that means we’re owned by Microsoft.

And it’s not so much that he states that, but that he states that continually and just reposts the exact same thing to the point where it’s a little disconcerting for me because this guy clearly doesn’t have much of life outside of that and seems so fixated on people and things he has no control over and has decided they’re his mortal enemy.

Zungre:  Yeah, in your video response to the Killzone 2 comments, you seemed to be most serious about those posts that, like you said, were trying to impugn your integrity as a journalist.

Sessler:  Why I use the “do you fuck your mother” line is because, obviously we, and I’m talking about myself and my colleagues on various sites, you yourself, we do pride ourselves in taking our job seriously and respecting the necessary objectivity in reporting and the lack of, obviously, taking money when we do these reviews, that to charge that from someone, and from the same position of anonymity I wanted to put it in the context of, that’s a very, very serious statement to make.  And I know they’re doing it whimsically, and they probably don’t understand that, whimsy or not, that’s an absolutely inappropriate thing to say, just as much as, you know, implying that you have familiar relations with your own mother.

Ripten, alone, burns thousands of surplus dollars from Microsoft payoffs every month. We call it the “Rip Ten Thousand” because we’ve got so much money, we can make jokes like that in a recession.

Zungre:  Right, right.  Hey, I wanted to ask you about one thing.  I saw your most recent Soapbox and you talked about how multiplayer sometimes takes away from assets for developing a good single player game, which i completely agree with.  I mean, I played Stranglehold multiplayer online and it was the saddest day of my life.

Sessler:  Yeah [laughs].

Zungre:  But, you know, I wanted to ask you about that because in the review of Killzone 2 you guys said that Killzone 2 could have really used some co-op.  And I wanted to know how you felt about that and give you the opportunity to justify that comment.

Sessler:  Yeah, just so you know, I was not the one who personally reviewed Killzone 2, it was Mr. Sark, Scott Robinson on our staff, and I don’t think he was wrong in doing that [laughs].  More or less, what he was trying to say is that, obviously the game got a 5 out of 5, [and] the game by its nature would be perfect for co-op.  And that some of the weaknesses that were in the single player game, which I personally do see, which is not the best pacing that kind of makes all the set pieces so memorable, could have been bolstered by allowing also for co-op, because the combat of the game is so much fun.  And I think that we all know that when you’re playing with someone else in a single player game, story kind of takes a back seat.  Sometimes in reviews you’re talking to the audience, sometimes you’re kind of talking to the developer as well, as in “be aware of this.”

I’m happy you brought that one up because what precipitated in some of the rant about the Killzone 2 review, and the postings on it, is that it was very evident that people went to our site, they saw the score and they looked at the pros and cons, yet didn’t read the body.  So, in the Cons it said “could use Co-op” or “No Co-op” as if somehow that was a really serious point that we were trying to make and no, if you read the body of the text it’s far more a nuanced statement that’s made with regard to co-op in the game.

You have to fight the spider-Nazi looking Hellghast alone, soldier.

Zungre:  Right, right.  And you know what, I’m so glad you talked about that because I remember one of the comments you really made fun of was the guy who said that Gears 2 got a 9.5 and Killzone 2 got a 9.4.  And it just made me remember, I think it was, “Innovation vs. Innumeration“, your soapbox where you talked about just this thing about numbered scores and about how you don’t like them.  I’d like you to talk about that a little bit, and where can we move as journalists to get away from numbered scores?  Because personally, I don’t like the 10 point scale, I don’t think it’s good at what it does.

Sessler:  No, and to be clear, I don’t think numbered scores period are good.  I would even say that on the show.  If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have numbered scores because that would force you to pay attention to the either video or the written review we have available.  [laughs] I mean, people work hard to put those things together and I can’t stand the fact that no one pays attention until they hear that number.  Obviously, I prefer the five point scale as opposed to the ten point scale, because I think anything below a five just reads as a crappy game, so it’s kind of, you know, pointless.

Zungre:  Oh, totally agree.

Sessler:  If I had to do a numbered score and, once again could have my druthers, I would probably do a four point scale because i don’t like the 3 [laughs].

Zungre:  Oh really?

Sessler:  Yeah.  But the fact is, the reason why we still have the scale the way that we do, obviously we’ve had the five point scale for a while and to make a change like that is a very, very difficult thing to do, because you’ve trained your readership or your viewership on that scale.  I also think that for all websites, we can’t move away from the numbers because, unfortunately, we are still businesses, and we would hurt ourselves if we didn’t have that easy access evaluation of a game, because as I said earlier, so many people won’t read it.  We’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Almost anyone out there would just as soon not have the numbered scores, but until the population is willing to educate itself and actually look at these reviews as something that’s more an evaluation and discussion about the game rather than some sort of consumer product, good or bad evaluation, I don’t think it’s going to change.  More or less, we need smarter readers [laughs].

Zungre:  [Laughs]  You know what, I really do get upset about some of the comments that pop up on Ripten and some of the other gaming sites that I see.  You talked about this thing called the “Cult of Exceptionalism,” and Adam, I have to say, I absolutely love that term, and I had never heard it before you said it.

Sessler:  I made it up. [laughs]

Zungre: [Laughs] No but it seriously is fantastic because it gave me a term for something I had been seeing and it’s just the thing that happens on the Internet so much where either a game is the most amazing thing that ever happened and it fathered your children or it completely sucks and it’s completely devoid of any worth.  So why do you think this happens, why do you think people are caught up in this idea?

Sessler:  I think it has a lot to do with the media and I think if you wanted to see where you really see that practiced would be in national politics.  When you see bills or politicians.  I mean just look at the Stimulus Bill, that while there is actual cooperation on what’s happening between the Republicans and the Democrats right now, the statements that are being made are, “This bill is completely evil, it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad.” And what really happens on that political sphere really does infiltrate other areas of discourse.

And just the media itself.  It’s not able to convey news in a nuanced style because they’re afraid they’re not going to be able to hold your attention.  So it’s either “this is the worst thing that’s ever happened” or “this is the best thing that’s ever happened.” Or “this is going to kill you” or “this is going to save your life,” and when it comes down to evaluations of cultural products it’s only “this is the best thing ever” or “this is the worst” and there can’t be a middle ground that also justifies that this is still worth your attention and your interest.

Zungre: Right, and I see a lot of games that are really good games, maybe not the best games, that are swept up in that undertow of that Cult of Exceptionalism, like you said.  And they don’t even get noticed.

Sessler:  We’re saying “this is really worth your time, it’s just not the best.”  That’s all [laughs].

Oh, Legendary, I know you weren’t as bad as everyone said…

Zungre:  And we’re so obsessed with the best, I think, in America, so it’s just very sad.  But hey, really quick before we finish up here, I just wanted to ask you some questions, journalist to journalist.  You’ve been doing this for how many years?  About ten years now?

Sessler:  About ten and a half.  Yeah, it will be eleven in July.

Zungre:  Ok, now what’s something that you’re really excited for?  In the arc of the gaming industry that you’ve seen, what’s something that your really excited for in the future of gaming?  Where do you see us going?

Sessler:  That’s a good question.  Two of the games that really stand out to me from last year are Fable 2 and Fallout 3.  Because they’re deep, rich, articulated worlds.  There’s such a sense of, who was designing this, they know so much more about the world than even what’s present in the game.  And that, you really feel that you’re in somebody else’s imagination.  And I’m seeing more and more of that.  I don’t know, to me that’s an absolute thrill and I think that those two games are the beginning of a sense of really getting in somebody else’s imaginative playground, where you just literally lose yourself.

Even when I was reviewing Fable 2…  Usually when you do a review you have an eye towards “I gotta get this done because I need to get it up by the time the embargo lifts.”  But in [Fable 2] I kept on catching myself just dithering around just enjoying all the small details.  The same thing is happening in Fallout 3, which luckily, I chose not to review because I wanted to indulge myself as much as possible in that one [laughs].

Zungre: Very cool.  What’s something you’re glad we’ve left behind?

Sessler:  Well we haven’t completely left swimming levels behind, but that’s one thing [laughs].

One thing which we are leaving behind is the abject sadism that was in a lot of video games. I’m obviously a big defender for violence in video games, in the fact that it is an adult medium, but I also think that just justifying the fact that there should be violence in video games isn’t the right thing.  Still, there needs to be utilization.  I look to a game like Soldier of Fortune, which I found to be just abhorrent in every stretch of the imagination.  It almost encouraged you to do horrible things to other human beings.  There is much less of that.  There’s still very violent games, but it seems to work within the context and rationale of the world that has been presented inside of the game.

This is one of the only gaming images that instantly makes me feel anxious and confused.

Zungre: Right, ok.  Hey Adam thank you so much for the interview.

Sessler:  No problem at all, thank you very much, I really appreciate how you pay attention to the recent soapboxes that I worked on [laughs].  Good luck with the website.

If you’d like to see more of Adam check out X-Play and the rest of the always insightful Sessler’s Soapbox.

Joystiq reports that a demo of the much anticipated (by some) Killzone 2 will be hitting the European PSN on February 5. In the US, PS3 owners will have to pre-order the game at GameStop to get the demo on the same day, or wait until 27 February. Of course, cunning PS3 owners will find a way of downloading the European demo on their Euro accounts, I’m sure. Hugo Bustillos, a UK Sony representative, has noted that we’ll see the first two areas of the game’s first level, ‘Corinth River,’ with a beach landing and a warehouse. Also, the demo will include a tutorial, although I doubt it can match a certain game’s tutorial.

This is good news for people like me, who haven’t really seen much about the game, but want to know why people are talking about it so much. If the game is anything like the mediocre last game, even if it does look pretty, it won’t be getting a free pass from me. That said, pretty graphics!

Having not ever been an owner of a PS3 or PSP, I wasn’t aware of the bias that retailers are showing towards the “black” console.  One of the guys that I work with is a huge PlayStation fan.  Not a fanboy, mind you, but a normal person who happens to like the PS3 over the 360.

I’ve heard him talk about it before, but I’ve always passed it off as simple bad customer service or people just being overly hyped about a 360 game over the PlayStation ones, but after “Emergence Day 2″, I was shocked and appalled at the level of anti-PS3 sentiment he had to deal with.

It all started with him telling me that every time he went to his local game store, a small “mom and pop” type store where he has shopped for quite a while, they constantly bugged him to show up to the midnight release of Gears of War 2.  On every visit, it seemed, he had to remind the shop owner that he did not have a 360 and had no intention of buying one.

I chalked this up to the store owner, a gamer himself, just being hyped about the release of the game.  Gears of War 2 is a huge title, after all.  After delving into it some more over several days of conversation, I soon learned that it was much more heinous than just a simple overzealous game store proprietor.

My friend went out to purchase Resistance 2 at a huge retail chain (which shall remain unnamed), and because the games are locked behind a glass case, he had to ask a sales associate for assistance.  He asked the clerk if he could purchase a game, and the clerk dutifully took out his keys and opened the 360 section and grabbed up a copy of Gears 2.  Quite confused, my friend asked the guy what he was doing to which the clerk replied “You want Gears, right?  That’s what everyone else is getting.”

My friend said no, he doesn’t want Gears and that he didn’t even own a 360 — he was a PS3 gamer.  The clerk looked at him like he was crazy, unsure of what to do next.  He then told the clerk what games he wanted (I believe it was Resistance 2 and the PSP version of EndWar), and the clerk just looked even more aghast.  He did get the games he was after, but the treatment he received was disturbing to say the least.

Talking further with my friend, he said that this sort of thing happens all the time.  He told me that he’s never able to talk to sales people familiar with the PS3 as everyone working in all the local stores are 360 gamers and don’t know anything about the PS3.  It has even gone so far that he stopped shopping at the local store he frequented because they never got Sony games in on time, unlike their instantly up-to-date 360 library.  Now he only buys used movies there, and refuses to purchase games from the small local game shop.

If it was just that small local game store, I’d just chalk it up to that particular owner’s own gaming preferences affecting his business, but my friend says he has to deal with it all the time at pretty much all the gaming and retail stores that sell games that he goes to.  Hell, this is Lancaster, PA, we’re talking about, so maybe there is some sort of Amish influence against the more technologically advanced system in favor of the more tolerable systems.  I don’t know.

The entire thing was quite a learning experience and has enlightened me to exactly why some PS3 fanboys are so rabid in their devotion to their system of choice.  They have to be to put up with all the negative stereotypes surrounding the system and its owners, as well as the horrible treatment people trying to purchase the system receive from retailers.

It’s a time for change, not just here where I am in America, but all over the world.  It’s time to end the hate.  The White systems of the Wii and the 360 need to accept their once powerful but now downtrodden Black brother in the console world.  We need to reach out to each other in peace and unity and proclaim to the game developers “Yes we can!” 

We CAN have games come out on multiple systems without arguing over two lousy frames per second.  We CAN rationally discuss our differing opinions on games without degenerating into crying, rabid fanboys.  We CAN live in a world with Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 together on the same shelf without getting into fist fights over which is better.

Yes.  We. Can.

Enough of the Metacritic nonsense right? Well, the story we broke a few weeks ago — the same one that so many sites forgot to source us on (it’s ok, we forgive you) — has apparently been eating away at G4TV host, Adam Sessler.

This installment of Sessler’s Soapbox features a relentless rant on the topic. So much so that I’m not even sure he stops to breathe. Check it out after the jump.

A few weeks ago, we ran a story about LittleBigPlanet’s Metacritic user score: a measly 6.3. We spoke to the site’s founder Marc Doyle about the matter and were informed that it was only that low due to rampant fanboys on the warpath, attempting to sabotage the PS3 and its games. This inevitably continued with more low user scores: Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2. Well, it seems that now, fanboys have started trying to influence the critic’s score, by flaming LittleBigPlanet on the site’s forums.

While posting on this thread, an unnamed Metacritic user and certified fanboy claims they were wrongfully banned for what the cite deemed “crude and rude” statements. The complaint was then carried over by the user as an attempted news post on gaming news site N4G.

In the Metacritic thread itself, a series of users voiced concerns that not every 10/10 score for Sony’s huge IP LittleBigPlanet had been posted to the site. The users kick and scream because their favorite system’s biggest game isn’t scored as high as they’d like — beaten only by GTA4. We spoke to Marc about the matter, and he summed up the idiocy neatly:

As long as I have a page for a game on Metacritic, I post every review for that game from the publications I track. It’s not an automated process and we’re human, so we will occasionally make a mistake on inputting a score or I’ll miss a review. But when it’s called to our attention, we post the review immediately. But it is our policy to post every review from every publication we cover, so long as we have a page for that game on our site. We don’t pick and choose which reviews we post.

In case you didn’t realize already, Metacritic only syndicates review scores from registered publications- ones that are chosen by Metacritic to represent the critical opinion of the games. If your independent blog gives LBP a 10/10, and you’re not syndicated on Metacritic, it’s not going to be on the list. This means it’s not going to be listed as a review on the game’s page.

While the very nature of reviews is to be subjective (it is the reviewer’s opinion, after all), Metacritic is certainly not biased towards one console or another. In addition to this, the site never claims to have an exhaustive list of reviews for any given game; it just does its best with the resources available to it (in this case, the publications signed up with Metacritic).

When will it end? Shortly after we talked to Metacritic founder Marc Doyle about LittleBigPlanet’s low user score, the wrath of Sony fanboys was unleashed upon Gears of War 2’s user score as a revenge hit. It now appears that the 360 fanboys just wouldn’t stand for that, even though they seem to have started this in the first place, and have retaliated by butchering Resistance 2.

I really don’t understand the point of all of this. It seems that the whole idea of abusing user ratings really took off when people slammed that dumb bitch who misrepresented Mass Effect on Fox News, busting the rating of her book on Amazon down to under one star. These fanboys misusing Metacritic, however, don’t seem to understand that while Metacritic offers them the ability to voice their opinions, the reality is that the user reviews don’t really matter.

This is very much the opposite of Amazon’s system where the user reviews are the only reviews on the site. Low user ratings on Amazon make much more of a negative impact on buying decisions than low user ratings on Metacritic simply because Metacritic features the Metascore, aggregating reviews from actual industry professionals.

If you look at this logically, which I’m sure is beyond the abilities of the common fanboy mentality, you will see that trying to wreck a game through the Metacritic user score is not going to work. The average user is smart enough to know that these scores are bullshit. While Metacritic itself is an excellent source for consumers to get the general consensus about a game, the user scores are no different than user scores anywhere else on the net, which unfortunately means they are susceptible to this kind of pettiness.

I know you fanboys may feel some sense of accomplishment or that you are helping your side win the console war, but you’re wrong. You are only hurting yourselves and your peers, and you make the existence of the user review mean less than it should. You are the belligerent, fist-fighting hockey dads of the gaming community, and quite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Please, just stop.

Liberal. Conservative. Fanboy.

These words have taken on new meanings in the age of internet and anonymous hate-spamming. And, just like pundits and politicos, gamers have their preferred warhorse.

But when you show your support for a system you instantly become “fanboy,” and are likely to get a face full of flamer comments within minutes. People get defensive. People get offensive. And most frequently, they degenerate into juvenile debates that go a lot like playground calls of “my dad can beat up your dad.” Sure, its never going to happen, its just that people really like to be assholes to each other.

But you already knew this, if you have any internet proficiency. So lets ask the question, what is a fanboy, and is it really so bad to be one?

Well, Brad Hilderbrand, at kombo, dared to ask that question, and his editorial inspired me to share my opinion with you, in a time when it’s not only gaming that’s full of name calling, and the side we chose has come to be a derogatory term.

I will admit, that for the better part of my years, I was a Nintendo fanboy. I owned mostly Nintendo systems and loved Nintendo games. Lately, I’ve become quite attached to the Xbox 360. I do not own a PS3, but that’s mostly because I’m fucking poor and can’t afford everything I want. That’s life. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like Sony. In fact, if I had the opportunity, I would buy a PS3 and some really great games to go with it, because all systems have their good and bad parts, and in the end, it comes down to having fun.

So lets put down the hate words and really come together as a nation, as a world, as a community of people with a shared interest, and maybe if we’re lucky, all the ‘responsible people’ who don’t play games will notice that we can get along without resorting to playground name-calling tactics.

Just as long as none of those dumbass PC douchebags who think their $2,000 system is hot shit come along. Seriously, fuck those guys.

That’s sarcasm. Put out your flaming torches, I own a PC too.

After reading about the suspiciously low Metacritic user score of 6.3 for Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, I decided to dig into the story a little deeper. For those unfamiliar with the situation, allow me to fill you in.

Metacritic, who by and large is considered the main source for aggregated scoring on the web, offers two score flavors (one for critics and one for users). This is the case across most sites. The problem is, when you are considered the “go to” resource for pretty much anything, there’s a chance that people will make a big deal out of something on your site that they would normally overlook on another.

That said, this specific instance pertains to the scores currently presented on Metacritic for the LittleBigPlanet game. The first, a 9.5 at the time of this article, represents the aggregated score based on several well accepted gaming review sites such as GamePro, IGN, and EuroGamer. The second, more controversial score, is a 6.3, and is compiled via the average score given by a pool of 2,225 user votes.

Gaming news site N4G, which pulls related news from various websites around the web, features a blog post titled “Fanboys pull LittleBigPlanet’s Metacritic score down”, discussing this very topic. Reading some of the furious responses to the score piqued my interest, so I visited the Metacritic site to see first hand what all the fuss was about. Clicking on the “Read user comments” link near the overall user score brings you to the bottom of the page, where the following statement by Marc Doyle, the sites founder, awaits:

“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.”

This prompted me to contact Marc directly in order to get a more complete picture of the situation from his end. Specifically, I felt that gamers would want some clarity regarding the portion of his comment stating that most of the user reviews submitted for LBP were made “before said users [had] played the game.”

Firstly, I wanted to know if he would consider eliminating user reviews submitted before the full release of the game, i.e. reviews clearly submitted based on the open beta alone, or even worse, no experience with the game at all, to which he responded:

” … we won’t be clearing those old scores from LBP when it launches, but we will only post reviews from people who have clearly played the game. All the reviews from fanboys and haters who haven’t played it will just be left out. That is true for all products on Metacritic. Humans actually read all of those user reviews (so we can delete profanity, spoilers, etc.), and those humans are told not to post reviews from people who clearly haven’t played the game.”

He then added that the burden of proof they demand from users submitting reviews prior to a game’s release date is be much higher than those doing so after the fact.

Slightly confused, I asked Marc for some clarification as to how the game could have such a low score, if his team was manually looking over each user review submitted. He stated:

“All the [numeric] scores “count” in the overall user average and total votes tally, but we only post a subset of those as [written] user reviews.”

When talking about the future of the site, as well as other things they are doing to help eliminate this type of fanboy nonsense in the future, Marc had the following to say:

“There will be a Metacritic re-design in the future (can’t say exactly when), and as a part of that process, we’re going to beef up our user registration and community functions so that “stuffing the ballot box” won’t be nearly as easy.

The original idea behind allowing users to write user reviews (and vote on them) was to allow those people (like me) who see advanced screenings of movies and sometimes play games ahead of their true release date to write reviews and have them posted on Metcritic. That’s still the case now.

Over the years, people have, by and large, not exploited the fact that you can vote early. Only recently have people started voting en masse for (and against) games like they’ve done with LBP.

Metacritic’s primary “product” is the Metascore, which is the weighted average of scores from professional critics. We include user reviews for obvious reasons, but because that score can never be 100% reliable, it’s given secondary importance on the site. For example, you can’t sort or search by user scores for any products. That will likely change with the redesign.”

Marc obviously has a solid understanding of the space, its evolution, and the challenges that lie ahead. The fact of matter though, is that currently, anyone can visit Metacritic and leave an abnormally low user score, skewing the average, without necessarily saying anything of value at all. I asked him if this was something the site would be revisiting in the immediate future.

” … nothing should change in this regard until we do the redesign. That tally will remain a raw tally, and only the printed user reviews will be “vetted” as useful reviews from people that we think actually played the game … “

He closed the topic by adding that the specifics of “whatever [they] do with the voting system moving forward [have] yet to be established.”

With October 27th just around the corner, LittleBigPlanet is four LittleBigDays away from being officially released. So while the current 6.3 Metacritic user score has been getting most of the attention on the net, I (like Marc himself), kindly ask that you shift your focus to the 95 out of a 100 Metacritic score the game is receiving from the mainstream media. Everything else will sort itself out in due time.