I mean neither is Swen.You were talking about mainstream reviews I never said anything about Steam until after and he was also talking about metacritic.
Swen is/was directly involved with sales/publishers. Journalists barely understand games. The other article also mentioned meta-critic as indicator for sales.
Many semi-casual players follow GS or IGN and I am sure they would give a try for games they don't know reaching 9+, especially if there is a consensus in the media that the game is good (which essentially is what metacritic is). Steam also put on his front page some selective scores to promote the game.
You don't have to understand games to understand the business side of them, just like you don't have to be a pro E-sports player to be an excellent E-sports commentator and being an excellent one doesn't make you a good commentator either.
The article is from 2014 a lot has changed very rapidly and even then it's still just speculation.
Metacritic alone has significantly changed since 2014 especially its reputation.
People also have more of an understanding of how Metacritic works now, for example how scores from certain media outlets like IGN actually weigh heavier than other sites on metacritic which only makes people take it even less seriously.
I am not saying that no one will buy a game because of a better score, what I am saying is that it doesn't have a significant impact except for Steam reviews because of the nature of Steam reviews.
It's also important to remember that correlation is not causation.
Most games with a high rating especially a '' critic '' one have it because the production value is so high and those games also have way higher marketing budgets and fancy grahpics which appeals to the mainstream audience.
Baldur's Gate 3 is sorta in the middle I guess.
Either way, your claim is that Baldur's Gate 3 has a bad reputation because certain media outlets didn't give it a high enough score.
I think that anyone who's paying attention knows that's not true, the game has been incredibly well-received.
And even in regards to Metacritic it doesn't even have a Metacritic score to begin with yet.
A critical review is better than a fan review. Praising unfinished product at this stage would be rather untrue.
Alanah Pearce covered the '' critics '' vs fans part too.
Basically, and remember that she used to be a game journalist at IGN herself and is close friends with A LOT of game journalists.
Game journalists write reviews for their social media followings and each other, that's why there's such a disconnect between game journalists ( or other journalists ) and the fans.
Most fans are totally aware of this, or they at least speculate that they're paid off ( which is what she was responding to ).
If anything I'd probably argue that '' critics '' are more biased than fans and the general public are.
Which is also why the general publics reviews ultimately matters more especially from the pov of someone in the general public too to begin with.
That's not to say that fans aren't biased or that things like reviewbombings etc can't happen there's always going to be exceptions.
But there's a reason why the Last Jedi was received well by critics but not the fans ( a Star Wars movie part of a trilogy is still bound to be successful tho ).
Not saying that you can't like the movie, but just that the '' critics '' care more about getting pats on the back from their friends, getting invited back to fancy parties and reviewing things for their friends and are often also more culturally involved so cultural drama also plays a much larger role while most people aren't even aware of it altogether and even less care.
We don't live in the times of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel anymore, we live in the age of the internet where people don't need to rely on '' critics '' anymore.
And things change VERY rapidly in just a couple of years.
