Any one score of a game means fuck all. It is one person's opinion on an item that could have nothing to do with a game at all. Maybe their publishing website demanded a quick turn around, a girlfriend left them, rent is late, maybe their parents died, or maybe some jackass from the 7th level of hell put a medium sauce packet in the diablo sauce packets and they came home to be one sauce packet short of a perfect meal. Any of these could lead to an individual giving a score or a rating they did. Now most of us can shrug off a bad score for a title but what if our gods Metacritic or the Steam score tells us that this terrible experience is not unique. Then we have social proof.
Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior in a given situation. (Wikipedia) Think of your first party. You stood around and most likely did more observing then you did acting. You were trying to figure out what the correct behavior was based on your observation of the people around you. While past behavior does affect your decisions, the way people react to your actions do influence what you do or do not continue to do. We use social proof in building our actions when we do not hold enough knowledge of the situation to act comfortably on our own.
This is easily applied to game reviews. When we don't have knowledge of a game we use the opinions of others to guide our actions. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because it only makes sense that we as people should learn from others to avoid negative experiences. In essence, we trust consensus.
On the other hand, people need to understand that social proof may not be a great thing. Think back to our party. Depending on who the first actors are at the party, the conditions of the party change. If some of the party patrons were of the drinking crowd than the social proof could be nothing more then an unadulterated drinking fest. The next thing you know you are waking up in a bathtub without your pants and you feel like you were hit by a truck. This is a lesson we should take to game scores as well.
There is most likely a game out there you played and liked that was panned for one reason or another. This does not mean your opinion is wrong, its just that there are different people who had a different experience. There simply isn't a deeper explanation than that and no matter how much some troll yells at you that your opinion is wrong, it really isn't. Unless it's that EA is okay then yes, yes it is.
You can attach this phenomenon to more aspects of gaming then just scores. Why do you think it is that younger gamers try much harder to troll then other gamers? Why do you think so many streamers are an archetype of one another? If you are old enough, think about how you decided what you saw as the correct way to act online.
Games scores is a prime example of social proof in games but it is by far not the only example. While it can be helpful, that does not mean that, even as consensus, reviews should be taken as gospel. As a consumer it's best to take a step back and decide, is this action something people are doing because it's a good action or just an action that everyone is doing. You will see that some games are a little more hyped and a little bit more under-hyped then you would have originally thought if you had just viewed their score.
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