For those wondering how it might work.
What you do, is you total the contribution of each site. For example:
Code:
GamesLol + GamesLmao + IGN = 1 + 1 + 1.5 = 3.5.
You then normalise the weighting based on the total, so:
Code:
GamesLol = 1/3.5 = 0.28
GamesLmao = 1/3.5 = 0.28
IGN = 1.5/3.5 = 0.43
Then when calculating the scores:
Code:
metascore = score1*GamesLol + score2*GamesLmao + score3*IGN
metascore = 75*0.28 + 75*0.28 + 93*0.43 = 82
With just a plain average:
I assume it's more complex of a model than that, but that's the idea of weightings. It just lends more weight to that site's opinion, so a site with a higher weighting is basically more influential on the score. In my example, IGN is more influential than the other two sites, but in reality it has only a small impact on the actual metascore. When calculated with many different sites, as Metacritic does,
I don't expect it actually makes an enormous amount of difference.