From a critical standpoint, Metacritic is about objective as things are likely to get. My own research uses Metacritic, and most of the industry looks to it for the “official” critical score. Steam embeds the Metacritic score right in the interface, and Microsoft announced yesterday that a low Metascore will be one of the trigger points for having your game de-listed from XBLA.

That said, the critical score isn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Gamasutra ran an opinion piece by former Eidos president Keith Boesky to that effect earlier today. Boesky’s main point is that critical success is not indicative of commercial success. It becomes intrinsically dangerous to pivot your entire business model on the critical reviews of your products.

If you look at a publisher like EA, they produce games that are commercially viable, even lucrative, but consistently receive mediocre reviews from critics. EA has published only three of the top 20 games on the 360, and is the developer on none of them. Additionally, of the hundreds of games EA has published since the release of the Xbox 360, only a handful have a Metacritic score above 80 for that system. EA’s new CEO, John Riccitiello has taken this to heart, having several times publicly stated that EA will be concentrating their efforts on producing newer, higher critical quality games than have been seen in recent years. That said, Riccitiello has also been quoted as saying that “You don’t cash MetaCritic, you cash cheques.”

There’s certainly a balance to be struck between the realities of business, and trying to create a game that tickles the critics. At the end of the day, I think that all of this concern is smoke and mirrors for the developer. All a developer can really do is try to create an amazing experience, to push the envelope of what’s possible with a technology, and to manipulate a player in new and interesting ways. If you can work your craft well enough, and on a scale that will appeal to a broad enough group of people, both the critical acclaim and commercial success will come. Understanding how to do that is where the mastery comes into play.