Speaking with this site in a new interview, published today, Metacritic founder Marc Doyle has assured he is proud of the site's growing influence, not just over those buying games, but also company bosses, who have been increasingly viewing the site's averages as a way of deciding bonuses and gauging success.

The site's role in the business side of the games has certainly caused something of a stir, although consumer-linked controversies have taken more frequent headlines - the balance of the site's averages questioned, user-generated score abuses also concerning some.

However, Doyle explains that the site try to insulate themselves from this burgeoning status, in order to remain fair and accurate.

"I'm proud that all kinds of users have found our Metascores to be useful in making their purchasing decisions, and more generally, as a dependable indicator of a product's quality," he explained. "If game publishers find our Metascores useful in their attempts to improve the quality of the games they create, that also certainly makes me proud. But no, there is absolutely no pressure associated with the industry's use of our numbers.

"Our team is a passionate group, and we'd be dong our best to put out the best site possible regardless of industry attention. Publishers, developers, and PR firms certainly send me a barrage of questions on a daily basis ("why aren't you tracking X and Y publications which gave our game a 90 score", etc), and they let us know when we've made background information mistakes or inadvertently omitted scores from publications we regularly track (in the same way that regular users do). But I've never felt any pressure to add or drop a publication or individual review from any outside company or from Metacritic's parent company, which is certainly refreshing."

More in the full interview.

By Luke Guttridge