A single aggregate number is now the most widely consulted verdict on a film or game. What it gains in convenience it pays for by discarding most of the information the reviews contained.
The conversion happens before the averaging
Aggregators translate each review into a value, either a score the critic assigned or a judgement about whether the verdict was broadly positive.
Reviews written without scores have to be classified, which requires someone to decide which side of a line an ambivalent piece falls on.
That decision is where most of the meaning is lost, because a review arguing that a work is flawed but essential is reduced to a single bit.
Proportion and intensity measure different things
A score reporting the share of favourable reviews says how many critics approved, not how strongly any of them did.
A work that almost everyone found adequate can therefore score higher than one that a smaller number found extraordinary.
Readers routinely interpret the first number as a measure of quality, which is not what it is reporting.
Divisive works are penalised twice
Something that splits critics sharply produces a middling aggregate, which is the same figure produced by something nobody felt strongly about.
Those are opposite outcomes, and the aggregate cannot distinguish them, so the works most worth arguing about are the ones the number describes worst.
This matters because disagreement is often the most useful signal a reader can have, and it is precisely what the format removes.
Who is counted changes the result
Aggregate figures depend on which outlets are included, and the composition of that pool shifts the number without any critic changing their view.
Early scores are calculated from few reviews and move considerably as more arrive, yet they circulate as though settled.
Publicity built around an opening figure therefore reports a provisional number that is often not the one the work ends up with.
The number now affects what it measures
Scores are used in marketing, in retail placement and in commissioning conversations, which gives them influence beyond informing readers.
Critics are aware their verdicts will be converted, and some report that awareness affects how they frame a mixed opinion.
The practical response for a reader is to treat the aggregate as a rough filter and then read two or three reviews in full, since the reasoning is the part that was thrown away.