GameRankings

GameRankings

URL	GameRankings.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Gaming
Owner	CBS Interactive
Created by	Scott Bedard
Launched	1999
Current status	Shut down; redirected to Metacritic

GameRankings was a video game review aggregator founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It hosted over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 different games. The ratings show the general critical opinion about a game; thus, GameRankings became an important measure of how well-developed a game is.

The website was shut down with its staff being merged with Metacritic in December 2019.

Rankings

GameRankings collected and linked to (but did not host) reviews from other websites and magazines and averages specific ones. While hundreds of reviews may get listed, only the ones that GameRankings deemed notable were used for the average. Scores were culled from numerous American and European sources. The site used a percentage grade for all reviews in order to be able to calculate an average, however, because not all sites use the same scoring system (some rate out of 5 or 10, while others use a letter grade), GameRankings changed all other types of scores into percentages using a relatively straightforward conversion process.

When a game reached a total of six different reviews, it was given a ranking compared to all other games in the database and a ranking compared to games on its console.

Site Inclusion Rules

GameRankings proclaimed that the sites that affects the overall score of a game are chosen under specific rules. These rules which were retrieved word-by-word from the GameRankings help page were as following:

• Sites must have at least 300 archived reviews for a multi-system/multi-genre sites, or 100 reviews for single-system or genre sites.
• Sites must publish a minimum of 15 reviews a month.
• Sites must be visually appealing and look professional.
• Sites must review a variety of titles.
• Sites must have a dedicated domain name with professional hosting.
• Site reviews must be well written.
• Sites must conduct themselves in a professional manner.

However, not all sites that followed these rules were included, such as sites in languages other than English.

Most notable sites that their scores included were;

• IGN
• Gamespot
• GameZone
• Game Informer
• Gamespy

Site Structure

Game Search Engine

The search engine provided by Gamerankings enabled the user to search games based on these filters:

• Platform
• Genre
• Released Year
• Number of Reviews provided
• Starting Letter

Game Page

Each game owned a page consisting these tabs:

Home

Home Page showed the overall score, overall game rank and game rank on the platform, a short description about the game, game's boxshot, availability on other platforms and their respective overall scores, latest articles relating to the game. Several links to partner sites like Gamespot and Gamefaqs were also included on each page.

Reviews

This page showed all the sites that reviewed the game and their scores. This page also included cover stories, previews, interviews, news, screenshots, and movie articles retrieved from different sites.

Cheats

This page included various cheat codes and game secrets available at the time.

Images

Included game box shots and screenshots retrieved from Gamespot

Check Prices

This tab included a direct link to Gamespot's Check Prices section.

Site overhaul and shutdown

On February 16, 2009, the site was temporarily shut down. It reopened on March 2, 2009 with most of the previous functionality removed, and new design highly similar to Gamefaqs.com.

On December 9, 2019, the site was completely shut down with content being merged to similar website Metacritic. The website's URL "gamerankings.com" now redirects to Metacritic's website.

External links

• GameRankings.com (archived December 9, 2019)
• "High Scores Matter To Game Makers, Too", The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2007.