NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
I mean the 6-10 scale. It is such a bizarre scale. Actual percentages don't seem to correlate properly? A 7/8 is mediocre?
How did reviews get so broken?
- Thread starter NotTheGuyYouKill
- Start date
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
You mean "how did review scores get broken," right?
Because last I checked, review text still reads just fine and is certainly useful for most consumers.
Because last I checked, review text still reads just fine and is certainly useful for most consumers.
this
It's based on the American school system. A C, which is called average but is really kind of bad, is a 70-79.
Aquamarine
Member
People often conflate them with school scores. It's a consequence of so many college students being on the Internet.
It's because Metacritic scores became so influential for determining a game's success.
This is always the correct answer.
BibiMaghoo
Member
It started with 'official' magazines giving scores of only 7+ to games representing the systems they wrote about. I imagine it was essential to keep them in a job.
mikefizzled
Neo Member
Honestly its so easy to set up a half decent website. Call yourself professional and then throw a wonky score in as clickbait and you have half a reason.
SolsticeZero
Banned
The birth of modern game journalism started with this fiasco
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Read the review, ignore the score. Magically unbroken.
Ray Wonder
Founder of the Wounded Tagless Children
I think it started with money, and ended with not being able to say a game that's better than the one you got paid for is less than the 10.
Savantcore
Unconfirmed Member
Gaming as a medium is thankfully (mostly) devoid of shovelware shit. Games are too expensive and too niche to mass produce on a shitty scale and reap the rewards in bargain bins like DVDs are. Sure, for every Metal Gear Solid and Watch Dogs there's a Wii U Party Bundle Fun Fun Fun 5 but no one gives a big enough shit about them to even review them.
Luckily this means 1-5 reviewed games are rare and our pastime is largely untainted by horrible crap, but unfortunately it means there is a overcrowded 6-10 selection. 7/10s are the most average good game we have, 9-10 are the great good and 5-6 are the shitty good games we have. It's a good problem to have, I suppose, but it certainly does negate the 1-10 review system.
Luckily this means 1-5 reviewed games are rare and our pastime is largely untainted by horrible crap, but unfortunately it means there is a overcrowded 6-10 selection. 7/10s are the most average good game we have, 9-10 are the great good and 5-6 are the shitty good games we have. It's a good problem to have, I suppose, but it certainly does negate the 1-10 review system.
Aquamarine
Member
If only all of the major sites decided to band together and ban review scores permanently from all future games...
Look at all the GTA 5 reviews with an 8 or 7 and look how people freak out like it's a 1.
Why does the score matter so much to you? Shouldn't the body text that comes to the conclusion be a better indicator of a games quality and subsequent enjoyment than a number? If a review has to convey whether you should buy it or not by a qualifying factor such as number or a statement then it's kind of failing in its purpose.
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
The only reviews I choose to read are the ones without scores - which is basially just Kotaku and only a couple of other sites. Anything with a score I will just scroll to the bottom and look at the number.
GenericUser
Member
*yawn* 1st post yalla yalla
Lifehack of the year.
SlasherJPC
Banned
POW! Right in the kisser! This whole, gotta focus on review scores, isn't because reviews use scores, it the community that gives them the power! Stop caring about a number folks!
SolsticeZero
Banned
Yep. A good system would be one without numbers, forcing people to read the reviews rather than just looking at a number and calling it a day
I think the masses wouldn't agree that a 8/10 is mediocre.
A 7/10 could be because it equates to a C in many academic grading systems, which means mediocre.
And to be honest, I can't tell from bad shit, to worse shit, to even worse shit (1/10 - 4/10).
Bad is bad. I'm more interested in how a competent title compares other competent titles.
Laieon
Member
Lucky, anything under 70 was considered failing when I was in school (well, elementary-high). There was no such thing as a D. 100-90 = A, 89-80 = B, 79-70 = C, 69-0 = F.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Manipulating people with numbers works. Look at how many people here criticize review scores and the broken use of the scale. But when a game of any note gets less than 8's across the board, plenty of folks right on GAF pile on. Either for attack or defense.
Marketers know bigger numbers = better in the human mind. So 5 on a 10 point scale will never be average or satisfyingly normal. It will be completely terrible because it's so far below 10. For some people even 8 is a bitter disappointment.
Marketers know bigger numbers = better in the human mind. So 5 on a 10 point scale will never be average or satisfyingly normal. It will be completely terrible because it's so far below 10. For some people even 8 is a bitter disappointment.
I wrote reviews without scores for a long time and loved it. If the text doesn't give you an impression that works without a score than you're doing it wrong.
But nobody wants to read anything cause everyone's a lazy piece of shit. And the review industry has been monetized to the point that content that isn't able to be easily aggregated and rehashed by ripoff linkroll aggregation websites is just ignored, eliminating the reach of would-be media outlets.
Nobody stands up for integrity in games writing because everyone's got one hand on the keyboard and the other one around the dick of whatever publisher they're relying on to attempt to do their job.
But nobody wants to read anything cause everyone's a lazy piece of shit. And the review industry has been monetized to the point that content that isn't able to be easily aggregated and rehashed by ripoff linkroll aggregation websites is just ignored, eliminating the reach of would-be media outlets.
Nobody stands up for integrity in games writing because everyone's got one hand on the keyboard and the other one around the dick of whatever publisher they're relying on to attempt to do their job.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
I don't know that it did "start" with this. I definitely remember magazines doing this before the "Official" era (e.g. Amstrad Action, CVG, Sega Power).
I honestly have no idea what causes it. It seems like some kind of psychological barrier that prevents you from accepting that 5/10 is average. It just seems so low.
styl3s
Member
It irritates me to no end when people say 7/8 is mediocre.
Aquamarine
Member
Better / higher-skewed numbers are good for the developers because some idiots decide to pay out bonuses based on Metacritic scores.
So honestly, I can't be all that upset.
So honestly, I can't be all that upset.
Man-is-Obsolete
Member
I am not trying to strike up controversy, but why allow review threads then where all that is posted is a score and small blurb? Seems like we are perpetuating the problem.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Mr_Miyamoto
Banned
I think it only seems to be weighted on the 6-10 end of the spectrum because a lot of media outlets don't have the time to spend on games that will obviously get a 1-4. There are just too many middle-of-the-road releases these days.
I don't think it would "fix the system" to make the 6-7 games the new 2's and rate the better games on a wider spectrum, really. You just have to deal with the fact that most game companies know the formula required to make a basically competent game these days and that the grey 6's and 7's are here to stay.
I don't think it would "fix the system" to make the 6-7 games the new 2's and rate the better games on a wider spectrum, really. You just have to deal with the fact that most game companies know the formula required to make a basically competent game these days and that the grey 6's and 7's are here to stay.
It was always broken. However, I do think there's something to there being a higher spread of scores before, but that's only natural; when reviews first started even high-profile games were frequently legitimately broken failures, and devoting a significant portion of the scale to "does this even work?" made sense. Even games like Battlefield 4 are a masterpiece of polish compared to many games in the past. So now that games (the kind that get reviewed anyway) do actually mostly work it's only natural for the average to go up.
That's why the scale needs to be revised to focus on other things, except that will never happen due to things like publisher pressure and metacritic bonuses.
That's why the scale needs to be revised to focus on other things, except that will never happen due to things like publisher pressure and metacritic bonuses.
Interfectum
Member
Ignore reviews... read GAF, Twitter, watch Giant Bomb quick looks or Twitch streams.
Nydius
Member
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Imagine that 500 console games came out per year. How many can you play in a year? Maybe 25 or 30 if you play a ton of games, maybe 50-75 if you basically do nothing other than play games, right?
It would stand to reason that in your process of selecting games, you'd apply some sort of sorting measure for choosing one over the other. Probably this sorting measure is your own level of interest. For many people, this closely tracks with the level of polish--they don't want to put up with rough edges, they just want really "amazing" "experiences". Personally I like flawed gems, I like trying different kinds of experiences. But for a lot of people, they really want that blockbuster experience with games, just like with movies.
So if you imagine that in this reality, 50 amazing games came out every year (the top 10% of what's released), it's pretty unlikely you'd be playing the stuff that comes out as "pretty good, not a waste of your time, but there are better options out there", right? Now recognize that the vast majority of gamers play 5-10 console games a year at most.
It's okay if maybe your tastes are a little more narrow, which leads you to deep-diving genres you like while ignoring high quality games in genres you don't like, or if you have only a few consoles and are stuck to what's available on the hardware. It's also okay if you play so many games that you like trying all sorts of things. But for the vast majority of people, writing off games with average scores in the 7s is in fact a good strategy to maximize their gaming time and money value.
Because it's not a problem for the vast majority of readers or the people posting the threads. It is a problem for the people complaining, who have an easy solution to solve the problem. Likewise, if you don't like Metacritic, ignore the Metascore. If your experience is that it tracks consensus very well and that's useful to you, use it. This is not a difficult problem.
flatearthpandas
Member
Have you all heard? We are living in the gaming utopia. We did it. Bad games just don't exist and that is why our brilliant professional reviewers rarely dip below 7's.
Back in the real world, reviews are broken because the 10 point review scale is pretty pointless for subjective reviews.
Blackthorn
"hello?" "this is vagina"
Isn't part of the blame on the people who go absolutely insane when a game they've been bandwagoning gets a score lower then they want?
I bet if you never read comments or visited a forum you wouldn't think a 7/10 was a big deal.
I bet if you never read comments or visited a forum you wouldn't think a 7/10 was a big deal.
CecilRousso
Member
I think the 1-10 scale works pretty fine. 7/8 is ok. 6 is "meh, only if you're reeeeeally into that type of game or have nothing else to play". Seems fine with me. I mean, considering the massive amount of games there are, why should you bother with games that are barely ok?
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
In the real world, boiling down an artistic (while still fully mechanical) expression comprised of thousands of lines of code created by teams of hundreds of people all into a single score is not only pointless, but offensively reductionist.