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[Aquamarine]

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.

I think it definitely results in situations where a lot of people don't click on the review and just react to the score. It's not really that much of a problem here because the reasonable people will actually read the goddamn review, but ideally, it would be nice to have a be a policy in place where you just post a link to the review to promote actually reading it.

Like this:

IGN Dark Souls 2 Review
GameSpot Dark Souls 2 Review


Instead of this:

 

[Kurdel]

I blame people mindlessly transposing the points scale from the public education system.

I mean, we all understand that below 6/10 is a failure, so the scale works.

Are there better ways? Absolutely.

 

[lt519]

Stump hit the nail on the head. I don't have time to play more than 20 games a year. 10 that I'm at least getting that I've already made my mind up on because I know I will like them unless they totally bomb.

That leaves 10 games or so for the media to sway me on. You bet your ass I'm not going to impulse buy and waste two weeks of my limited gaming time on an average game. I tend to do a bit more research but filtering out the 7-8 range is pretty acceptable if it doesn't fit your niche.

To be clear I'm not a big FPS guy, but may buy one a year on a whim, that pretty much auto tosses anything below a 9.

 

[PBY]

I agree it's a weird place we find ourselves in. That said- the biggest outcry I hear is when a reviewer DARES to actually go lower. Those are the reviews that get hammered.

 

[Manu]

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet. Right or wrong, it always makes me laugh.

I never got why it says "it's all a dream" instead of 6/10, can anyone explain?

 

[Jobbs]

The gaming review scale of 7-10 is funny and gets a lot of rightly deserved lampooning, but at the end of the day, we understand what they mean. We understand what they mean when they give their score. So what's the big deal? As long as we understand what they're trying to say, then who cares what number is used?

 

[benicillin]

The rise of Metacritic really exacerbates the issue, converting everything to a 100-point scale. People usually don't use the full scale because 50 and lower would indicate a game that was bad - why would you ever want to play a game with more negatives than positives? I prefer scores out of 5, because it gets the point across without being needlessly granular.

 

[Mindlog]

I'd like to take some responsibility.

When my favorite games get anything less than a 10 I start to rage. I start sending hateful tweets. I create spite ridden forum topics lamenting how broken and jaded reviewers have become. The goal is to let outlets know that scoring my favorite game anything less than a 10 is unacceptable. Scores have reached the 7-10 scale in part because of our hard work pressing the issue. Now we turn up the vitriol until 8-10 is the norm.

gamez.

 

[Phades]

If only all of the major sites decided to band together and ban review scores permanently from all future games...

Need to ban hype, spin, and hyperbole while you are at it too. There are still some who do things right though. It just feels few and far between sometimes.

It is just a shame really, since I used to like reading them about a decade or so ago. It wasn't even the scoring that did me in towards them, but the misleading comments or completely overlooked aspects within the games by the reviewers. Sure, they only have so much time to do the review, but it just starting coming across like they stopped being genuine as a result. This drove me to be more interested in places that focus more on the technical aspects of the title opposed to the touchy feely sensations transcribed for all to view as a result of the mad dash to see as much of the game as possible in the shortest amount of time.

 

[Ataru]

A better question would be, why do gamers even care?

Judging by the latest box office results, the movie going public has learned to ignore reviewers... why can't gamers do the same?

I trust word of mouth by friends, family, and even random strangers on the internet, more than "professional" reviewers.

 

[sjay1994]

I never got why it says "it's all a dream" instead of 6/10, can anyone explain?

Well Spoilers for Mass Effect 3

Spoiler

The ending was leaked before the game released, and the ending believed to be a dream because people couldn't believe it was the ending

 

[mdubs]

Read the review, ignore the score. Magically unbroken.

He speaks the truth.

Plus many of us do a something called reading more than one review and thinking for ourselves.

 

[zeldablue]

There was a time when games wouldn't even function properly.

Most games actually work the way they are advertised now. 1s and 2s are still dedicated to faulty controls and terrible glitchy messes.

Also companies "pay" for good scores.

 

[LuchaShaq]

Fans and publishers throwing a hissy fit over ever review score.

I mean look at our own uncharted 3 thread it was disgusting.

 

[lensoftruth]

Reviews for games have always been like this ever since the NES days from what I remember.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I think it definitely results in situations where a lot of people don't click on the review and just react to the score. It's not really that much of a problem here because the reasonable people will actually read the goddamn review, but ideally, it would be nice to have a be a policy in place where you just post a link to the review to promote actually reading it.

Like this:

IGN Dark Souls 2 Review
GameSpot Dark Souls 2 Review

Personally I'd rather see review threads use a little bit of selectivity in terms of sources. Nothing is more useless than a review thread that's just a repeat of the Metacritic index. Personally I don't use review threads because they currently consist of Metacritic, which I can use on my own, and then a bunch of people either validating their pre-existing opinion of the game they haven't played or complaining that the reviews aren't going to dissuade them from playing a game they know is going to be good. The presence of the score isn't what does it, those same people would click through to the reviews, highlight random text, and roll their eyes or nod accordingly.

Someone manually curating sources with interesting prose, dissenting opinions, unique insight, or unusual depth would actually be useful.

I don't think the presence of scores is a problem, since they complete the objective--give a very quick overview of the consensus on the game. If everyone gives it 9+, it's pretty clear the consensus is positive. If it has a wide variety of scores, then maybe it's a divisive game or a game that's rewarding to a certain audience. If everyone gives it a bad score, then reviewers clearly did not like it. That's what you get from a review thread. That's the stated objective. Like I said, not useful to me, but seems to work for what people want to use it for.

 

[Grief.exe]

I never got why it says "it's all a dream" instead of 6/10, can anyone explain?

Does it have to do with the plot being so garbage people were using a 'Dream Theory' to explain the holes?

 

[FlyinJ]

The way I look at it is this:

7-10 is for the consumers

1-6 is for the developers, so they know just how badly they screwed everything up.

Just like the US grading system.

 

[massoluk]

I think contrary to the popular belief around here, most commerical games are at least decent. 1 would be total fail like that infamous big rig truck game.

 

[strafer]

I give this thread a 7.34

 

[bitesnintendog]

Because everyone uses the same numbers but scores on a different scale. Some publications have 5 being average while others have 7 being the average. Game Informer is the largest publication and they use 7 as average. That means they dedicate over half of their review scale to saying this game isn't worth your time.

Since the largest publication is using 7 as the average I think that has a ripple effect on other publications as well. Edge is seen as being a tough but its more that they just use the full scale that they set up instead of worrying about backlash. Destructiod during Jim Sterlings time as a reviewer also used the full scale to effect though he was far more controversial with scoring.

I think another thing we are seeing is middle tier games which often got middling reviews have disappeared and shovelware almost never gets a review at a big outlet. So when most reviewers are reviewing higher quality titles they are going to predictably be getting fairly high scores. When a big budget game gets universally panned like Aliens did its seen as a big deal. Aliens may be a bad example as it had other shady dealings to make it interesting.

I personally prefer smaller scales with no half scores. I feel that the Yes/No scale is equally flawed for a review score as a passable game and an excellent game receive the same rating. I would personally like to see sites implement a Not Recommended/recommended/ Highly Recommended type system as you do not need that many ways to say don't play this game and it separates the greats from the enjoyables.

 

[Stumpokapow]

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.

Boiling it down to a narrative of your own experience is equally reductionist, and requires significantly more effort on the part of the reader to synthesize with other writers. Unless you're a nihilist about the entire enterprise of trying to react to creative works, there's going to be a loss of precision, you just hope that the reader develops a set of critical skills to read the review, understand the extent to which it does or doesn't apply to them, and adopts a comparative mindset between reviews and between games.

 

[iamjohn]

I think one of the biggest problems is just how the scores can really only be given blindly. There's no rubric that says "deduct x points for this" and so we see people's guestimates more than anything else. Kotaku has it best; a review should tell us whether or not we should play the game, rather than going off of someone's bullshit number.

 

[Talon]

I'm appreciating the fact that a fair amount of sites have stopped giving scores. I know EGM always wanted to do this from an editorial perspective, but it sounded like Ziff wasn't down with it.

 

[Tybolt]

While marketing collusion being the guiding hand nowadays is the given cause and reply, I also blame the 10/10 or bust mindset being bought on by Ocarina of Time.

If you dig up old reviews and magazines and look up games like Link to the Past, Mario 64, Final Fantasy 7 and 8... Hell, even Super Metroid! You know what they have in common? None of them really hit that point back in the day. Then over that one holiday period with Zelda 64, everything was barfing out 10/10s for it and that was the end of the numbered rating system. Now everyone had an objective example of the so-called "perfect game", apparently without realizing that technology and gameplay would improve, the glass ceiling was broken and everything had to rate high if it measured up against the example of the 10/10 game at the time, and I guess it spiraled out from there.

 

[Nymphae]

It's based on grading in school. 50% or less is considered failing. So me terrible game that fails to work would be a 5 or under. A "B " level game is a 7-7.9. An "A" game is 80-89 and an "A+" game is 90-100. It's just the way we were graded in school.

Pretty much. When you put no value on numbers 0-50, people grow up thinking everything below that is a failure not worth discussing. Who cared what the difference was between a 20% and a 40% on a test? You failed once you fell below 50, and the degree to which you failed was not all that important.

It never made sense to me to use 1-10 point scales, or even worse, the 0-100 point scales. Use letter grades, thumbs up/down, rent/buy, or just write me your take on the game and don't feel like you need to attach a number to it.

 

[aeolist]

Read the review, ignore the score. Magically unbroken.

only if the text is objective though

 

[Goddard]

this

Lol

 

[PBY]

only if the text is objective though

It's an inherently subjective thing.

 

[BananaSprinkles]

It's based on grading in school. 50% or less is considered failing. So me terrible game that fails to work would be a 5 or under. A "B " level game is a 7-7.9. An "A" game is 80-89 and an "A+" game is 90-100. It's just the way we were graded in school.

Cause a C in school is often a 70 and that's average. 50 is failing.

Pretty much. When you put no value on numbers 0-50, people grow up thinking everything below that is a failure not worth discussing. Who cared what the difference was between a 20% and a 40% on a test? You failed once you fell below 50, and the degree to which you failed was not all that important.

6-10 scale is how it works in school. I don't think there is a conspiracy there. 50 and below are varying degrees of failure.

When I went to school, which wasn't really all that long ago, anything below a 70 was considered failing. When did it get changed to 50 or below was failing?

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.

Same here.

 

[Timeaisis]

I give this thread an 8.8/10.

EDIT: Beaten by an oscar worthy post.

 

[RedStep]

Look at all the GTA 5 reviews with an 8 or 7 and look how people freak out like it's a 1.

Yeah, but you're talking about a problem with the broken fanbase, not the broken system. The cancer in gaming is the gamers.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I think one of the biggest problems is just how the scores can really only be given blindly. There's no rubric that says "deduct x points for this" and so we see people's guestimates more than anything else. Kotaku has it best; a review should tell us whether or not we should play the game, rather than going off of someone's bullshit number.

It's still a bullshit number, it just gets rid of the gradation between "No", "Maybe", and "Yes". All forms of information can be translated to one another. Apparent granularity is the only difference between a 5 point scale, a 3 point scale, a 10 point scale, and a 100 point scale, and you can just as easily provide a threshold filter for existing scoring systems. Like, it'd be just as easy to convert anything from IGN that's 8+ to "Yes", 7-8 to "Maybe", and 1-6.9 to "No" and then claim IGN has a yes/no/maybe or buy/rent/ignore scale, and it's just as easy to convert a Kotaku review that's a mild recommendation to a 7.5-8 and a Kotaku review that's an enthusiastic, GOTY quality recommendation to a 9-10. It's all equivalent.

It comes down to how you choose to read and interpret the information.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

Boiling it down to a narrative of your own experience is equally reductionist, and requires significantly more effort on the part of the reader to synthesize with other writers. Unless you're a nihilist about the entire enterprise of trying to react to creative works, there's going to be a loss of precision, you just hope that the reader develops a set of critical skills to read the review, understand the extent to which it does or doesn't apply to them, and adopts a comparative mindset between reviews and between games.

I have to disagree here. Describing your experience IS reductionist, sure. Equally so? Absolutely not. Not even close. Even if we look at it from a purely "objective" standpoint, ten "points" is still far less range of expression than the near-infinite combinations of the English language to express a person's reaction to a piece of media.

The point I was making is not that reductionism is bad. Reviews are inherently reductionist to a degree. But there's a point where everything can be reduced to a point of uselessness - and this is where scores exist but review text does not.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

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 singlescore is not only pointless, but offensively reductionist.

...and 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 short personal essay isn't crazy reductionist because...?

 

[Ala Alba]

I tend to prefer reading reviews with scores around 80%. They're mostly positive with a lot focus on the good points, without neglecting potential problems.

I don't want to read a review that craps all over the game, and I don't want to read a review that just reinforces the hype I've already experienced.

So in that respect, review scores are helpful for finding a balanced review.

 

[PBY]

I tend to prefer reading reviews with scores around 80%. They're mostly positive with a lot focus on the good points, without neglecting potential problems.

I don't want to read a review that craps all over the game, and I don't want to read a review that just reinforce the hype I've already experienced.

So in that respect, review scores are helpful for finding a balanced review.

This makes no sense to me

 

[jschreier]

It's still a bullshit number, it just gets rid of the gradation between "No", "Maybe", and "Yes". All forms of information can be translated to one another. Apparent granularity is the only difference between a 5 point scale, a 3 point scale, a 10 point scale, and a 100 point scale, and you can just as easily provide a threshold filter for existing scoring systems. Like, it'd be just as easy to convert anything from IGN that's 8+ to "Yes", 7-8 to "Maybe", and 1-6.9 to "No" and then claim IGN has a yes/no/maybe or buy/rent/ignore scale, and it's just as easy to convert a Kotaku review that's a mild recommendation to a 7.5-8 and a Kotaku review that's an enthusiastic, GOTY quality recommendation to a 9-10. It's all equivalent.

It comes down to how you choose to read and interpret the information.

No "Maybe." Our scale is binary.

 

[aeolist]

It's an inherently subjective thing.

um i guess you're not up on the latest and greatest review site on the internet

http://www.objectivegamereviews.com

these guys are what game "jurnalists" should aspire to be

 

[Stumpokapow]

I have to disagree here. Describing your experience IS reductionist, sure. Equally so? Absolutely not. Not even close. Even if we look at it from a purely "objective" standpoint, ten "points" is still far less range of expression than the near-infinite combinations of the English language to express a person's reaction to a piece of media.

The only way in which a score is more reductionist than a narrative is if you believe the score and the narrative diverge. I do not typically see this in reviews; typically the reviewer feels that his or her final score represents his or her opinion. Even reviews with meaningless subcategories tend to have very clustered scores (IE games that are viewed as bad thus end up having bad graphics scores, bad music scores, bad gameplay scores rather than scattershot category scores and a negative conclusion).

Can you provide examples of cases where the score provides an impression that the text does not, to the point of misleading readers? Note that IGN's 2.0 for Deadly Premonition is a totally shitty review, but it's not a shitty review because they gave it a 2.0, the 2.0 matches the review text well. It's a shitty review because it's a shallow, surface-level examination of the game that misses the forest for the trees and is myopic in that it failed to recognize the extremely divisive and complicated reception the game eventually got.

 

[Aquamarine]

Personally I'd rather see review threads use a little bit of selectivity in terms of sources. Nothing is more useless than a review thread that's just a repeat of the Metacritic index. Personally I don't use review threads because they currently consist of Metacritic, which I can use on my own, and then a bunch of people either validating their pre-existing opinion of the game they haven't played or complaining that the reviews aren't going to dissuade them from playing a game they know is going to be good. The presence of the score isn't what does it, those same people would click through to the reviews, highlight random text, and roll their eyes or nod accordingly.

Someone manually curating sources with interesting prose, dissenting opinions, unique insight, or unusual depth would actually be useful.

I don't think the presence of scores is a problem, since they complete the objective--give a very quick overview of the consensus on the game. If everyone gives it 9+, it's pretty clear the consensus is positive. If it has a wide variety of scores, then maybe it's a divisive game or a game that's rewarding to a certain audience. If everyone gives it a bad score, then reviewers clearly did not like it. That's what you get from a review thread. That's the stated objective. Like I said, not useful to me, but seems to work for what people want to use it for.

Ah, good argument. I'm starting to think now that the same people who just blindly react to the scores now would do the same thing if all the scores were removed...it would just take them a couple extra steps as they click on the link and scroll down to the bottom.

In that case I guess it's futile to omit the numbers on GAF so yes, they do make logical sense as a quick reference. What annoys me is the propensity to gut-react to a score instead of carefully weighing the review, but then again, that's an unfortunate consequence of any community that can't exactly be solved...

Your idea sounds quite good! I'd love to see those kind of threads and the contributions they would make to elevated discourse.

 

[fedexpeon]

I don't understand why review score uses decimal point.

Like 8.8, but not round it to a 9.0.
I know IGN believes it does matter in determine what is great and what isn't.
But .2? WTF is the difference?

Using .5 I can understand though, it is better than the lesser whole # but not better than the other greater whole #. It is just in between.

But a .1-.4, .6-.9 range? They are tacking in points from a subjective viewpoint.
Yeah that game definitely deserves that extra .1 point for having a MC with brown eyes. /s

 

[DNAbro]

When I went to school, which wasn't really all that long ago, anything below a 70 was considered failing. When did it get changed to 50 or below was failing?



Same here.

I was saying 50 is an example of failing, even though it is "half" and some people want it as the average for review scores. Below C is definitely the same as failing.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

...and 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 short personal essay isn't crazy reductionist because...?

Because a personal essay is the closest you can get to communicating a game aside from playing the game itself. It's obviously a lossy compression of information, but in the end it's the best we've got.

And it's still more useful than a single number, a number for which correlates to a table of extrapolations nobody can seem to agree on.

 

[GuessMyUserName]

Because people scale out of 10. It just inflates everything needlessly leaving the "pit of death" below 6 which is hard to actually understand. What's the difference between any of those? Nobody knows what really pushes people to give something a 2 as opposed to a 4, they're just two bad scores.

5-point scale is all people could ever need:

Garbage, nobody should suffer through this
Bad, but maybe you're a fan so go ahead
Passable, worth a shot if you're interested
Great, you should look into it even if you're not interested
InstaClassic, everyone should play it

Simple, and every tier has an actual meaning. Unfortunately for publishers though it would be dragging down their metacritics a lot (no more 9/10s)

Like 8.8, but not round it to a 9.0.
I know IGN believes it does matter in determine what is great and what isn't.
But .2? WTF is the difference?

It can lead to some hilarious moments though like 8.9 "we did not give Titanfall a 9/10"

 

[d0nnie]

The almighty dollar

Honestly, it is hard to believe that reviewers (or the employer) do not get approached by companies in order to sway the reviews one way or another. It would be naive not to consider.

There's just too much money involved in video games. Casual gamers for the most part do base their "buy" or "not buy" decisions on reviews by the bigger names (Gamespot, IGN, etc.). However, the trend appears to be that casual gamers also check gaming forums for more "Amazon-like" reviews as well.

I mean as an example, Polygon. Is it hard to believe that they would be biased towards the Xbox platform/agenda after considering that MSFT sponsored them in the beginning?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon_(website)

Again, it would be naive not to think that money has anything to do with it....

 

[PBY]

Honestly, it has hard to believe that reviewers (or the employer) do not get approached by companies in order to sway the reviews one way or another. It would be naive not to consider.

There's just too much money involved in video games. Casual gamers for the most part do base their "buy" or "not buy" decisions on reviews by the bigger names (Gamespot, IGN, etc.). However, the trend appears to be that casual gamers also check gaming forums for more "Amazon-like" reviews as well.

I mean as an example, Polygon. Is it hard to believe that they would be biased towards the Xbox platform/agenda after considering that MSFT sponsored them in the beginning?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon_(website)

Again, it would be naive not to think that money has anything to do with it....

Knew we'd get to polygon at some point. Welp.

 

[ShapeGSX]

Who cares? Read some reviews, watch some videos, play a demo (if there is one), visit a forum, come to your own conclusion.

 

[flatearthpandas]

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.

Have to disagree with you there. Just because something took a lot of man hours doesn't mean it is inherently worth any respect. The amount of code or the number of people that built something is totally irrelevant to a consumer's impressions and final evaluation of a product.

Absolutely nothing wrong with a binary or 5 point scale. I think most people can easily distinguish between "worth it/not worth it" and "hate/dislike/mediocre/like/love" and, ultimately, it is how we categorize most things that we experience.

 

[Freeman]

Time to create an addblock like program that hides the scores for reviews.