I've always hated scores--but the sad truth of the matter is that most people click the review and scroll straight to the number.

I was in favor of ditching them last time GameCritics redesigned, but it screws up your almighty MetaCritic linkage. The compromise was that we actually hide the score now. I think everyone's figured out how to find them, but it was pretty interesting for those first few weeks where people were like "I can't find the score!"

We also get a lot of drama over the fact that we use the 5 is average on a ten point scale thing too.

@Fraser

"5 should be average for funk's sake"

It's a weird one, though, because most of the games we actually play are probably above average. If we were to take every game in the planet and rank them side by side, the stuff we call "average" would probably be well above that point.

I tend to think it doesn't matter what your average mark is, as long as you're transparent about that fact. If people know what your scores mean, it doesn't matter. Metacritic is the only thing that fucks it all up.

I was brought into reviewing with more of a "don't tell me, SHOW me" review mentality. It usually works more than using some arbitrary grading scale. I mean which works better thumbs/stars/???out of a 100 or "this best features are .... The worst features are .... If you think you can handle this, the game is at least worth a rental."

Rant away. I think you're exactly right about this.

He is definitely right! These days way too much games get 9's, 10's and when a game gets a 7 or around that they react like:

Hmmm, bad game.
I expected more of it.
Now I ain't gonna get it!

Whilst the grade the game got is just plain good, but was not given a 10 because of this minor flaws.

Which publications are we talking about here? If we're just browsing Metacritic to see what people are doing, we're as skewed as they are.

If we look at the major publications - by which I'm talking about UK stuff and online, since I don't have much access to other mags worldwide - we have Edge, IGN, Gamespot, Eurogamer and 1UP. I wouldn't say any of them are even slightly guilty of high-scoring everything. Even down the ladder slightly to, say, GamesTM, and we're looking at an average mark that sits firmly around the 5/10 region.

I think many smaller sites do tend to veer towards the higher end of the scale, as they tend to be more reliant on building relationships with PR. This is perhaps unhealthy, though understandable, as benefit of the doubt goes a long way there. And a lot of the smaller sites aren't going to be staffed by people with the same experience as those working for the big guys, so expectations are going to be slightly lower.

Still, while ever the text and mark are cohesive, I don't see it as a problem. As long as each publication is transparent in what its scores mean, and consistent in its application of them, it's simply a matter of having enough sense to read into the respective system and understanding the mark on the basis of how they intended you to understand it. If a site decides 7 is the average, that's totally fine, as long as the readership knows this and measures expectations against it.

The people who react to 7s and 8s with vitriol are the insecure fans who require validation of their latest pre-order, or those so caught up in the history of a franchise that anything below a perfect mark is taken as a personal insult. It's like football fans who can't accept that their team lost because they didn't play as well as the opposition. A sense of belonging, of camaraderie, whatever - it's fanboyism. But that's a totally different issue, and one I'll probably come back to in another thread sooner or later.

We've discussed Metacritic a lot, but not in much depth. Metacritic arrogantly rejects any claims by the publications it includes that their scoring systems are not equatable to the hundred-mark scale. Adam Sessler talked about this at GDC. A developer had fallen out with him because they had checked Metacritic and seen he awarded their game 40/100, which Metacritic calls "generally negative". But Sessler's original mark had been 2/5, which according to their scale is "average" - ie. what Metacritic claims to be 50-70/100. Metacritic's response to Sessler's comments that this was inaccurate was, spectacularly, to say "No, you're wrong." This is a site that even makes scores up for reviews that don't include a mark.

As a result of this, it seems publications basically have to play up to MC's scale in order to not have their own opinions vastly altered. Do you think this results in certain publications adjusting their own scoring scales to suit Metacritic's needs? Is there a way out of this? People have suggested that just stopping using marks would be the way to go, but I'm not so sure. Firstly, Metacritic's going to make shit up anyway. But secondly, and more importantly, I think it would be a display of tremendous writerly arrogance to insist that people just read our increasingly lengthy reviews. Some people can't, don't have time, or simply don't want to. And whenever anyone cries "foul" about something we write, we constantly reassure our audience that we only answer to them, not to publishers etc. But if we truly are answering to our audience, to our readership, we surely have a responsibility to rate games using a system they support and understand. People like scores; therefore, they should stay. The press is not a dictatorship.

As for what I think we should do?

Well.

My personal preference for a scoring system, something no one's ever done to my knowledge, is to get rid of a "scale" entirely, and replace it with a short, illustrative summary. Not "These bits are good / these bits are bad" or "A solid game with minor flaws" or whatever -- but a single word if possible, something that really encapsulates what the game is about. Your 10/10s could be "inspirational" or "transcendent." Flawed but deeply interesting games could be "fascinating." You're not restricted to ten words; you've a whole dictionary to play with, to decide how best to summarise your feelings. This, I'd hope, would eradicate some score-laziness in the press, while still providing a useful shorthand to the reader with little time on his/her hands.

On www.thisismyjoystick.com we've gone for a simple 'Avoid it', 'Try it', and 'Buy it' system, as a bit of a finger to the growing subculture of people focusing on the scores or spending their time 'reviewing the review'.

It means people will have to read the text to see what we really think of it.

"It means people will have to read the text to see what we really think of it."

This is what I'm on about above, though. Is that necessarily the right way to go?

Yes?








Just kidding.

Well what's the point in a review if you can't really go in depth about the experience. The idea of a score is accompany the text, people should use the text to see how the reviewer arrived at that score.

Overall I just find the numerical score detrimental when people should focus on what is said there-in and judge it from that.

I totally agree about metacrtic being manipulated to prevent opinions being altered tho.