The failure of game ratings--less than 9/10 = trash!

[CMoon]

Gentlemen:

I forget who said it but I'm a firm believer in the "Don't give the people what they want, give them what they need," school of thought. I think if you get into the habit of only giving especially high marks to genres that are easily digested and appreciated by the game buying majority, it's an easy sell but you're just propagating the idea that the only valid genres of game are FPS, sports and gritty sandbox adventures. If a game is an incredible genre defining experience, you shouldn't shy away from the fact.

But there are two sets of people here and Metacritic ratings are definitely used by publishers. Whether or not this a good practice is also beside the point, it happens and I'd hate to see a game losing points because it's specialist. I have limited sympathy for a fabled Joe Average that gets stung buying a game based purely on the number at the bottom of a review they didn't read.

I completely agree that a ten should be more than just a genre defining experience though - It should transcend genre and ideally have some wider impact on gaming. I think there are possibly five or less games in this category. Much as I love Bayonetta, it doesn't qualify as a ten for me. I think there are possibly five or less games in this category.

I don't think Bayonetta is a 10/10, but what Bayonetta scored is almost beside the point. I dislike the implication that it should lose marks for being niche. But while we're on the subject, scores are ridiculous as it stands:

00 - 89: Crap
90 – 94: Good
95 – 99: Great!
100: Nothing will ever be better?! This is an outrage!

Film reviews don't seem to have similar worries about their top scores, unless there is a 6th star I don't know about, and they don't give 4 and half to something they consider average. Why do we create an even bigger scale and then have the final 10% contain everything from “okay” to “so good nothing should ever be awarded this”?

I'm using the guts of these two posts (from the Bayonetta thread) to get to a larger problem in gaming reviews. Taylor gets it totally dead on, but both these posts capture various problems with game scores and how the market seems driven by them.

Having spent a few years of my past reviewing music, I much enjoyed Rolling Stone's 5 star system, but that's really only a modified grading system (A-F). The problem with other systems is they waste all those numbers on every grade of fail. Why? Here's how the much superior 5 star system works:

0 = fail
1 = highly flawed / only of interest to hardcore fans of the genre
2 = OK, held back by some flaws
3 = Good
4 = Excellent (probably a GOTY)
5 = Classic (console defining, more often than not only given in hindsight.)

Using a system like this, scores become less subjective, and are actually much more useful, since you really would rather get a quick feel for the overall quality of the game, not some gushing highly subjective number (why not out of a million?)

The problem is that these scores don't exist for accuracy or assessment purposes, but are instead meant for the same effect as 'jumbo' sizing your meals, huge candy bars, etc. (IE draining your wallet) OMG, that game got 100 out of 100!!!!!1! And you can be certain that any game that cost over X amount of money to develop WILL get a rating above a 90%.

In short, the rating system (not just for games) gets a 1/5 stars from me. It's only vaguely useful, and at times completely corrupt. Other issues (namely raised by RupertH) are still there. What about IGN's 3/10 for God Hand? Is that a fair score if you hate brawlers? Reviews will always be subjective, but there's gotta be some review etiquette, especially when these reviews can kill off a game.

Thanks for your attention.

[neorichieb1971]

A developer knows what score they are aiming for most of the time. Most developers if trying to penetrate the 4 or 5 main genres know their limitations in skills and budgets. They know they will probably reach a 3 on your scale if they do really good.

If 7 games were made every year, its clear to me that most of those would be 9/10 or 5 star games. But the industry doesn't work like that. It works on the basis of spilling out 100's of which 95% are also rans.

The death of inspiration has a lot to do with the scores as well. Head shots, FPS, Sports and racing have become simulations of real life Earth. All you have to do to become inspired and original is to move away from that ideal.

[Battlesmurf]

It's funny that you mention this.

Aliens Vs Predator is a HUGE example of this that I have been discussing lately. I've seen people quote a 7/10 review and say "I will not touch that garbage". 7/10? When did this start being a terribly score?

*(the game is wonderfully awesome, by the way. It does seem like a polorizing title, though. Please either love it or hate it- I say everybody needs to give it a shot).

[xris]

I've loved so many games that have gotten a 6 or 7. Go with what you like, and listen to the word of mouth.
I like that Play magazine stopped giving scores for reviews, just their impressions.

[Skykid]

In case the quotes between Rupert H and Taylor don't seem to make sense because they're both agreeing with each other, it was because they were answering questions of debate I raised in the Bayonetta thread about it not being deserved of a perfect score. For the record, I agree with all of their points, but I'm in the camp that is getting a little narcy about the alarming regularity of perfect scoring games every couple of months.

As Battlesmurf rightly said, what's wrong with a 7/10 game? Sure, it might not be the greatest example of a genre, but at that score I would expect it would still have some redeeming, possible unique features that would see it appeal to some rather than all.
But yeah, nobody wants a 7 - especially not PR guys. They tell you they 'would love anything 8 or above' in the nicest possible way.

[Never_Scurred]

I want to address this quote right here....

I completely agree that a ten should be more than just a genre defining experience though - It should transcend genre and ideally have some wider impact on gaming. I think there are possibly five or less games in this category. Much as I love Bayonetta, it doesn't qualify as a ten for me. I think there are possibly five or less games in this category.

What annoys me the most is the inability of gamers to rate a game on its own merits and not against every other game out there.
For example, if I were to write up a review for Bayonetta and I felt that it was one of the best gaming experiences i've had to date, why shouldn't it get a 10/10 if I feel the game warrants it? I do not believe that a score should be indicative of a game's place amongst other titles out there or its influence on the genre/industry as a whole, but merely a summation of the experience that one person had with it. Since when does a perfect score mean that a game has to practically reinvent the wheel or that it is somehow better than every other game out there?

[CMoon]

The reason I started with the two quotes is I think they both make valid points. Reduced to a 5 star system, a 3/5 game is a GOOD game, and one you'll probably not shy away from at least without reading reviews. 2/5 you might start asking questions, but it could still be a great game (for you.) The fact so many games are being given 10/10 is really misleading and effectively creating a ceiling effect. If GTA4 is a 10/10, but it is a shitty game (in a lot of ways--even fans will have to acknowledge this), then 10/10 leaves room for no growth. Skykid's arguments in Bayonetta that it isn't a 10/10 game are the same thing. I love Bayonetta, but I'd never give it 5/5. Maybe not even 4/5. But reviewers have no problem giving it 10/10 (or 93/100 or something) as though the numbers actually mean anything.

Basically these game reviewers need a rubric so there scores actually mean something--there's a lot of systems that would work, but the current one is pretty close to meaningless.

[JoshF]

I love percentage ratings that include decimals. You know the reviewer was in his lab with an abacus dipping the game in bright orange chemicals. "Ah yes, eighty-eight...point three!"

[Never_Scurred]

But the question I had went unanswered.
Why can't a game be considered perfect for the experience of the individual rather than having to be some lofty genre defining experience as many readers have come to expect a 10/5/100/A+ to mean nowadays?
There are alot of movies that I consider A+ or 10/10, but that is because of the effect that film had on me, not whether or not it defined its genre. I consider Brother to be a 10/10 film, but the best the genre has to offer, no way.

[dcharlie]

i personally don't use reviews at all, but i know that's not the case for everyone.

Some of my favourite games of all time reviewed badly - in Chromehounds case EXTREMELY badly.

I just don't trust many peoples opinions, and a hell of a lot of the games scoring highly these days also tend to fall into the "wait, this is shite!" category.

[CMoon]

But the question I had went unanswered.
Why can't a game be considered perfect for the experience of the individual rather than having to be some lofty genre defining experience as many readers have come to expect a 10/5/100/A+ to mean nowadays?
There are alot of movies that I consider A+ or 10/10, but that is because of the effect that film had on me, not whether or not it defined its genre. I consider Brother to be a 10/10 film, but the best the genre has to offer, no way.

This is a separate problem, raised in the posts I quoted (and by you.) Giving games a numerical grades suggests they can be compared across genre, which isn't true, but secondly, that the grade given is subjective. Personally I believe the very top scores (10/10, etc.) should only be given hesitantly, and if possible after the dust has settled. This is different than your view, because if I was reviewing a film or game (or whatever) and gave it a 10/10, that really means (at least from me) that it not only represents the best of that genre but offers something wholly new that re-defines the genre. But again, I think the scoring system as a whole is abused.

[JoshF]

What annoys me the most is the inability of gamers to rate a game on its own merits and not against every other game out there.

Review = Evaluation. The way you measure value is by comparing one thing to another thing. For instance, something that is good is good because it's better than something that's bad.

I suppose you could come up with some model that considers personal experience but I don't think it'd tell you much, even if reading about experiences might be slightly more interesting that nuts and bolts-style reviews. Everyone's childhood favorite would be a masterpiece.

[BrianC]

I'm not thrilled when I read a review that doesn't mention important details about a game and gets replies like "5 out of 10, I'm not buying this game" or "I liked this game quite a bit when I played it, but it got a low review, so it must be a bad game". Way too much stock is placed in the score, when it's the content of the review that counts.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

A lot of games cost $60 a pop, and it's common sense to choose the higher scored games. If you could buy a maximum of 3 games a year, would you take your chances with a lower scored game? Say both Bayonetta and God of War III sound appealing to you and you had to choose one or the other.

[dcharlie]

A lot of games cost $60 a pop, and it's common sense to choose the higher scored games. If you could buy a maximum of 3 games a year, would you take your chances with a lower scored game? Say both Bayonetta and God of War III sound appealing to you and you had to choose one or the other.

but this board should serve as a perfect antidote to the strength of review scores though surely? If we stack up what shmups score against things like GTA, Fallout, etc then in the above scenario a lot of great games go under certain peoples radar - and that's just in the shmups realm.

For the average casual gamer, sure, reviews offer an easy way to pick out games they'd want, but i think for people who have gamed for years and years development of individual tastes means most reviews are a lot less meaningful.

I certainly don't think a higher score is necessarily an indication of a better game, just someones personal preference. I mean, how do you quantify that a 77% game is better than a 75% game?

[BrianC]

A lot of games cost $60 a pop, and it's common sense to choose the higher scored games. If you could buy a maximum of 3 games a year, would you take your chances with a lower scored game? Say both Bayonetta and God of War III sound appealing to you and you had to choose one or the other.

I think it makes more sense to read why the games got the score than to just avoid a game that got a 5 out of 10 without reading the content of the reviews. It doesn't make much sense to trust a review that has incorrect information about a game either. If I had to choose one or the other, I'll choose the one that sounds like the better game from the information I have read from multiple sources.

[Vexorg]

I think a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that there's just a whole lot more people out there reviewing games, which makes the whole process a lot more subject to the tastes of the reviewers. The main reason 10s used to be rare was that there were a lot less reviewers (mostly professionals) who used to be doing this, now practically anyone who can manage to find their way to Blogspot could, in theory, become a reviewer.

That said, I think that the risk involved in producing big-budget blockbuster games (especially new IP) means that these games HAVE to sell millions in order to be profitable, and thus the need to get the high review scores to avoid losing money. There are a lot of people out there buying only 3-4 new games a year (and in a lot of cases, Madden is already booked for one of those) and there's a good likelihood that they're going to be buying those based on what's reviewing well or what's most popular (things like MW2, Guitar Hero/Rock Band whatever, GTA something-or-other, maybe one of the higher-rated platform exclusives like an Uncharted 2, Forza, Gran Turismo, NSMBWii or whatever Halo game is out, depending on your platform of choice.) Maybe something that's heavily advertised and reviews well like a Borderlands, a Bioshock or a Dragon Age can sneak in there every once in a while as well. Since these people are buying so few games, they can be spending hundreds of hours on these, and as a result may be far less inclined to play less well reviewed games.

I also think some games tend to automatically start with high ratings, with the reviewers mostly seeking to justify those ratings rather than actually trying to review the game (see also: anything with the words "Final Fantasy" in the title.) Sure they're epic games with high production values and lots of graphics, but I don't think there's been one that's truly defined the platform it's on since FFVII. I tend to agree that tens should be exceedingly rare, and should really be reserved for games that define their platform (or in the case of multiplatform games, define their console generation.) I have no problem giving something like an Ocarina of Time, a Super Metroid or the Dreamcast version of SoulCalibur a 10. I'd be a lot less inclined to give one to a game like Grand Theft Auto IV, (the only game on x360 that IGN has given a 10 to so far. On the PS3 side, MGS4 also got a 10, but those are the only two.) Ten years from now when people think of an Xbox 360 or a PS3, what games are they going to remember? MGS4 is quite likely to be in the conversation, so I'll give it that (although I haven't played it, so I couldn't say for sure if it is truly deserving.) I suspect GTA4 might also appear up in the conversation somewhere, but by then people will also be playing GTA6 on their Xbox 1080s or their PS5s, so people probably won't give it any sort of distinction. I suspect none of this will truly be apparent until years down the road when this generation has ended.

I could probably go on, but this is already getting a tad disjointed as is, so I'll leave it with one thought: Remember, this is a board full of finicky niche gamers. Our opinions are generally well outside of the mainstream, and as such, our ideas of which games are and aren't deserving of their high ratings will probably be invalid for pretty much everyone else. On the other hand, I also find it's generally a good place to find out what (somewhat) like-minded gamers think of things I am considering purchasing, and over the years it's probably saved me from a few bad ones (and suggested some I would have otherwise missed, but quite enjoyed.)

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

A lot of games cost $60 a pop, and it's common sense to choose the higher scored games. If you could buy a maximum of 3 games a year, would you take your chances with a lower scored game? Say both Bayonetta and God of War III sound appealing to you and you had to choose one or the other.

I think it makes more sense to read why the games got the score than to just avoid a game that got a 5 out of 10 without reading the content of the reviews. It doesn't make much sense to trust a review that has incorrect information about a game either. If I had to choose one or the other, I'll choose the one that sounds like the better game from the information I have read from multiple sources.

I said both of them sound appealing, so you must have read the reviews. Then, would you buy the 8.0 game or the 9.0 game? It's a hard choice and I wouldn't blame anyone if they went the safe way and chose the higher rated game.

[Skykid]

But the question I had went unanswered.
Why can't a game be considered perfect for the experience of the individual rather than having to be some lofty genre defining experience as many readers have come to expect a 10/5/100/A+ to mean nowadays?
There are alot of movies that I consider A+ or 10/10, but that is because of the effect that film had on me, not whether or not it defined its genre.

The only way to go in this case would be to scrap scoring entirely (which considering where we are at the moment with scoring, is probably the only sensible option). But to answer your question on why can't scoring be subjective based on people's tastes, it can of course - the problem is that as a commercial industry, people rely on buying guidelines (in this case, scores, percentages, whatever) to indicate beyond the text of the review how they should spend their money.
A 10/10 means definitely spend your money, no question - which in the case of Bayonetta means some dude is going to be sitting there thinking "wtf did I just blow may wages on?"

I consider Brother to be a 10/10 film, but the best the genre has to offer, no way.

Please tell me you don't mean that laughably bad Beat Takeshi movie?

[FIL]

The current game rating system is 1, 2, 6 (for when you're too scared to give a 2), 8, 9, 10.

[CMoon]

I think a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that there's just a whole lot more people out there reviewing games, which makes the whole process a lot more subject to the tastes of the reviewers. The main reason 10s used to be rare was that there were a lot less reviewers (mostly professionals) who used to be doing this, now practically anyone who can manage to find their way to Blogspot could, in theory, become a reviewer.

I'm sure there is some truth to this but Gamespot in particular is now guilty of:

90-100: Someone paid us a lot of money / we really enjoyed this game

80-89: We really enjoyed this game, but no one paid us.

75-89: Serious faulted but we still enjoyed it.

<75: UTTER SHIT!!!!

My issue isn't just the ass-poor rating system, but that you will start believing after a while that every game that comes out is 100/100 or isn't worth your time. True there's more reviewers out there, but maybe there should be: With so many blogspots, that can't all be bought off to give 10/10 reviews.

*cough* That said, gamespots reviews themselves are often not bad, but the scoring system they use is absurd.

[Lordstar]

a place which I like to read reviews from are peoww.com they have a counter review and rate things out of 10. 5 being a avrerage game 7.5 being a comendable one 10 being a you must buy it now!!!

[Skykid]

To be honest, numerical ratings are so unreliable these days due to either external influences or inexperienced journos, they're not really worth the paper they're printed on. It's a shame actually, when I was a kid the old percentage system and a bit of humorous honesty really helped me when buying games, and a lot of the taste I have now is thanks to magazines like Super Play making sure they slated things that deserved it.

We always had Nintendo Magazine System and Total, whose scores were dodgy, but CVG, Mean Machines etc were generally very reliable.

I'd say doing away with scores completely is the only way to go, but due to PR/game companies relying on scores massively they're not going aywhere.

[Ex-Cyber]

Part of it might just be making the scale too wide numerically. Among other things, it suggests a precision that scores are never going to honestly represent. With a score out of 100 (or, by extension, out of 10.0) there might also be the influence of how people think about school grades, at least in the US (i.e. 75 = average/mediocre and < 60 = failing). For example, I think X-Play does a surprisingly good job of using the whole range of their 1-5 scale, to the point where they essentially gave Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing a zero by explicitly refusing to rate it (because their scale doesn't officially include zero, and 1 means a terrible game, which would be unduly crediting it as an actual legitimate game).

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

No review site actually says that less than an 8 means crap and quite a few try to dispel that notion from people. What I often see is people saying "CRAP" at the bottom of less than stellar reviews. This thread is exaggerating things. Usually review sites regard a 7 as "good," but so many games nowadays are getting "good" that it often ends up just meaning "your average game" to some people. I don't see why we're focusing on the cynics in here.

Number grades are a good thing since they let you see at quick glance about how good a game is. Without them, just imagine how much time you'd lose reading about bottom scrapper games, and it would be nigh impossible to know what the overall opinion of a game is. There'll always be a reviewer that misjudges a game like in God Hand's case, but if a game has any worth, it will not score badly across the board and that's how you know that that reviewer out there is giving a game the God Hand treatment. They will be the only one doing it.

[Rupert H]

And the debate rages on.

90-100: Someone paid us a lot of money / we really enjoyed this game

80-89: We really enjoyed this game, but no one paid us.

75-89: Serious faulted but we still enjoyed it.

<75: UTTER SHIT!!!!

To me it's obvious why only the 7+/10 end of the score system is worthy of any interest. There are an insane amount of truly brilliant video games on the market, and hard as I try, I simply don't have time to play them all. A 6/10 game might be above average, but who (particularly those of us who appreciate the whole thirty year plus library of games) has time for something merely "above average" when there are so many exceptional examples?

Review = Evaluation. The way you measure value is by comparing one thing to another thing. For instance, something that is good is good because it's better than something that's bad.

Exactly. If we only took games on their own merits Great Giana Sisters would be a 10, along with Super Mario Bros.

Ultimately it is impossible for a score to hold the same meaning for every possible reader that will be viewing it. How do you reconcile the gamer that only owns one console and plays contemporary games with the guys that has every console under the sun? You don't, so you get bizarro situations like the mid-nineties where Super Play's successor was banding around giddy scores for some truly appalling fighting games on the N64 while the rest of us were playing VF/Tekken/Street Fighter Zero/insert any other real fighting game here. How do you reconcile the gamer who really only considers video games to be military FPS games, sports games and grimy sandbox adventures with the guy that only owns a DS and a Wii? You don't, so you get people perusing Super Mario Galaxy reviews in absolute disbelief.

If you read a review (not just the score) you should be able to get a good idea for the reviewer's taste, which is why comparison is such a vitally important tool. If I read a Modern Warfare 2 review that drew comparisons with Battlefield, Medal of Honor and various other games that I didn't enjoy, it doesn't matter how much they sing its praises - I know it's probably not for me. I think it's often just a matter of judging how compatible you are with a reviewers taste before putting any stock in scores. I know if I was to review Mushihimesama Futari in a mainstream publication I would still give it a 9, and if some meat-head just looked at the 9 and ran out and bought it without reading the review, I can't say I'd have much sympathy for them.

Maybe it's just the fact that the games press doesn't have the breadth of say, the music press. I know if I was a hip-hop head I wouldn't be picking up Metal Hammer for my album reviews, but aside from the mostly irrelevant format divisions, we just have games magazines/sites and are expected to all share the same scales of quality.

[Skykid]

I understand and agree with all of the above.

It's the 10's that bother me man, just the 10's.

[BryanM]

It is pretty douchey. If it deserves a 90, it deserves five stars. If it deserves a 50, it deserves one star. Is it like a report card 'cause games are supposed to be for dumb kids?

What annoys me the most is the inability of gamers to rate a game on its own merits and not against every other game out there.

Because nothing exists in a vacuum. Super Mario Brothers was nice, but in a universe where fifty trillion other platformers exist, it gets knocked down a peg or two.

Think of it as a pretty ladder where things get knocked down it toward The Abyss.

And a reviewer that isn't familiar with the genre of the game he's reviewing isn't worth turds.

[AraraSPAMWitch]

wwwwwww

[BrianC]

I said both of them sound appealing, so you must have read the reviews. Then, would you buy the 8.0 game or the 9.0 game? It's a hard choice and I wouldn't blame anyone if they went the safe way and chose the higher rated game.

I lean more towards Bayonetta. Slick heroine rather than buff hero and, from what I read of past God of War games, Bayonetta probably has more depth to it.