Is scoring games (or any other media) using a numbers system is fair? - General

I don't think that you should necessarily judge how good a piece of media is on a one to ten scale or any other type of quantifiable system. Really it seems like most games, movies, novels, etc. aren't entirely good or bad as much as they have small flaws that can't and shouldn't be measured using a numbers system. We shouldn't be reading reviews as 8.5/10 as much as "well it's got this problem and this problem but overall it should be enjoyable to experience." Recently there seems to have been some news concerning game review sites and game developers like Obsidian being screwed because they were below [B]1 point[/B] that they needed to get more money. It seems like having this sort of system can really only hurt artists. I personally believe that we need to have more reviews be like Rock Paper Shotgun's "Wot I Think" articles. What do you think?

It's not the system that hurts artists, it's publishers that place stupid demands.

The scoring encourages lazy consumers who only look for scores, and the entire system is bullahit because every score is so inflated because the norm is so high.

The number system is stupid in my opinion, if you want to play a game you should either: Watch a Let's play of someone playing it, read a non-number review of what a reviewer thought, like "Wot I think" as OP said. Not sure how it could work for movies though.

Looking at IGN's 1/10 on Deadly Premonition... no, it is not fair. Also the demands from the publishers side are ridicilous. You judge the team and the product by the quality and not if a fanboy reviewer pulls down the whole metascore with a bad review because it's nothing like the great game he loves. There are jobs as 2D or 3D artist in the games industry to which you can only apply to, if you worked several years in the industry and shipped atleast 3 AAA games with a metascore over 80. It's ridicilous.

It's a nice quick way to score something, sure. It's great for the lazy people, but personally I think that they should also write a nice review about it to go along with it so that those who actually want to read an in depth review can do so. Just a plain number isn't enough for me, I've never actually looked at them while buying games tbh.

A numerical rating system isn't inherently bad. Done properly and used objectively it'd be fine, the real issue is the retards who currently use it and their very thinly veiled agendas

Any sort of system that makes it easier for people to form an uninformed opinion on something is bad Kinda like sensationalist titles, even in reviews. People should know what they're getting into, and condensing a review into a number and some pros-and-cons isn't a good way to help people make decisions. Besides, it's much easier to bullshit a number than an entire review, so it's much easier for companies to give reviewers a little "nod towards the right direction" if the reviewer uses a point score or other form of "TL;DR"

It doesn't really seem like a fair system. It abstracts away from what the review actually tells you about the game too much, and can't really be used as a fair comparison between games (especially of different genre/ indie or published). A pros/ cons list review system seems to work a lot better from the ones I've read. You still get that nice quick overview of a numbers system, but it actually tells you why that game is good and bad, rather than some abstract value of how good it is. You can see which aspects of the game were good or bad quickly, allowing you to make a better judgement. When I say a numbers system isn't fair for comparisons, what does an 8/10 on a published game, and an 8/10 on an indie game actually entail? Even if they are of the same genre, what does the published game have to do to obtain that compared to the indie game? The difference could be quite large due to bias in favour of either. A pros and cons list however, doesn't have that flaw.

[QUOTE=Aman VII;38695052]A numerical rating system isn't inherently bad. Done properly and used objectively it'd be fine, the real issue is the retards who currently use it and their very thinly veiled agendas[/QUOTE] Pretty much exactly this. Aggregate sites like metacritic don't help when their metrics for weighing scores is a secret. The whole 7.5-10 scale isn't helping matters either. The whole rating system is a catastafuck, and far too many people value it far too much.

A number system is perfectly valid. People need to understand, however, that one rating is not representative of the game's quality, and a review should only be used to gauge expectations. The other problem with the system is that the high-profile sites that do game reviews are biased, and it's pretty obvious it's due to someone sending a few bucks their way. There are problems like you'll see on The Verge, where they have ratings for arbitrary things like software ecosystems. Somehow, Windows 8 got only like a 6 or so, when, well, it's fucking Windows and has the same ecosystem as it did for (more or less) the past 3 iterations.

The best use of a numerical rating I've seen comes from the Finnish gaming magazine Pelaaja (Player/Gamer), where they have the scale of their ratings explained on one page before the reviews. A number six being being rather flawed but still and enjoyable experience.

Numbers are completely pointless. At one point they weren't, but now the only point to them is so people can point to a game that got a 9 and go "I WANT THAT" and one that got a 6 and go "I DON'T WANT THAT." I believe people should be able to read a review and draw their own conclusions based on the opinions of multiple sources. This is why I hate Metacritic.

Sunday_Roasts example is more legitimate. Perhaps there is some way to modify it so that the scale itself isn't flawed. It's really hard to judge what most scales mean, since 8/10 might be pretty good whereas 7/10 is a bit "meh". And 6/10 is never as good as a 3/5. And 60/100 (for those few examples where a 100-scale is used) is just riddiculous. I reckon that the average game shouldn't be seen as so flawed as it is tday. 5/10 SHOULD BE the average game. Maybe the scale would work in a IQ-way and have as many 1/10s as 10/10s? [B]Edit[/B] Make that 0/10 so that 5/10 is the centre of the scale. Then we have a 11-grade scale! Shouldn't be confusing. Also I remember the last issue of the swedish gaming magazine SuperPLAY (back in... 2007?) where they were just fooling around. Brütal Legend got 11/10.

I like the number system because even when someone makes a worded review, sometimes you can't tell if they're giving a fully negative review or just describing the bad points more than the good points to the point where it looks negative but it's not.

[QUOTE=Mr. Tripp;38698023]I like the number system because even when someone makes a worded review, sometimes you can't tell if they're giving a fully negative review or just describing the bad points more than the good points to the point where it looks negative but it's not.[/QUOTE] This is why you shouldn't just take a single person's opinion into consideration. A conclusion should be drawn from multiple reviewers that you trust for whatever reason without taking a score into consideration.

An inherent fallacy of reviews is that they cannot be sued for false advertisement, no matter how technically wrong they may be about it. The importance of this has been noticed, so publishers have just about purchased most review networks. Being the herd of ridiculous consumers that we are, typically believing anything we see online or on television, allows for the majority of the market to be funneled in specific games due to the general lack of exposure to what one would refer to as taste. Honestly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the concept of people rating a product, but there is an issue when the people you pander to are simply too brainwashed to know the difference.

I find number scores to be good for a general idea of how good a movie/tv show/game is, but they don't absolutely define its quality and should not be used for that. Though the system can get much more complicated when ad revenue and publishers are involved. And I'm sure there has been some score inflation as time goes on.

I don't rely on game reviews at all, or 1/10 scaling systems. I hardly even read or watch any reviews. I have found 3-10-20 minutes of gameplay footage to be plenty sufficient for me to choose whether I'd get the game and play it, or not.

I know it's easy to say, but any honest coverage is good coverage in my opinion. I just watch gameplay videos (be it with a little salt) when it comes to PC games and then base my decision on that. Reviews make for good reading, but I don't trust them at all - it's very rare for the writer and editor to share my opinions on what makes a good game and at the end of the day it's their opinions that are translated into points for the title.

I believe it's fine as long as there is some sort of rating system/structure to go along with it. Some people may have higher standards and consider 8/10 "amazing" and reserve 9 & 10/10 for classics/personal favorites, etc. I believe it's a quick and easy way to give an opinion on something, but before giving a numerical rating the rater/reviewer should state what the rating means and have a proper rating system. Either that, or include a review to further explain.

the problem with a numerical system is that it doesn't convey what exactly is good or bad about a game. it also misses the point of critique, which is not simply to give the game a rating, but to say what went well or wrong with a piece of media. instead of a number system, just review the damn games. [editline]8th December 2012[/editline] and read the damn reviews.

I think number system from "official sources" are pointless, review the game, let the viewer make their opinion. Like hexpunK said a pros and con list is also way better and doesn't tell you whether it's good or not, just what's inherently wrong or good with it. Number systems are also incredibly flawed simply because different people treat the numbers differently. a 7/10 isn't a 7/10 for everyone or everything. People have their own ways of interpreting a 1-10 or 1-100 system which doesn't necessarily sync with the author, and different authors also rate differently. After all, what is good? What is very good? What is average? What is bad? What makes it very bad? It's nonsensical and shouldn't be used by "official sources". Leave it to the audience to rate things by numbers if they want to.

Everything is quantifiable, as soon as you can say that something is more something (more beautiful, better, etc.) than something else, you've brought in quantities to the mix.

the number system is a leftover from an age before youtube and really the mass communications that we have today. think X-Play being replaced with Let's Play, games used to be 1 out of 1000, but since the industry has been pared down by the likes of EA, and other massive software publishers, the numbered system has thus been abused by publishers to "encourage" developers, while the real reviews people look at are the video reviews on youtube even the app stores are notoriously wrong sometimes, great games can have 1 or 2 star ratings only because somebody decided to spam 1 star ratings, while the vast majority of people didn't rate at all

I like the way the AngryJoeShow does it on Youtube, where it's twenty minutes of bringing up all the good and bad points of a game then a score based on how much he would recommend it.

I enjoy the Spill.com ratings (even though they're obviously only applicalbe to movies but a game version could be adapted). Basically it takes the objective standards of a numeric system but gives the ratings weight in how much money you should spend on it, which is much more practical, and of course it comes off as less objective and more understood as an opinion, especially since they always have at least 2 people who can give different ratings. Here is their scale: [IMG]http://puu.sh/1zeS3[/IMG]

I'd love to see more sites do what GiantBomb does with their Quick Looks; just do 20-40 minute long videos showcasing sections of the game, with funny and informative discussion of the game as it's being played. Sure, they review stuff too and even use the number system, but Quick Looks are invaluable in giving people a chance to see what it's [I]actually like[/I] playing the game.

It honestly really depends. Ratings have become more difficult to give fairly as games have grown so advanced they're either Good, bad or moderate. No real number system. The only number system I can get behind was X-plays. Their 1-5 scale was honestly the best. 1 - Trash, 2 - Trash but not completely, 3 - Potential/Average, 4 - Great with some problems, 5 - Overall great. 1 - 10 is difficult and fucking 1 - 100 is stupid as hell. What in gods name is the difference between a 77 and a 78? Overall it's not exactly viable anymore to use a scale. One thing that is unfair in the gaming industry is the near rampant comparing of games. Unless a game is a direct copy there is no excuse to compare them (Case in point Battlefield 3 - Modern Warfare 2/3)