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Numbered Reviews Must End

T

TheCloser

Banned
Let me start by saying that this topic is offspring of today's new controversy. People have been bashing reviewers today and honestly, its not their fault. The practice today is to write a detailed review and then provide a numbered score at the end.

The question is, how can you quantify something that is subjective? It makes no sense. What is the difference between an 8.1 score and an 8.2 score? How do you quantify the .1 difference? Is there a checklist that all games must fulfill?

My point is this, reviews are not quantitative but they are qualitative. We need to stop attaching numbers to reviews. It is pointless. It leads to inconsistencies in scoring, claims of bias and fraudulent reviews. We have all seen the ign EA gif where the score increases as the money goes to ign. It will lead to a lot of transparency if numbered reviews just stop.

Opinions?
 
A

Amir0x

Banned
I think the problem with reviews is the widespread distrust of game journalists now, so I'm not sure if changing the numbers would end that. It would be an interesting start though, although those scores probably get a big number of hits or sell a few extra magazines, so it's unlikely ever to happen.
 
M

Mooreberg

Member
It is funny how many in the gaming press say this, but they keep attaching numbers to the reviews. It is almost as if they are aiming for clicks... /tinfoil
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Buy / Not Buy
Read the review at least a bit if you want to see how person who reviewed it liked it.
Kotaku has it right. I feel like numbered reviews are fetishising the whole process almost.
 
S

Sendou

Member
Mooreberg said:
It is funny how many in the gaming press say this, but they keep attaching numbers to the reviews. It is almost as if they are aiming for clicks... /tinfoil
Click to expand...

Yeah... That's kind of the reason they exist you know. How they go about it is up to their discretion but still.
 
R

Rickenslacker

Banned
Numbers aren't bad, but they shouldn't have the kind of granularity that should make it seem like they're marking the exact quality of a title. Like you said, 8.1 or 8.2, what's the difference?

It's why I prefer a four or five star scale without decimals or halves. Every point serves a purpose and is general enough to get the idea across.

Then again, I haven't actually used a review in years so I guess it doesn't matter to me at all.
 
S

Scooter155

Member
Some people (Hi) pop in to a trusted gaming site and just quickly scan the article and read the number (or stars or hearts or thumbs ups or whatevers) to get a feel for how the game is liked.

I check Giantbomb because I know those guy's tastes pretty well and I trust their star counts to line up fairly well with my own tastes. I still like reading long form reviews too though.

I don't think numbers are inherently bad. Don't look at them if they bother you, yeah?
 
J

jschreier

Member
Hear, hear! Copy/pasting from another thread...

Yeah, it's one big toxic cycle that will only end when gamers stop caring enough to make threads like this. Bonuses are tied to Metacritic scores because Metacritic scores affect sales, and Metacritic scores affect sales because gamers obsess over whether the newest AAA game just got 8s or 9s, as if a game's quality can be quantified like a piece of meat. Review scores poison discussion and remove the ambiguity of criticism by forcing reviewers to write in a way that "justifies" attached numerical values when they should be trying to capture the ambivalence and weirdness of video games, which are so bizarre and cool and so worth a better level of discourse than "OMG I can't believe Polygon gave The Last of Us a 7.5." Review scores are at best arbitrary numbers determined by whether a game holistically "feels like a 9," and at worst checklists pieced together by our predetermined expectations of game-as-product ("oh, we had to knock off a point because of all the bugs").

Review scores actively harm the development of video games, too. Publishers hire consultants and mock reviewers to go out and predict a game's Metacritic average, and if a publisher can "bump a game from the 80s to the 90s" they will make decisions accordingly, because it's more important to hit that vaunted 90 Metacritic than it is to take risks or experiment or try to make games that are nuanced and interesting and might trigger ambivalence. Fascinating games like Nier and El Shaddai and Remember Me are relegated to B-movie territory because they got 6s and 7s and are considered "mediocre" games based on our collective arbitrary standards of what a video game should be. Games are defined as critical successes and failures not because of the language we use to describe them, but because Metacritic websites decided to give them 9s or 6s. There is no room for nuance. Just numbers.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: review scores are hurting video games and they need to go away.
 
davepoobond

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
No


A number is the only thing you can rely on in this crazy game journalism world to convey a concise and logical opinion

Math is better than English
 
rob305

rob305

Member
Lord Error said:
Buy / Not Buy
Read the review at least a bit if you want to see how person who reviewed it liked it.
Kotaku has it right. I feel like numbered reviews are fetishising the whole process almost.
Click to expand...

Buy / Rent / Ignore would be perfect in my opinion
 
D

DudeWithNoName

Member
Lord Error said:
Buy / Not Buy
Read the review at least a bit if you want to see how person who reviewed it liked it.
Kotaku has it right. I feel like numbered reviews are fetishising the whole process almost.
Click to expand...

I love this.

I can't imagine being a dev and pouring blood, sweat and tears into my creation only to have some dickbag reviewer throw out a 6.5/10 because of some arbitrary nitpicks. Just tell me about the game, and let me decide if it's something that I'd like to play.
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
I like reading the score before I read the text. It's mostly habit I guess but I like to get an idea of where it's going to end up, it's like reading a headline in a newspaper. Also it's nice to quickly scan Metacritic just to get an easy consensus; I'm not going to read 10+ reviews of a game I'm only mildly interested in.

It's not the fault of a score that people freak out over them, and publishers withhold bonuses because of them.
 
S

Servbot24

Banned
I like number scores and I like Metacritic. Sometimes I don't want to have to do heavy research just to have a general idea of whether a game is quality.
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
The problem with reviews that lack scores is that you have to read them.
 
Z

zewone

Member
So there's 10-20 entities whose reviews everyone follows. Like...what really makes these people's opinions worthwhile?

Any schmuck with a Macbook can now be a "journalist". It's not like when magazines used to rule the world.

Stop putting so much weight behind these people's opinions and it won't matter if they put a number next to their wall of text or not.
 
S

Scooter155

Member
alr1ght said:
Not worth it
Buy it on sale
Buy it full price

however, C.R.E.A.M. dolla dolla bill yalll.
Click to expand...

This still doesn't work though, I mean, some people have more expendable income than others, and then there are some people who don't have as much free time as others. Everyone has to make a value judgment for themselves and there's no way a gaming site could possibly know whether I'd buy it "on sale" or "full price" or "at all".

100% is ridiculous, I'm a fan of the 5 star with half step increments.
 
R

Ri'Orius

Member
TheCloser said:
The question is, how can you quantify something that is subjective? It makes no sense. What is the difference between an 8.1 score and an 8.2 score? How do you quantify the .1 difference? Is there a checklist that all games must fulfill?
Click to expand...

You do it subjectively.

When I went to the ER with a burn, they asked me to rate my level of pain from one to ten. It's subjective, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. Yes, there will be outliers, but on the whole if someone says their pain is a 2 versus an 8 that tells the doctor something about the severity of the problem.

When a survey goes out to your company, or to a particular market demographic, they'll ask you to rate how satisfied you are from "Not at all satisfied" to "Extremely satisfied." It's subjective, but it still provides important information that can help dictate the future of the company/product.

Papers at school, figure skating at the olympics, boxing matches. Subjective ratings are everywhere. Why not games?
 
Z

Zombie James

Banned
TheCloser said:
The question is, how can you quantify something that is subjective? It makes no sense. What is the difference between an 8.1 score and an 8.2 score? How do you quantify the .1 difference? Is there a checklist that all games must fulfill?
Click to expand...

A 100-point scale is stupid. Believe it or not, I actually prefer the old GamePro scale:

BPuqPjU.jpg
Click to expand...

There are certain things you can give objective scores for. For example, a game that manages 1080p@60fps should get a better score in that category than a different version of the same game running at half the frame rate, or you may give a game that stutters to single digits a low score in that category. Things like audio and gameplay may still get high scores in this scenario, though, which is perfectly fine. There's too much stuff happening in games at once to lump everything into one score, imho.
 
E

emag

Member
Strongly disagree. There are way too many games for any one person to play; review scores allow games to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The vast majority of gamers don't care about minor variations and inconsistencies in scoring. The only ones complaining about such are internet addicts who'd rather whine online than play games.
 
M

mephixto

Banned
TheCloser said:
Let me start by saying that this topic is offspring of today's new controversy. People have been bashing reviewers today and honestly, its not their fault. The practice today is to write a detailed review and then provide a numbered score at the end.

The question is, how can you quantify something that is subjective? It makes no sense. What is the difference between an 8.1 score and an 8.2 score? How do you quantify the .1 difference? Is there a checklist that all games must fulfill?

My point is this, reviews are not quantitative but they are qualitative. We need to stop attaching numbers to reviews. It is pointless. It leads to inconsistencies in scoring, claims of bias and fraudulent reviews. We have all seen the ign EA gif where the score increases as the money goes to ign. It will lead to a lot of transparency if numbered reviews just stop.

Opinions?
Click to expand...

People that think an 8 is equals to a bad game must change not the numbered reviews, just because they don't give a 10 to the new over hyped new game it means the reviewer is bad or the game.
 
T

TheCloser

Banned
Scooter155 said:
Some people (Hi) pop in to a trusted gaming site and just quickly scan the article and read the number (or stars or hearts or thumbs ups or whatevers) to get a feel for how the game is liked.

I check Giantbomb because I know those guy's tastes pretty well and I trust their star counts to line up fairly well with my own tastes. I still like reading long form reviews too though.

I don't think numbers are inherently bad. Don't look at them if they bother you, yeah?
Click to expand...

Isn't this doing a major disservice to the author though? The text is what gives us true insight into game as a whole. Doing this just leads to number wars? I've read some posts earlier and in those posts, they attempted to compare titan fall's reviews scores to infamous. Why would you compare them? They are not the same game.

Scores just need to go. People jump straight to the numbers; they don't read the text.
 
I

IAmRandom31

Banned
Actually people focusing only on the number at the end needs to stop.

There is usually context and reasoning behind the scores, people just ignore all that evil writing stuff and go straight for the score. Hence the popularity of metacritic. Thats all you want, thats all you get.

And nowadays, the scores are not broken down by the different parts of the game. You used to have scores based on Gameplay, Controls, Fun Factor, Replayability, Sound, Graphics, etc. Now, it is just that single number for everything.

I liked the old ways of reviewing myself.
 
A

Adam Blue

Member
Mooreberg said:
It is funny how many in the gaming press say this, but they keep attaching numbers to the reviews. It is almost as if they are aiming for clicks... /tinfoil
Click to expand...

Do you have examples?

I applaud Kotaku for their stance on it.

emag said:
Strongly disagree. There are way too many games for any one person to play; review scores allow games to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Click to expand...

You're assuming a score makes sense. It doesn't. No one here could explain "the score system" then choose a bunch of games based on that.
 
T

The Boat

Member
Hell yeah they need to go. They're a poison to everyone but the suits in some major publishers that withhold bonuses if certain meta critic scores aren't met and save money at the expense of the developers.
 
J

justjustin

Member
I find the numbers helpful. The score frames the review, so I know ahead of time if the reviewer likes or dislikes the game. It's just a way of expressing approval or disapproval. Everyone will use the same numbers differently just as everyone will use the words good, bad, love and hate differently.
 
1

1upmuffin

Member
1-10 or 1-5 works fine, no need for ratings like 7.2. I think numbered reviews are fine, people like seeing numbers and those who want to know more can actually read the review.
 
P

PlumCantaloupe

Member
Honestly I sometimes feel people like numbers because it makes the choice for them on whether to purchase or not. We are notorious for not researching ideas before believing them (partly why marketing works so well).
 
S

Shamdeo

Member
What's the incentive to put out a certain number score? Pressure from publishers so that you'll have continued access to assets/interviews/etc or for them to hit a certain Metacritic score to determine critical success? Trying to increase your readership/impressions?

Are reviews more a tool for various outlets than anything meaningful to discerning readerships?
 
-COOLIO-

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
i think the numbers can have their place, especially when you follow just one or two reviewers that you trust.

i think that instead of asking reviewers to forgo numbers, we: the gamer community, should forgo being asshats and chill out.
 
P

PoweredBySoy

Banned
Hah! There's a large population of GAF that is absolutely fanatic about numbers and giving clicks to online reviews. We do it to ourselves.
 
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