I used to use an 8/10 in Edge as a standard for what I would buy or not. But over the years I eventually became disillusioned and stopped reading them.
It's now a scale of 8-10, and for the super hyped releases, it's a scale of 9-10. Remember, folks, a 9/10 is grounds for a boycott, outrage, or demanding someone be fired.crypticracer said:Reviews and sites like meta critic have made them pointless. On a 10 point scale there is 7-10 and everything below that is considered the same (unbuyable.)
As someone who lives in the US, I'm just as baffled as you are. A C is not (or at least, is not supposed to be) the 'minimum passing grade'; that would be a D. An F is a failing grade, that's why they used the letter 'F'. A C is supposed to be average. I suppose they've changed the rules since my not-that-long-ago-really school days. I guess grade inflation is the logical next step of degree devaluing, but, well, I guess all I can say is "Good luck, young people! I hope you're not actually as screwed as this makes it look!".BiscuitTrouser said:What the fuck? Is this the USA that does that?Prime_Hunter_H01 said:70% or a C is the minimum passing score ingrained in to our mind as the minimum of good enough and everything up is better.
Im at uni in the UK and our first, that is the best result you can get, is 70%. I consider 70% to be the one to aim for at least with 80% being above and beyond.
Thats so weird because it would mean 70% of the questions have to be easy enough for the average person to answer them, then one tiny fraction are VERY hard to weed out the good people. Thats such a stupid way of doing it, At my uni the average student will get 40-50% and all laddering is done from there on up.
I guess thats why I consider 7/10 to be definitely quite good. Id consider 6/10 to be meh, 5 to be a neutral time sink and all other things below to be actively unfun.
Most sites/magazines do try to assign titles to reviewers that are fans of the genre/part of the target demographic, but I wonder if that's always ideal. There are plenty of good games that have an appeal beyond the build-in audience, so shouldn't we see some other perspectives as well?As it is now, I don't even know why they assign some games to some reviewers. Limited people, I get. But If I hate young adult stuff and you send me to review the Twilight series... it can be well done to shit and I'd still hate it with all that I am.
that's elementary/middle/high school and sort of depending on what you get into for college (or uni as you would say). we have our public schooling system setup with the whole "no child left behind" crap, and seeing as how most ghetto kids couldn't give two shits about school, grades have become extremely watered dow. I graduated with engineering in college, and let me tell you, the average score for most of our tests were anywhere from 20%-60%, the tests were just fucking brutal and were extreme time crunches, most teachers ended up having to curve grades because everyone would fail if they didn't, so it highly depends on what career you're getting into, and how the test measures applicable principles or things. (personally I think more tests are stupid,the focus should be on projects/labs/field work...by taking tests, you're concentrating on doing well on that test, which could or could not be relevant to how stuff is actually done in the field. I've known plenty of book smart kids be fucking god awful after graduating.)BiscuitTrouser said:What the fuck? Is this the USA that does that?Prime_Hunter_H01 said:70% or a C is the minimum passing score ingrained in to our mind as the minimum of good enough and everything up is better.
Im at uni in the UK and our first, that is the best result you can get, is 70%. I consider 70% to be the one to aim for at least with 80% being above and beyond.
Thats so weird because it would mean 70% of the questions have to be easy enough for the average person to answer them, then one tiny fraction are VERY hard to weed out the good people. Thats such a stupid way of doing it, At my uni the average student will get 40-50% and all laddering is done from there on up.
I guess thats why I consider 7/10 to be definitely quite good. Id consider 6/10 to be meh, 5 to be a neutral time sink and all other things below to be actively unfun.
But why can't I just like something others don't? I love Dead Island not because I'm fan of the franchise, or I'm convinced everybody else is an idiot, or I don't have the time to play something else. I love first-person melee combat, I love zombies and having NOT played Dead Rising or Left 4 Dead the whole proposition was new to me (also happened to be my first PS3 game). And I love RE5 because I had a blast playing it on co-op. And so on.Jandau said:The reasons are simple:
Fanboyism. People who are fans of other franchises will cling to any excuse to decry a game from an opposing franchise, even if that excuse is "It's good but not quite perfect.
Self-aggrandizing snarkyness. The simple belief that if you can hate something, then you're above all the "sheeple" who like it. A bunch of people enjoy something, but because you don't, that implies you have more refined tastes (which naturally stem from your better education, higher intelligence and longer penis). So saying that you wouldn't stoop to playing a 7/10 game is your way of saying you are above such games and therefore above people who play them.
Finally, time limitations. How many games do you play? All of them? I'm guessing not. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you have a finite time for gaming. And let's say you decide you feel like playing an FPS that day. So you go online and look at available FPS games. You narrow your choice through various criteria (like say, theme, price, platform, etc.) and let's assume you're left with 3 games. One is a 5/10, everyone thinks it's "meh"; one's a 7/10, solid but flawed; the last one is 10/10, universal acclaim, everyone says it's the best thing since penicilin. Which one do you buy?
These are IMO the three major reasons (or categories of reasons) and people can be guilty of multiple ones at once.
That's not how the grading system works, these are graded essays, projects etc, not questions with right or wrong answers. Someone getting 60% for a subject doesn't mean they got 40% of it wrong. There is a thread here that goes into it:Unsilenced said:TIL: I should have gone to college in Britain.
If you only know 60% of how to do something, I wouldn't say you've learned how to do it. It may mean I have to re-take a few courses, but I'm glad people aren't going into the field only knowing 60% of how to be a doctor or an engineer.
Of course you can enjoy things others don't. That's not the question posed in the original post (which was basically: "Why do so many people interpret decent scores are being terrible?") and at no point did I state that you are in any way wrong to like something that's unpopular. I was just providing what I consider the reasons for attitudes of people who hate on games that get less than perfect scores.Johnny Novgorod said:But why can't I just like something others don't? I love Dead Island not because I'm fan of the franchise, or I'm convinced everybody else is an idiot, or I don't have the time to play something else. I love first-person melee combat, I love zombies and having NOT played Dead Rising or Left 4 Dead the whole proposition was new to me (also happened to be my first PS3 game). And I love RE5 because I had a blast playing it on co-op. And so on.Jandau said:The reasons are simple:
Fanboyism. People who are fans of other franchises will cling to any excuse to decry a game from an opposing franchise, even if that excuse is "It's good but not quite perfect.
Self-aggrandizing snarkyness. The simple belief that if you can hate something, then you're above all the "sheeple" who like it. A bunch of people enjoy something, but because you don't, that implies you have more refined tastes (which naturally stem from your better education, higher intelligence and longer penis). So saying that you wouldn't stoop to playing a 7/10 game is your way of saying you are above such games and therefore above people who play them.
Finally, time limitations. How many games do you play? All of them? I'm guessing not. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you have a finite time for gaming. And let's say you decide you feel like playing an FPS that day. So you go online and look at available FPS games. You narrow your choice through various criteria (like say, theme, price, platform, etc.) and let's assume you're left with 3 games. One is a 5/10, everyone thinks it's "meh"; one's a 7/10, solid but flawed; the last one is 10/10, universal acclaim, everyone says it's the best thing since penicilin. Which one do you buy?
These are IMO the three major reasons (or categories of reasons) and people can be guilty of multiple ones at once.
You don't have to be a fanboy, a douche or a busy person to enjoy something others didn't.
What about people like me, who admit to have poor tastes and are just terrible people in general? I do it less because of my endowment, and more to make my self feel better, as well as compensate for size.Jandau said:The reasons are simple:
Fanboyism. People who are fans of other franchises will cling to any excuse to decry a game from an opposing franchise, even if that excuse is "It's good but not quite perfect.
Self-aggrandizing snarkyness. The simple belief that if you can hate something, then you're above all the "sheeple" who like it. A bunch of people enjoy something, but because you don't, that implies you have more refined tastes (which naturally stem from your better education, higher intelligence and longer penis). So saying that you wouldn't stoop to playing a 7/10 game is your way of saying you are above such games and therefore above people who play them.
Finally, time limitations. How many games do you play? All of them? I'm guessing not. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you have a finite time for gaming. And let's say you decide you feel like playing an FPS that day. So you go online and look at available FPS games. You narrow your choice through various criteria (like say, theme, price, platform, etc.) and let's assume you're left with 3 games. One is a 5/10, everyone thinks it's "meh"; one's a 7/10, solid but flawed; the last one is 10/10, universal acclaim, everyone says it's the best thing since penicilin. Which one do you buy?
These are IMO the three major reasons (or categories of reasons) and people can be guilty of multiple ones at once.
That's only natural if number scores have merit. Otherwise it's just lazy self-deception.Augustine said:I would like to posit that there is so much choice out there, that most people don't have to bother with anything below "7". Seems quite natural.
Not to say that assigning numbers to the quality of games is an effective way of measuring their merit...