3/5 DONT BUY EVER SUCKS: Why do we consider these ratings shite

FoolKiller

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Bob_McMillan said:
So I was on this other thread asking about how reviews affect you purchasing the game (here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.866970-How-much-do-reviews-impact-your-purchases#21682063) While others don't seem to bother with reviews of a game, its pretty much the deciding factor for me. I'm the kind of gamer you people hate, the guy who doesn't buy games that are less then 4 stars. And there are a lot for people like me. So I've been wondering for some time, why do consider these perfectly acceptable scores as bad? Far Cry 4 got 7, which is pretty good, but that dissuaded me from buying the game.

My own little theory is that because in school (at least my school) 7 out of 10 and 4 out 5 are passing, and borderline passing isn't really considered good, in fact, its considered bad. So when I see a score like 6 or 7, I immediately think of failure, and that makes me not want to buy the game. What do you guys think?
I do three things:

1. I look at the aggregate score on gamerankings
2. I look at the pros and cons on GameSpot
3. I read the IGN/Destructoid/Sterling review. Whichever one I can find

Then I go and try to find a way to try the actual game and decide whether to buy it.

The score never really bothers me though. I have games I like rated below 5/10 and hate games getting 9s and 10s
 

StriderShinryu

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Charcharo said:
FrozenLaughs said:
3/5 or 6/10 is 60%. In America we spend 12 years being taught that 60% is the bare minimum required to succeed; anything less is a failure.

You don't want your Doctor scoring 60 on his finals.
You don't want your Chef scoring 60 on his exams.
You don't want your Mechanic scoring 60 on his tests.
...
...
...
Apparently we don't want our money going to a game that scores 60% either. (or a publisher/developer who delivers 60% of a game)
I dont really think those two things are comparable :p...
I agree. Educational Testing is, in the vast majority of cases, an objective system. Either you get the question right or you get it wrong. Your professor doesn't look at your test and go "I like what this guy has done in the past, I like the subject matter and he had good intentions.. I'll give it him an 80%." In a game review, however, there are some objective measures to be sure but game reviews are largely subjective. They are opinions. One reviewer can rightfully give a game 90% and another reviewer can give the same game 70%, and neither of them are wrong.
 

Vivi22

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Two reasons: the first is that most people have limited money and don't want to risk wasting what they do have on anything other than a 9 or a 10 out of 10 game.

The second is that most reviewers, websites, and publications stopped giving ratings below a 6 or 7 except in the most dire of cases such a long time ago that ratings below that are almost unheard of and, I'm sorry, all of the games coming out can't possibly be that good. At least some have to suck, but the reviews rarely actually reflect that. So what happens when a 6 or a 7 becomes the baseline and you can't tell if a game is actually a 7/10 or would actually be a 5/10 or lower in a sane world? You assume everything in that range isn't worth your time because trying to sort the good from the bad in that review range has become too time consuming.
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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If a game is costing me £50-60, I want to know its Good or Excellent, not Average. I'll get an Average game when its on sale or cheaper due to age further down the line.
 

renegade7

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BiscuitTrouser said:
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.
What the fuck? Is this the USA that does that?

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.
The idea, I think, is that you should be familiar with most of the material, not just a simple majority of the material, because a lot of course progressions are linear (ie you take "basic x" then "applied/intermediate x" then "advanced x"). 52% might technically be a simple majority of the material, but it also means that there's almost half you're missing (and a few percent could very well just be a lucky guess), which really doesn't bode well for future study.

Plus there's also the bell curve, where the grade assignments are based on the relative distribution of scores, and I am so glad I went to school in my undergraduate that had a firm policy of not doing it that way, because sometimes it can result in nonsense like a 92 being a D if everyone does well (which actually happens at our more competitive schools, sometimes), and when it comes to taking the next course in the progression (ie completing your major) or presenting your transcript for an internship, it's the letter grade people are going to look at. When you hear about stuff like pre-medical students hoarding library books so people can't study, stealing adderall from the dorm room of a student with learning disorder, or sabotaging people's projects to make them fail, that's usually why.

OT: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPointScale I think this is particularly illuminating. A lot of it boils down to the expectation that something you're willing to invest time and money into be better than other stuff, and the fact that fanboys can be a volatile bunch.

And I'm not even joking there. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people reading the reviews for the next installation in a major IP are just doing it for confirmation that their game is good, ideally better than everyone else's. It was a while ago, but remember the fury that erupted when Zelda: TP was given 8.5 scores by a few reviewers? Like, how DARE they give my game a B+, since clearly it deserves nothing less than to be canonized as an artistic endeavor of the purest form and the pinnacle of mankind's cultural achievement (until the next installment, of course). But honestly, TP had PLENTY of flaws: the plot was contrived and seemed mostly to be a formulaic attempt to do what ALTTP did where it turns out it's Ganon at the end, it did very little that hadn't already been done to the point where it just felt like Ocarina experimenting with AAA "grittiness", the controls sometimes stuck for no reason, and it shipped with several game-breaking bugs.
 

Tegual

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The problem i find with reviews is that they are just the opinion of the people who wrote them, and maybe i will agree with them. BUT i cannot form an opinion on a game unless i play it myself. So i stop reading and watching reviews until after i play a game. I have only ever found 1 game that was so bad i got a refund for it and that was simply because is was released completely broken and the studio collapsed before fixing the broken mess of a game they released. I have a huge game library and have played most of them to completion and finding at least something enjoyable about all of them, sure i haven't finished all of them, simply because of time constraints but most games are fun and worth playing.

Also i often find that reviews are not always a true representation of how the game is especially later on if a game gets a lot of additional content and patches to fix glaring issues.
 

Augustine

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Scars Unseen said:
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...
That's only natural if number scores have merit. Otherwise it's just lazy self-deception.
As much as I dislike number measurement of games, I still do think they have merit. It is a useful shorthand for seeing the value of a title at a glance. I, for example, would not bother reading reviews of every piece of rubbish spawned by Steam Greenlight, but numbers of recommendations Steam provides, do give me some measure of how worthwhile closer look is.
 

FirstNameLastName

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I may sound completely insane for even suggesting this, but have you ever considered that review scores are nothing more than conjecture?
While aggregate scores are fairly reliable when they are either really high or really low, anything in between is more of a mixed bag. As many people have already pointed out, we've probably all had experiences with games that get rated to the moon and back but turn out to be pretty shit, along with games that get pretty average scores that end up as favorites.

After all, even some sports game that gets a 10/10 will be of less value to me than a 7/10 RPG.
 

EbonBehelit

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It's because when you're inundated with games, so many that you could never hope to play them all, you become spoiled for choice - and when one is spoiled for choice, they tend to get very picky.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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Here's how my ratings go and this has nothing to do with reviewers ratings:

1/5 or 1 star - Well they released it. I guess thats an accomplishment but I wouldn't pay for it and would demand my money back. Will not buy ever, might play for laughs if free. Anything below this isn't a game, isn't even alpha quality, just shite spread across a disc. Slaughtering Grounds would be a "game" that rated 0/5 for example.

2/5 or 2 stars - Bargain bin material, not worth a full or half price buy. Not even a $19.99 buy. Still serviceable but either riddled with bugs or just counterintuitive to natural play. Either way a game that might have been great but fell short of the mark.

3/5 or 3 stars - Average level game that may not be worth Day 1 pricing but if it falls between the $19.99 and $29.99 mark can be serviceable. Mechanics can be compromised if story makes up for that, or character development. Something has to rate at least 4/5 on subcharts to warrant this rating. Does not have to be brilliant, just has to capture attention for appropriate time periods according to game type and platform.

4/5 or 4 stars - Superb work, little-to-no game breaking bugs or immersion breaking bugs. Frame-rate must be consistent without significant dips during high action scenes. Or if the game isn't actiony, the look and feel must bring a sense of wonder. Can have either 4/5 across the board in subcharts or mixed 3/5 5/5 subratings.

5/5 or 5 stars - Superb story, sound, mechanics, if not bug free bugs should be so minor that they are rare, or they change the game without negative affect and mistaken for features (yes an accidental mistake can actually make a game better... hell isn't some of the best paintings/drawings/etc due to mistakes on the artists part?). Must have no graphical hiccups, good writing, engaging mechanics, intuitive UI. Basically a game that one can pick up naturally and play however one wishes to. Does not have to be complex, but needs to have depth. Beyond all of that the game must not have any jarring moments that take you out of whatever hooked you in the first place. These are the games that you end up saying "One more turn..." or something comparable and find yourself hours later still playing despite it being way past the time you need to go to bed or possibly cutting close to making you late for work (please don't use a 5/5 game as an excuse to miss work though, the game will always be there but your job won't if you don't go).

Basically I don't need a game to be perfect for me to play it. I've actually had games that critical reviews gave a 2/5 and I personally loved to death (but they may not have gotten over a 3/5 from me). As long as it has over 1 star, to me its a game worth playing at least once and part of the rating also is drawn out of the price tag, that is how much I paid for it and would I rate the hours spent worth that price.
A $60.00 game that I only spent 20 minutes on... well if I paid $60 and someone spit in my face for 20 minutes I'd be a bit pissed IRL, so why would I want someone to do the equivalent in a video game? Moreover why would I pay someone to do that?
 

GabeZhul

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I would say another angle to take into account is the problems regarding the entire notion of "average". In order to determine an average, one must have an even sampling of an entire field, which in gaming terms means one should play a lot of games, both really good and really bad.

Now the thing is, most people don't play really bad games. You might hear about them (especially in the age of YouTube riff playthroughs), but I assume most people would never touch something that obviously looks like trash. In fact, most people, because of time and monetary restraints, restrict their gaming to the crème de la crème, and so they are comparing those to each other instead of the big picture. Just for an example: when was the last time an decent AAA FPS was compared to some budget movie tie-in instead of CoD?

Under these circumstances, since their sampling is biased towards the high-end of the scale, 9/10 and above will be their good games, 8/10 will be their flawed/average games, 7/10 their bad games and everything under that will be just white noise they don't care about.
 

RedDeadFred

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May 13, 2009
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1. As others have already stated, many people look at scores with the mindset that they would look at their school grades. You would not consider 50% an average grade. You aren't normally happy with 60% or even 70%.

2. The actual reviewers tend to perpetuate the above mindset.

Basically, like it or not, this is how most reviewers and readers approach reviews. One of the few sites I've seen that doesn't follow this mindset is Quarter to Three. This results in them often having the lowest scores on Metacritic causing a large amount of rage to be directed towards them.
 

Casper Andersen

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Well first off, it seems like only the top part of the number scale is being used at any given site, that in itself makes it an unreliable way to gauge whether the game is good or not. With the way it is, bad games almost always gets a score of 5-6 on scale of 10, the reviewer may have gotten some entertainment value out of it, but it is no way an accurate score if viewed from my perspective on whether I should fork over the 60$ (actually 84$ here in Denmark)for the game.

Also I am a bit of a cheapskate, so it is extremely rare that I buy games right when they come out, it is only for major titles that either rely on multiplayer (WoW expansions, Diablo and such) or if it is gonna be a game my friends are all gonna be playing and discussing (GTA 5).
So not only are games a whole lot cheaper when I buy them, the community has judged it, and I can get a much more accurate picture of what the game is like and its level of quality.
 

Scars Unseen

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Augustine said:
Scars Unseen said:
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...
That's only natural if number scores have merit. Otherwise it's just lazy self-deception.
As much as I dislike number measurement of games, I still do think they have merit. It is a useful shorthand for seeing the value of a title at a glance. I, for example, would not bother reading reviews of every piece of rubbish spawned by Steam Greenlight, but numbers of recommendations Steam provides, do give me some measure of how worthwhile closer look is.
I would point out that those are not the same thing. Steam's system is similar to Rotten Tomtoes in that you can only recommend or not, with no middle ground allowed. That is a much better system to my thinking. Is the game a rough gem? A polished turd? You can detail as much as you like, but it ultimately comes down to a single question: did you like it? Combined with their curation system, I think Steam has one the better "review" systems out there.
 

NPC009

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Aug 23, 2010
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The second is that most reviewers, websites, and publications stopped giving ratings below a 6 or 7 except in the most dire of cases such a long time ago that ratings below that are almost unheard of and, I'm sorry, all of the games coming out can't possibly be that good. At least some have to suck, but the reviews rarely actually reflect that. So what happens when a 6 or a 7 becomes the baseline and you can't tell if a game is actually a 7/10 or would actually be a 5/10 or lower in a sane world? You assume everything in that range isn't worth your time because trying to sort the good from the bad in that review range has become too time consuming.
I don't know what sites/magazines you get your reviews from, but the ones I'm familiar do not grade on a 7-10 scale. And I should know. I've handed out plenty of 4s, 5s and 6s myself.

What you do see on magazines and sites is that many of the truely bad games are not reviewed at all. Magazines have a limited amount of space and websites a limited amount of money to pay freelancers with. To make the most of these limitations they focus on games readers are interested in with some quirky smaller titles thrown in for good measure. Shovelware, cheap movie tie-ins and the like are considered filler and most magazines don't cover these games unless you can't fill their pages any other way. Now, the games the average gamers are interested in and the quirky stuff writers/editors want to share with the world tend to be atleast decent. 5-6 territory or better.

That's the main reason you don't see super low scores that often: most publications don't review games that bad all that often. But when we do, we'll be sure to stick a 1-4 on them.
 

J.McMillen

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Sep 11, 2008
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The real problem with rating scores is that a particular score may mean different things to different reviewers. For one, a 6/10 may be slightly above average, to another it's failing. Without actually studying what a particular reviewers scoring criteria is, the number is meaningless.

The one Imperioratorex Caprae talked about is very similar to the one the show 'X-Play' used. There, a 3/5 was considered a good game. Not great, not exceptional, not near perfect, just good. If you like similar games, it's probably a game you would want to play. But it far from a fail because it only got 60%.

So trying to equate game review scores to school grades is useless. Unless you understand what a particular score means, it's just a number.
 

lunavixen

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I don't decide on games wholly based on the score, I use the numerical score as a rough guide to how much I might want to look into a game. If a game has a "neutral" score of say, 4-6, I look harder into the explanative reviews as to why, whether there are massive glitches or the game is just plain bad/unfun (I generally stay away from games that sit at 3 or less unless I'm looking specifically into the game). I'm also skeptical of games that get perfect or near perfect scores like TLoU and CoD as they usually tend to be over hyped for what you actually get.
 

NPC009

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Aug 23, 2010
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The real problem with rating scores is that a particular score may mean different things to different reviewers. For one, a 6/10 may be slightly above average, to another it's failing. Without actually studying what a particular reviewers scoring criteria is, the number is meaningless.
Many websites and magazines have a page on which they explain what their scores mean. Reviewers have to follow these guidelines. When they give a score that doesn't seem to match the review and grading scale, they'll probably have a talk with their editor.

Most of the publications I wrote/write for use a scale similar to this:
1-3: Terrible game. Stay far, far away.
4-5: Playable, but we doubt you'll have much fun with this.
6-7: Decent game, good pick for fans of the genre.
8-9: Very good game, most gamers will enjoy this.
10: Instant classic.

It's different from a scale of, say, RPGfan.com. There they use something similar to schools:
0-59: Bad
60-69: Subpar
70-79: Avarage
80-89: Good
90-100: Great
 

veloper

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Jan 20, 2009
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The rating scale is irrelevant here. All the commonly used scales can work.

The reason a gamer won't bother with mediocrity, the 5/10s or 6/10s, is because there are more than enough games that are ABOVE average.
We can afford to be picky and our time is limited.
 

GundamSentinel

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Aug 23, 2009
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Mostly I use score as a veeeerrrry rough guideline about what to check out and what to ignore. Just to save time, nothing more.

For me:
<60 = ignore, there are enough better games out there.

>60 = read/watch some more to see whether or not it's worth it.

Other than that, scores don't influence my purchasing decisions.