Comparing different methods of rating/scoring games.

[llsaidknockyouout]

100 Point Scale

Is most precise but impossible to make consistent, too arbitrary and riddled with minutia. Good if you have a specific rubric for grading games (like old Gamespot). Bad otherwise.

20 Point Scale

.5's give a degree of precision with just enough simplicity to keep the metric sane.

10 point scale

At this point, you're able to meaningfully stratify each category and what it means. 9 vs. 10 becomes a difficult discussion though.

5 point scale

It makes the score more subjective and essentially converts it to a "Hate" "Dislike" "Like, But..." "Really Like" "Love" scale.

Buy/Try/Pass

The problem with a 3 or less pt scale is that there's no difference between a game that's somewhat good and a game that's totally amazing.

No Rating At All

No such thing. Everyone has some way of comparing and stratifying games, whether they admit it or not.

 

[tippy2k2]

That's nice...

I''m not sure what we're here to discuss though. Which system do we prefer? What are the problems with each system? Does this dress make me look fat? You just stated things about review systems and that's all...

Frankly, I don't think it matters all that much as long as the reviewer is consistent with their ratings. The people who are going to ***** about reviewers rating their games wrong are going to ***** no matter what scale they use since their opinion is the only valid one and no reviewer is allowed to think differently than they do.

I do my own movie reviews on the side and I like the 10 point system myself with 1/2 stars. I feel like it gives me the flexibility I want while writing while not being overwhelming in the options. However, I could just as easily do a five star, twenty star, or five million star system and it wouldn't change how I wrote my reviews.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

What I do is, I read my review over and then synthetize a number from that. It's the last thing I think about, and the least important.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

I mentally convert every review score to a ?/10 (with some rounding) or a percentage (aka ?/100), because nearly all of the systems are fractions/percentages that can be easily converted between one another. It makes it much easier when comparing reviews. (It also allows me to resist the temptation to be lazy to go to Metacritic and let them do it for me. That way only the reviewers I trust are considered and I'm not subconsciously swayed when seeing MC's aggregate score.)

Even when doing that, I'm trying to find aspects of the game actually being discussed in multiple reviews and how the reviewers' opinions reflect my own on those aspects. A score is meaningless without real thoughts to back them up. It is nice when reviews give quick summary bullet points of the pros and cons at the end.


I do like Famitsu's style where 4 people each review the game. They each produce a score from 1 to 10. Then, the scores are added, with 40 being to the top of the scale. I don't care whether or not the scores were averaged back to a X/10 scale, but it would be nice if other publications did the multiple opinion strategy. (Too bad Famitsu themselves have loosened their standardsin recent years. It's to the point where they would give anywhere from a 36 to a perfect 40 to a disc case filled with with rancid tapioca pudding if the title of a hit Japanese RPG franchise is on the cover. Games receiving 40s used to be an extremely rare occurrence.)


ProJared also has an interested system (if you can call it that). His final score is a non-number (usually an item, character, or concept from the game) out of 10. Then he uses that thing as an analogy to explain his final thoughts on the game.

Spoiler: For example: (don't click if you want some ProJared review scores spoiled)

A Bleeding Ear/10 for Mega Man X7 (MMX7 is pretty bad.)

Clothed Barbie and Ken dolls dry humping/10 for Ride to Hell: Retrobution (RtH:R is bland, horrible and contains sex scenes with the characters still fully clothed.)

A clock without hands/10 for Chrono Trigger. (Ummm. Chrono Trigger is a timeless classic... about time travel.)

Abigail[small]Eating a rock.[/small]/10 for Stardew Valley (He really liked Stardew Valley. Jared's character and Abigail fall in love in the game. [small]She also ate the rock he found in a mine, for some reason.[/small])

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I am a fan of dual ratings in a lot of cases. I see a lot of games who get marked dow for simply being the genre they are irrespective of how good specimens of that genre they are, with reasonings used that show that no game of that genre can ever be a good game for the reviewer. Tears to Tiara 2 is a great example since most of the reviews complaied about there being too much reading, when the game is a visual novel srpg. That's like saying a mario game has too much jumping. It just makes no sense.

So, my conclusion is games should be rated twice, one for the reviewer and the irrational biases which prevent them from potetially enjoying the game, and once more as how good the specimen is at the genre it actually is trying to be, irrespective of how much the reviewer actually likes the genre. And yes, it is harder to rate how good a thing you dislike is as though you like it, but that is much more helpfull for fans of that genre than a review which is a takedown of the genre of the game which means no game of that genre ever can be good.

This is also solved by having people who actually get the point of games do the reviewing (people who get that in visual novels you go there for the reading) but I don't believe that's easier to achieve.

 

[Lufia Erim]

I think we need several categories. And then each category gets a rating out of 10.

Graphics/aesthetics , sound, mechanics , gameplay and fun.

Graphics/aesthetics is fairely straightforward. How good a game looks with the current technology. A 8/10 in 2016 will not be ab 8/10 in 2026 for example. But I'm sure we all agree that we expect a certain visual quality in the games we buy.

Sound. How good is the soundtrack, this one is a no brainer.

Mechanics. How good the game is mechanic wise. Is it buggy, broken or does everything work as intended. Are the controls crisp, responsive and fluid, etc....

Gameplay. This is the second most important thing. How is the gunplay, swordplay, exploration, story , etc. Is the game too easy, too hard, does battle feel good.

Fun. This one is subjective. How much fun did the reviewer have? What did he enjoy , what didn't he enjoy?

I consider the last 3 points the most important. If a review like that is too long i would suggest only mechanics, gameplay and fun. Althoug the more info the better.


On a side note. I would like to add that for me if a game look,sounds and plays as intended, it deserves a 8/10 on a regular scale. Even if it's the most bland game i have ever played. Because of the work and effort put into making a world that looks good, plays good and works properly, they deserve props. Even if it's boring as balls.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

What I do is, I read my review over and then synthetize a number from that. It's the last thing I think about, and the least important.

But it's the first thing people look at and the main thing that many people judge games by. As much as we might wish that people would actually read the review, the long history of internet outrage surrounding review scores shows that many don't.

As for scores in general, I prefer either a five point scale or "buy/wait for sale/kill it with fire" as I think that more granular scores get into a silly grey area of relative ranking of games based on score and many of the numbers seem fairly arbitrary (what is the difference between a 9.5 and a 9.8?). It's far easier and more understandable to just indicate if a game is excellent, good, okay, poor, terrible, etc.

 

[NPC009]

What I do is, I read my review over and then synthetize a number from that. It's the last thing I think about, and the least important.

Yep, me too. Of course I use the publications guidelines, but it's always a matter of 'yep, this feels right'. Once you start tricking yourself into believing you're giving objective scores (and that these are things that can be given in the first place), you should probably start rethinking your career.

Anyway, I like this 5 star systems in which every star stands for a category. Shit - Meh - Okay - Good - Great. Something like that. And sure, some good games may be better than other good games, but small differences like that are so subjective you can't really account for them in a review anyway.

As long as I stay consistent, my readers will probably figure out that I:
-like turn-based battlesystems
-am extra critical towards games that try to look realistic (as opposed to stylised)
-like anime but have a low tolerance for anime bullshit
-am rather strict compared to many other reviewers, but nearly always make an effort to look for the game's strengths
-don't mind tons of reading as long as the game is competently written
-dislike QTEs (party because I'm bad at them)
-have a huge reference frame for RPGs but don't know that much about shooters or sports games
-will point out that wearing metal bikini armour while hiking up a snowy mountain is fucking stupid

I think we need several categories. And then each category gets a rating out of 10.

Graphics/aesthetics , sound, mechanics , gameplay and fun.

Graphics/aesthetics is fairely straightforward. How good a game looks with the current technology. A 8/10 in 2016 will not be ab 8/10 in 2026 for example. But I'm sure we all agree that we expect a certain visual quality in the games we buy.

Sound. How good is the soundtrack, this one is a no brainer.

Mechanics. How good the game is mechanic wise. Is it buggy, broken or does everything work as intended. Are the controls crisp, responsive and fluid, etc....

Gameplay. This is the second most important thing. How is the gunplay, swordplay, exploration, story , etc. Is the game too easy, too hard, does battle feel good.

Fun. This one is subjective. How much fun did the reviewer have? What did he enjoy , what didn't he enjoy?

I hate to break this to you (actually, no, I don't), but all those points are subjective.

For instance:
-I like synth rock soundtracks, but not everyone is a fan of the genre. So while I might love the music in Ys or Valkyrie Profile, others might not care for it or even hate it.
-Good sprite art makes me happy and I think some SNES games are better looking than various recent games. This is not a very popular opinion.
-I like turn-based battlesystems and can appreciate a good one, but there are also people who find the whole concept outdated.
-Even controls can't be rated objectively. Most games offer one or two schemes, but that's not always enough for everyone. Response times can vary from set-up to set-up and the tolerance for bad response times can vary from person to person (a competitive fighting game players are bound to have different standards than Joe Average, who just wants to have a good time with his friends). And these things aren't mechanics, by the way. Game mechanics refer to the rules and systems that shape the game and the player's interaction with it.