Glass Joe the Champ said:
Hey guys, I was reading an article on how video game review scores are inflated and the average review score on many websites is around seven. They act like this is a really bad thing, but if I remember from the academic grading scale, seven is average and anything below that is bad. If it works for schools, it should work for us, right?
What do you guys think, on a 1-10 scale, what should be the average score and why? This doesn't apply to only game scores, really any scoring system based on 10s or 100s. (including, as I mentioned above, academic scoring)
The problem is how we define "average."
In schools, the grade of C is usually termed "average." But this is a measure of
proficiency, which is why 50% is not considered "average." The average person is more than 50% proficient at adding and subtracting, for instance. The average student scores around 76-84% proficiency (or a C level) after thorough instruction.
So the grade isn't a measure of which students are above or below average, per se. The grade is a measure of proficiency with the task, and the
label we assign to that grade is whether or not that proficiency represents the average level.
Some argue game reviews work the same way. If a game is rated around a 7.5, we're saying the game is
functional, but not much
good. If it's being rated lower than that, we might be meant to take that as a game that is not functioning properly. A student with a grade of C is getting the job done, but not in any stellar way... whereas a student with a grade lower than a C isn't really getting the job done.
Do reviewers actually think this way every time? Doubtful. But it's clear there are a certain number of "gimme" points for a game that functions enough to be sold, and the remaining points measure the value of the content. The grading scale isn't as uniform as we think.
(There's also the problem that most people consider themselves to be "above average." If asked to rate themselves on looks or intelligence or capability, most people would rate themselves at a 7 or above. We tend to think of "average" as "bad" because of our own inflated view of ourselves. This is often called the "Lake Wobegon Effect.")