If Jim thinks a game is bad, it's at best a 3 on his scale. Jim thought the game was bad, he scored it as such. What is the problem?CaitSeith said:2/10 = BadPhoenixmgs said:2 isn't THAT low.
If Jim thinks a game is bad, it's at best a 3 on his scale. Jim thought the game was bad, he scored it as such. What is the problem?CaitSeith said:2/10 = BadPhoenixmgs said:2 isn't THAT low.
Er... dude or dudette? A 2 out of 10 is actually really, really bad. Like, in pretty much all school systems, that'd be a failing grade. The literal only reason it'd probably be seen as not that bad is because at least it's not a 1Phoenixmgs said:A 4 means below average, not awful. Thus, if Jim really didn't like a game, it's at best a 3 then. With that in mind, a 2 isn't THAT low. Just because major sites like IGN and Gamespot use 7 as "average" only makes stuff like 2s or even 5s seem really really bad.
It depends. If the reviewer scales in full stars, then yes, cuz that's the lowest grade you can give. If they grade in half-stars... still yes because that's the 2nd lowest grade you can get.You wouldn't feel like a movie critic just "destroyed" a movie by giving it 1 out of 4 stars, right?
Nothing. I'm just quoting the meaning of his score, at the bottom of his review for clarity sake.Phoenixmgs said:If Jim thinks a game is bad, it's at best a 3 on his scale. Jim thought the game was bad, he scored it as such. What is the problem?CaitSeith said:2/10 = BadPhoenixmgs said:2 isn't THAT low.
2 (Bad): A 2 represents a straight-up bad game. A thorough disaster, there is no hope of a positive experience ever shining through all the broken features and atrocious ideas. Only the truly desperate will be able to dig through the mire and find something passable.
I don't believe that to be strictly the case, because reviewers for bigger gaming sites are designed for mass consumption by many different types of readers, even on sites that have a narrower subset of readers. Your second sentence pretty much sums up the reason why I don't see your first being valid for "most" reviewers for major websites. It's also why you tend to see reviews on metacritic or other aggregate sites typically falling within a certain range of scores (gonna guess 10-40 points, with controversy being a big factor), with few extreme outliers.CaitSeith said:That pretty much applies to every reviewer.axlryder said:Basically, Jim's reviews are a very poor consumer guide for anyone other than people whose feelings about video games align almost identically with Jim Sterling.
Obviously "overall quality" or "objective" quality is impossible to truly measure. That said, I'd posit that estimated quality is a totally valid and functional statistic. For most games it's pretty straightforward how to rate a game based on certain elements and you could probably come up with a fairly accurate formula that reflects how many review sites go about assigning scores (what's the genre? is it a sequel? does it do what it set out to do? how well does it perform in x categories when taken in context to the previous things? does it possess some kind of je ne sais quoi or meaningful innovation? are there technical issues and how bad are they? do I like the game?). Yes, even with guidelines you're never going to get an exact answer, but it'll still probably fall within a narrowish range of scores that one could likely estimate with a relatively high level of confidence based on a fairly small sample.CaitSeith said:"Overall quality" isn't measurable in games, as there is no official standard or guideline on how to measure quality.
so now you want me to research a bunch of controversy i wasn't even around for now?hermes said:Which just sounds like a handy way of saying "I don't care about past evidence. It didn't happen if I wasn't there! Now let me continue throwing random accusations based on selective past evidence..."Yoshi178 said:i don't think i was actively on the escapist around the time of the Uncharted 4 review let alone paid attention to itBattenberg said:You're calling him a fanboy for giving a game that got fantastic reviews across the board a similarly fantastic review himself? (I'm not counting Nier since Sony actually had nothing to do with that game but again his review score fell well in line with other critics and players.) Maybe you don't recall the shitstorm he got for giving Uncharted 4 too low a score not far back where people accused him of being a Nintendo fanboy, those people sounded daft too.Yoshi178 said:like that idiot Jim even matters.
thats cause Jims a Sony FanboyJohnny Novgorod said:Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.Lisker84 said:To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
Lot of people seem to really go out of their way to drop hate on Jim Sterling for the absolute weirdest shit, often just the fact he has opinions which aren't identical to their own. I always find it hard to fathom how they have the kind of spare time and motivation you need to do that for prolonged periods. Like if the guy irritates you that much surely it's easier to just skip past anything to do with him and move on with your life.
OT: I was super hoping Yooka-Laylee would be good as I have heaps of nostalgia for a lot of PS1 mascot platformers but even the good reviews mention issues with the game I'd find offputting. Pretty disappointing really but given how games are handled these days I guess there's a slim chance some of these things will be altered/ fixed in the future in response to some of these reviews.
Again, there is no official guideline on how relevant certain elements are over others in games. The straightforwardness comes mainly from personal biases, preferences and popular opinions rather than an inherent relevance of the elements themselves.axlryder said:(for most games) it's pretty straightforward how to rate a game based on certain elements
Your desire to exclude Jim from the aggregated score, makes me think that you don't consider consumers who have the same tastes as Jim as part of the overall public. Even if they are just 1%, that's enough to justify his score to be aggregated.axlryder said:That means that I believe Jim is doing it differently than these big sites, and I feel his scoring system should reflect that, or at least not be lumped in with the rest of them on aggregate site's that are there to really give players a good idea of "average estimated quality"
Well, if you are trying to convince people of some conspiracy theory, you should try to source things other than anecdotal evidence.Yoshi178 said:so now you want me to research a bunch of controversy i wasn't even around for now?hermes said:Which just sounds like a handy way of saying "I don't care about past evidence. It didn't happen if I wasn't there! Now let me continue throwing random accusations based on selective past evidence..."Yoshi178 said:i don't think i was actively on the escapist around the time of the Uncharted 4 review let alone paid attention to itBattenberg said:You're calling him a fanboy for giving a game that got fantastic reviews across the board a similarly fantastic review himself? (I'm not counting Nier since Sony actually had nothing to do with that game but again his review score fell well in line with other critics and players.) Maybe you don't recall the shitstorm he got for giving Uncharted 4 too low a score not far back where people accused him of being a Nintendo fanboy, those people sounded daft too.Yoshi178 said:like that idiot Jim even matters.
thats cause Jims a Sony FanboyJohnny Novgorod said:Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.Lisker84 said:To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
Lot of people seem to really go out of their way to drop hate on Jim Sterling for the absolute weirdest shit, often just the fact he has opinions which aren't identical to their own. I always find it hard to fathom how they have the kind of spare time and motivation you need to do that for prolonged periods. Like if the guy irritates you that much surely it's easier to just skip past anything to do with him and move on with your life.
OT: I was super hoping Yooka-Laylee would be good as I have heaps of nostalgia for a lot of PS1 mascot platformers but even the good reviews mention issues with the game I'd find offputting. Pretty disappointing really but given how games are handled these days I guess there's a slim chance some of these things will be altered/ fixed in the future in response to some of these reviews.
wow you guys are looking real hard to find ways to prove to me that i'm wrong
He uses a score system that is as compatible with metacritic as they could be. It is not like they had to map some weird scoring to a numerical scale, so I would say his page score should definitely be included in the aggregation...axlryder said:I don't believe that to be strictly the case, because reviewers for bigger gaming sites are designed for mass consumption by many different types of readers, even on sites that have a narrower subset of readers. Your second sentence pretty much sums up the reason why I don't see your first being valid for "most" reviewers for major websites. It's also why you tend to see reviews on metacritic or other aggregate sites typically falling within a certain range of scores (gonna guess 10-40 points, with controversy being a big factor), with few extreme outliers.CaitSeith said:That pretty much applies to every reviewer.axlryder said:Basically, Jim's reviews are a very poor consumer guide for anyone other than people whose feelings about video games align almost identically with Jim Sterling.
Obviously "overall quality" or "objective" quality is impossible to truly measure. That said, I'd posit that estimated quality is a totally valid and functional statistic. For most games it's pretty straightforward how to rate a game based on certain elements and you could probably come up with a fairly accurate formula that reflects how many review sites go about assigning scores (what's the genre? is it a sequel? does it do what it set out to do? how well does it perform in x categories when taken in context to the previous things? does it possess some kind of je ne sais quoi or meaningful innovation? are there technical issues and how bad are they? do I like the game?). Yes, even with guidelines you're never going to get an exact answer, but it'll still probably fall within a narrowish range of scores that one could likely estimate with a relatively high level of confidence based on a fairly small sample.CaitSeith said:"Overall quality" isn't measurable in games, as there is no official standard or guideline on how to measure quality.
My point, however, is not that Jim is doing reviews wrong or that it's wrong for metacritic to ever include outlier opinions, just that Jim is often an outlier statistic (either positive or negative). That means that I believe Jim's methodology is probably very different from what is typical for big site's with similar grading scales (a view that is reflected in both his persona and review style), and I feel his scoring system should reflect that, or at least not be lumped in with the rest of them on aggregate site's that are there to really give players a good idea of "average estimated quality", since outliers typically have more of a pull on the average than a number that falls in the middle. I also think metacritic is partially/mostly to blame, but I don't really have time to get into all that.
All that said, I really don't know how metacritic weighs various sites or buffers scores against outliers, so the inclusion of such scores may appear more superficially damaging than the reality.
My point was not that there is an official guideline, we don't need to know the guidelines or how each reviewer subconsciously weighs each element, we can simply look at the numbers (and the reviews themselves) to know that there are at least vague similarity to all of these review site's review processes that leads to a relatively low range in standard deviation. We are dealing with continuous data and trying to put it into a discrete form, thus things will always be lost in translation, but to essentially say "well this aspect is subjective so everything is a crapshoot" is kind of reductive, imo.CaitSeith said:Again, there is no official guideline on how relevant certain elements are over others in games. The straightforwardness comes mainly from personal biases, preferences and popular opinions rather than an inherent relevance of the elements themselves.
No, as I said, outliers have a more significant pull on a score if you're going by pure averages, so you're taking a much more specific subset and giving them a much bigger voice, essentially. What's more, not even all of Jim's readers agree with him (based off of various comments on his reviews and videos), they read him for entertainment value and to make them think about games in a different way (again, super valuable, but not good for aggregation). Meaning we could have a very very small number of people relative to the whole pulling the average score down by an unjustifiable amount.CaitSeith said:Your desire to exclude Jim from the aggregated score, makes me think that you don't consider consumers who have the same tastes as Jim as part of the overall public. Even if they are just 1%, that's enough to justify his score to be aggregated.
Hence why I prefer ACG or Yahtzee style of reviewing; especially the former.sageoftruth said:This thread should be called "Why Game Reviews Shouldn't be Scored"
I don't think people are latching on to the "bad game received bad score" thing quite as much as they are the fact that you're saying that the literal second-lowest score possible in most scoring systems "isn't THAT low". Like, we get that he thought the game was bad and so he gave it a score corresponding to that. But that happens to also coincide with... a really low score, because it has far more potential numbers above it than below it.Phoenixmgs said:If Jim thinks a game is bad, it's at best a 3 on his scale. Jim thought the game was bad, he scored it as such. What is the problem?CaitSeith said:2/10 = BadPhoenixmgs said:2 isn't THAT low.
i wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. i simply gave my opinion that i think Jim Sterlings a Sony Fanboy and as the usual asshurt Escapist forum reaction, you then all decide to jump down my throat and then try to show me in full detail about why i'm wrong and why i shouldn't have my opinion.hermes said:Well, if you are trying to convince people of some conspiracy theory, you should try to source things other than anecdotal evidence.Yoshi178 said:so now you want me to research a bunch of controversy i wasn't even around for now?hermes said:Which just sounds like a handy way of saying "I don't care about past evidence. It didn't happen if I wasn't there! Now let me continue throwing random accusations based on selective past evidence..."Yoshi178 said:i don't think i was actively on the escapist around the time of the Uncharted 4 review let alone paid attention to itBattenberg said:You're calling him a fanboy for giving a game that got fantastic reviews across the board a similarly fantastic review himself? (I'm not counting Nier since Sony actually had nothing to do with that game but again his review score fell well in line with other critics and players.) Maybe you don't recall the shitstorm he got for giving Uncharted 4 too low a score not far back where people accused him of being a Nintendo fanboy, those people sounded daft too.Yoshi178 said:like that idiot Jim even matters.
thats cause Jims a Sony FanboyJohnny Novgorod said:Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.Lisker84 said:To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
Lot of people seem to really go out of their way to drop hate on Jim Sterling for the absolute weirdest shit, often just the fact he has opinions which aren't identical to their own. I always find it hard to fathom how they have the kind of spare time and motivation you need to do that for prolonged periods. Like if the guy irritates you that much surely it's easier to just skip past anything to do with him and move on with your life.
OT: I was super hoping Yooka-Laylee would be good as I have heaps of nostalgia for a lot of PS1 mascot platformers but even the good reviews mention issues with the game I'd find offputting. Pretty disappointing really but given how games are handled these days I guess there's a slim chance some of these things will be altered/ fixed in the future in response to some of these reviews.
wow you guys are looking real hard to find ways to prove to me that i'm wrong
What's with you people (gamers) and comparing school grades to game ratings? What other art has ever been rated the same as school grades? They are 2 completely different things. If someone doesn't like a game or movie or book, they will rate it as below average. Average is conventionally 50% rating whether using a movie 4-star system or a 10-point scale. A 2 only seems so horrible because other game reviewers don't rate games like they should. Even IGN and GameSpot's scales state that 5 is mediocre so they don't even properly use their scales as they define them. Unless you are to believe that basically every game is average and above average, which makes completely no sense with regards to what the word average means. Here's the 1st page of GameSpot's most recent reviews, every game is average or above!!! Gaming must in such a golden age no other medium has ever seen.BX3 said:Er... dude or dudette? A 2 out of 10 is actually really, really bad. Like, in pretty much all school systems, that'd be a failing grade. The literal only reason it'd probably be seen as not that bad is because at least it's not a 1Phoenixmgs said:A 4 means below average, not awful. Thus, if Jim really didn't like a game, it's at best a 3 then. With that in mind, a 2 isn't THAT low. Just because major sites like IGN and Gamespot use 7 as "average" only makes stuff like 2s or even 5s seem really really bad.
Like I said above, a 2 only looks so bad because just about no other game reviewers give out those type of scores. I posted a link above to GameSpot's most recent reviews and every game is average or above. Thinking a game is bad shouldn't come off as "edgy" as about half the games should be bad and half should be good. People think Jim gives scores like that to be edgy or for clickbait when if Jim was a movie reviewer, Jim would be just like any other reviewer.shrekfan246 said:I don't think people are latching on to the "bad game received bad score" thing quite as much as they are the fact that you're saying that the literal second-lowest score possible in most scoring systems "isn't THAT low". Like, we get that he thought the game was bad and so he gave it a score corresponding to that. But that happens to also coincide with... a really low score, because it has far more potential numbers above it than below it.
Jim's only a Sony Fanboy if you have confirmation bias. I guess that Last Guardian review was before Jim became a Sony Fanboy...Yoshi178 said:i wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. i simply gave my opinion that i think Jim Sterlings a Sony Fanboy and as the usual asshurt Escapist forum reaction, you then all decide to jump down my throat and then try to show me in full detail about why i'm wrong and why i shouldn't have my opinion.
The problem is that "your opinion" is akin to libel... and just because you call an accusation of poor professional ethics "your opinion" doesn't mean it can't be libelous, or wrong.Yoshi178 said:i wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. i simply gave my opinion that i think Jim Sterlings a Sony Fanboy and as the usual asshurt Escapist forum reaction, you then all decide to jump down my throat and then try to show me in full detail about why i'm wrong and why i shouldn't have my opinion.hermes said:Well, if you are trying to convince people of some conspiracy theory, you should try to source things other than anecdotal evidence.Yoshi178 said:so now you want me to research a bunch of controversy i wasn't even around for now?hermes said:Which just sounds like a handy way of saying "I don't care about past evidence. It didn't happen if I wasn't there! Now let me continue throwing random accusations based on selective past evidence..."Yoshi178 said:i don't think i was actively on the escapist around the time of the Uncharted 4 review let alone paid attention to itBattenberg said:You're calling him a fanboy for giving a game that got fantastic reviews across the board a similarly fantastic review himself? (I'm not counting Nier since Sony actually had nothing to do with that game but again his review score fell well in line with other critics and players.) Maybe you don't recall the shitstorm he got for giving Uncharted 4 too low a score not far back where people accused him of being a Nintendo fanboy, those people sounded daft too.Yoshi178 said:like that idiot Jim even matters.
thats cause Jims a Sony FanboyJohnny Novgorod said:Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.Lisker84 said:To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
Lot of people seem to really go out of their way to drop hate on Jim Sterling for the absolute weirdest shit, often just the fact he has opinions which aren't identical to their own. I always find it hard to fathom how they have the kind of spare time and motivation you need to do that for prolonged periods. Like if the guy irritates you that much surely it's easier to just skip past anything to do with him and move on with your life.
OT: I was super hoping Yooka-Laylee would be good as I have heaps of nostalgia for a lot of PS1 mascot platformers but even the good reviews mention issues with the game I'd find offputting. Pretty disappointing really but given how games are handled these days I guess there's a slim chance some of these things will be altered/ fixed in the future in response to some of these reviews.
wow you guys are looking real hard to find ways to prove to me that i'm wrong
I don't see how that's relevant in any way to what I said. First of all, I've been following Jim since just before he first came to this website, so I understand his review system pretty well. Second, this discussion isn't about whether a 2/10 "looks bad" or not; objectively speaking, a 2/10 on a scale that goes from 1-10 is a low score. There is only one possible score that can be lower than it. That isn't a bad thing, it provides valuable information both for people who will agree with Jim and for people who will disagree, and yes, I agree that other reviewers shouldn't be afraid of using the entire range of the scale if that is indeed what they think of a game.Phoenixmgs said:Like I said above, a 2 only looks so bad because just about no other game reviewers give out those type of scores. I posted a link above to GameSpot's most recent reviews and every game is average or above. Thinking a game is bad shouldn't come off as "edgy" as about half the games should be bad and half should be good. People think Jim gives scores like that to be edgy or for clickbait when if Jim was a movie reviewer, Jim would be just like any other reviewer.shrekfan246 said:I don't think people are latching on to the "bad game received bad score" thing quite as much as they are the fact that you're saying that the literal second-lowest score possible in most scoring systems "isn't THAT low". Like, we get that he thought the game was bad and so he gave it a score corresponding to that. But that happens to also coincide with... a really low score, because it has far more potential numbers above it than below it.
I did support my opinion. I compared yooka Laylee and Zelda Jimquisition reviews with Persona 5, Horizon and Nier Jimquisition reviews.hermes said:The problem is that "your opinion" is akin to libel... and just because you call an accusation of poor professional ethics "your opinion" doesn't mean it can't be libelous, or wrong.Yoshi178 said:i wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. i simply gave my opinion that i think Jim Sterlings a Sony Fanboy and as the usual asshurt Escapist forum reaction, you then all decide to jump down my throat and then try to show me in full detail about why i'm wrong and why i shouldn't have my opinion.hermes said:Well, if you are trying to convince people of some conspiracy theory, you should try to source things other than anecdotal evidence.Yoshi178 said:so now you want me to research a bunch of controversy i wasn't even around for now?hermes said:Which just sounds like a handy way of saying "I don't care about past evidence. It didn't happen if I wasn't there! Now let me continue throwing random accusations based on selective past evidence..."Yoshi178 said:i don't think i was actively on the escapist around the time of the Uncharted 4 review let alone paid attention to itBattenberg said:You're calling him a fanboy for giving a game that got fantastic reviews across the board a similarly fantastic review himself? (I'm not counting Nier since Sony actually had nothing to do with that game but again his review score fell well in line with other critics and players.) Maybe you don't recall the shitstorm he got for giving Uncharted 4 too low a score not far back where people accused him of being a Nintendo fanboy, those people sounded daft too.Yoshi178 said:like that idiot Jim even matters.
thats cause Jims a Sony FanboyJohnny Novgorod said:Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.Lisker84 said:To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
Lot of people seem to really go out of their way to drop hate on Jim Sterling for the absolute weirdest shit, often just the fact he has opinions which aren't identical to their own. I always find it hard to fathom how they have the kind of spare time and motivation you need to do that for prolonged periods. Like if the guy irritates you that much surely it's easier to just skip past anything to do with him and move on with your life.
OT: I was super hoping Yooka-Laylee would be good as I have heaps of nostalgia for a lot of PS1 mascot platformers but even the good reviews mention issues with the game I'd find offputting. Pretty disappointing really but given how games are handled these days I guess there's a slim chance some of these things will be altered/ fixed in the future in response to some of these reviews.
wow you guys are looking real hard to find ways to prove to me that i'm wrong
So, I am not saying you "shouldn't have your opinion", but if your opinion are accusations you can't support, you really are wrong.
That is not how averages work. Averages only mean they are above or below most values of the scores. If most games were scored a 7/10 (relatively common in today's sites), a game that scores a 6 is "below average", and a game that scores a 9 is "above average". The only way 5 is considered the average value is in a uniform distribution, where every value in the scale is equally likely to be the score of a game (without seeing it), like scoring a game by throwing a dice.Phoenixmgs said:Like I said above, a 2 only looks so bad because just about no other game reviewers give out those type of scores. I posted a link above to GameSpot's most recent reviews and every game is average or above. Thinking a game is bad shouldn't come off as "edgy" as about half the games should be bad and half should be good. People think Jim gives scores like that to be edgy or for clickbait when if Jim was a movie reviewer, Jim would be just like any other reviewer.shrekfan246 said:I don't think people are latching on to the "bad game received bad score" thing quite as much as they are the fact that you're saying that the literal second-lowest score possible in most scoring systems "isn't THAT low". Like, we get that he thought the game was bad and so he gave it a score corresponding to that. But that happens to also coincide with... a really low score, because it has far more potential numbers above it than below it.
Really, my point is if the overall critics' preferences are distributed in a way that accurately matches the overall consumers, a small number of outliers will be unavoidable. Not all people who have the same tastes as Jim have ever visited his site or watched his videos.axlryder said:No, as I said, outliers have a more significant pull on a score if you're going by pure averages, so you're taking a much more specific subset and giving them a much bigger voice, essentially.