The Gamer's Quarter

[Cycle]

Yeah, I liked the idea of a four star system and our editor came up with another idea similar to that, but ultimately our readers wouldn't want it. They desperately need to know which game is better than the other. We're 1-10 right now and lots of people want us to go back to the 100% system because I WANT TO KNOW WHICH 7 RATED GAME IS A HIGHER 7!!! SIGH.
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[Shapermc]

If your readers really want to go back to the 100% system use a letter grade scale and explain to them how to break it down:

F = 50% or lower
D- = 50-53%
D = 54-57%
D+ = 58-59%
etc....

Really though...
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Cycle]

Yeah we went through that idea too, but then we'd have people saying I WANT TO KNOW WHICH D IS THE SLIGHTLY HIGHER D!!! Really, we can't win.
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[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[jjsimpso]

[jjsimpso]

Here's the scale I was thinking about using:

3d6. Yep, 3d6 as in D&D. Scores are distributed on a nice bell curve, so 9-12 are average scores(roughly within one standard deviation of the mean). Anyone who's played D&D understands this intuitively. An 18 or a 3 would be incredibly rare, 1 out of 216 random observations.

Ideally you'd represent this score with graphics of 3 dice. This conveys another subtle level of information to the reader through the combination of dice you choose to reflect your score. There is clearly a difference between a score of 4-4-5 and 6-6-1 even though the final score is the same. You could use this to indicate if there was a certain element which really let the game down. A 6-6-1 might even be intriguing enough to convince someone to read the review!

Alternatively, if you want to avoid the problem of defining the limits of achievement the moment you hand out your first 10, use something like the Ricther scale which doesn't have a max. So an 11 is 10x better than 10, and 100x better than 9 and so on. Obviously you'll have to rely on decimal points though. The first 8 you hand out would be a milestone achievement though in that it would be 1000x better than the average game(if 5 was average)!

[dessgeega]

wait, so are you rolling dice to get review scores?

because that's actually brilliant.
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[jjsimpso]

[jjsimpso]

Oh shit! My avatar just made me think of something.

Mahjong hands!!!!

18 Unique Wonders for the mother fucking win!

[Access]

Metrics on journalism / criticism is ridiculous.

Its like a war correspondant putting a score on a battle, its just pointless and insensitive.


A reviewers role is an extension of marketting, they tell consumers independantly whether you should buy a product or not.

A critic tends to be more about talking with people who may or may not have played the game about the medium in general.

If you *must* have a score on it, make it as vague as possible. Roger Ebert, who dabbles in criticism in most of his reviews has a 4 star system. The larger the score, the more precise it has to be and the more stupid it is(whats the difference between a 65 and 66???).

Even if video games are out of 100, they are really out of 50 because for some reason (maybe a sociologist can help me out) our industry treats anything less than 50 as a negative score. We might want to see a 3 (of 5) star film, but we wouldn't want to play a 60% or a 6.0 game. But they are the same. 50 - 60% is like the lowest score for video games, anything less than that isn't just bad, its *loathed*.
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[dessgeega]

[helicopterp]

i don't.


and I think the problem with numbers is the way people look at numbers, giving arbitrary demarcations a silly, unquestioned authority. the problem lies in a readership's perception of the number as fact, and that is a responsibility which a reviewer ought to take into consideration. especially when it's in print form or from a well-presented source. however, the mere act of assigning a number is, often times, a useful way to condense words, visualize them, or contradict them when they're especially useless.


count me in the camp agreeing that the text of a review should be able to convey an opinion scorelessly, but that asks a lot of an audience. the inclusion of numbers is a more democratic way to present the score, which I'm for. why deliberately exclude a group of people (readophobes) when you can easily include them somewhat. who knows, the numbers could rope some "readers" into actually reading a good review. i realize this doesn't do much against the aura of authority numbers can carry in the eyes of some.

as far as metrics are concerned, i would love to see them. but not just masquerading opinions--real objective statistics. (well, in so far as any statistic can be objective. there is always the issue of which statistics to include/what factors into each.) For instance, how many jumps in a racing game/number of different context sensitive moves/average life-span of the reviewer in a multiplayer shooter. Then you could take these simple ones and dissect them into each other, sabermetrics style. Bill James has pushed baseball stat-tracking in a number of incredibly interesting directions (go to Baseball Prospectus and just look at the titles of the articles if you aren't familiar). Games criticism, too, could benefit from a real study of in-game statistics.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[helicopterp]

i.e. use numbers from a game to tell a different kind of story in a review
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Cycle]

I agree numbers have their place, which is why we didn't consider the absolute removal of them for very long.

On a personal note, there is nothing more frustrating than seeing a post on the official forums along the lines of WHY DID THIS GAME GET ONLY A 5 THAT'S BULLSHIT and I just want to say RTFR, but instead I just repeat what I already wrote and they calm down.
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[jjsimpso]

[extrabastardformula]

[purplechair]

[SuperWes]

I was reading Official Xbox magazine last month and they had something incredibly offensive in their letters section. Somebody had written in and asked about review scores and their response was something along the lines of "review scores are relative to the time of release. Sometimes a game comes out and we give it a 10, like we did with Fight Night: Round 3. That doesn't mean it's still a 10 today, but at the time it was so much more advanced than anything we'd ever seen that we felt it deserved it. Now we might give the same game a 7 or an 8."

Now, I totally understand that this would happen. Sometimes you're blown away by a game at first, but when you look back at it you didn't really walk away learning as much as you'd have liked to. This is fine because, hey, shit happens, but it should be the exception rather than the rule. It should be an accident that you try not to do again, not a structure an entire review system is built around.

BTW, Official Xbox magazine is shit. I only get it for the demo disc and now that I have the internet and Xbox Live I'm not even sure why I have a subscription anymore.

-Wes
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[aderack]

Shaper 4.0:

And then 1 and 4 seem extreme enough (though they are each entirely reasonable) that you are inclined to read the review to understand the justification. And often those are the fun ones, as he really has something to say and is able to let loose -- whereas the 2s and the 3s involve a lot more head-scratching.

It's a good, bold, unambiguous rough sketch -- that's simultaneously so lacking in nuance that it requires the context of the review itself to know what the hell it means.

EDIT: WHOA, there's a second page here.

What I like about Ebert's relativism is that -- well, say you really liked some dumb action movie that was such an excellent example of a dumb action movie that he gave it four stars -- and you thought his review was right on-target, so you went to see another movie that he rated four stars. Completely different kind of movie. March of the Penguins, or some foreign drama. If you've got a bit of imagination in you, maybe your world will be rocked a little. It goes the other way, too -- being able to appreciate really excellent trash, and breaking out of the snob tower. It's a step toward being able to appreciate things on their own terms, rather than measuring them up against some kind of imaginary ideal or just plugging them in to fill some random fun hole in your life.

I mean. I don't know how often it really works, but I'd like to think I've grown a better appreciation for many things not even film-related through Ebert's reviewing style.

Even if I am still a bit of a snob.
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[kirkjerk]

[kirkjerk]

[SuperWes]

[D-A-I-S]

[jjsimpso]

Recent column on gamesetwatch:

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/06/videogame_review_scores_pointl.php

[Swimmy]

http://www.insertcredit.com/features/journalism/index5.html

I never thought there was much more to say than that. Games deserve all kinds of criticism, scores are fine in their own context, more varieties of competition would be much better, more competition won't come until there's more public interest.

Until then, I support people doing their own thing and trying to make that public interest happen or to individually fix what they think is wrong with game criticism. Like TGQ! And blogs!
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[daphaknee]

i really liked the gamepro picture reviews of the guys face and when it got a five he would be SCREAMING becuase thats how i felt about the graphics/sound too, but yeah i think the gameplay was more just a big smile

does gamepro still use that system?

[aderack]

I think, a less straightforward variant on it. And yeah, I really like that system too. It was basically a 1-5 rating, which is fine.
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[daphaknee]

yeah sleeping to screaming is probably the best scale that anyone could ever use, it should be adopted everywhere!

man i cant even find pictures of it
i wonder if i have some old gamepros around here somewhere..

[aderack]

I'm imagining a variant with Tim Rogers' face.
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[dessgeega]

lestrade looks kind of like the spikey screaming face.
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[purplechair]

Hello hello.

[jjsimpso]

[Harveyjames]

Man this forum has really gone uphill now I don't have the internet D: D: D:

First one to suggest the two events are related gets a SOCK IN THE KISSER

[jjsimpso]

I've put up my first review using my L/N method.

http://taipeigamer.blogspot.com/2008/07/ln-review-bioshock.html

It is a review of Bioshock, of course. L11,N18 if you are curious.

If that makes you eyes glaze over, you can ignore it and just read the text(which I've included below). Still might want to click the link to see my fancy dice graphics.