Poll: Are scores an important part of a videogame review?
- Thread starter CaitSeith
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Scores can help in aggregate(but not on an individual basis) if you are trying to find a quick solid title in a certain genre. Not helpful if you are looking for niche or trying to find something "different". That said, with the rise of gameplay video's I have a hard time even being motivated to click on a review of any kind, which is why I picked "who cares".
They do provide that quantifiable measure, a number that's supposed to encapsulate a reviewer's position. Still, the position is the key, isn't it? I always (okay, almost always) read the review when I take a score into account. Numbers are just easier to process, and I like that convenience.
Most of critics are paid. reviewers give high scores to popular games because they got paid from big company like rockstar or activision.
I think that some sort of summary and/or recommendation is pretty useful to have in a review. And a score can provide both of those in a very quick way.
But if both of those are present, then a score isn't really necessary. Reviews/First Impressions like the ones given by Totalbiscuit don't feel lacking because there isn't a number stuck on the end.
But if both of those are present, then a score isn't really necessary. Reviews/First Impressions like the ones given by Totalbiscuit don't feel lacking because there isn't a number stuck on the end.
I don't think scores are that important in any kind of review. I mean, they are to people who won't actually read the review, but as a reviewer it kind of undermines everything you write down and reduces it to a simple math equation.
The only time I give scores any credence is if a game gets universally bad ones. If a game gets 10s across the board I'm still going to read professional reviews, user reviews, user responses to reviews, and most importantly, watch some gameplay footage. The main things I'm interested are which aspects of the game are good and which are bad. Multiplayer is shit? Fine. Story is shit? A maybe, depending on the type of game. Core mechanics are shit? I'll pass. You don't get that information in a numerical score. What's more a tenouttaten doesn't guarantee all those things are good anyway.
Diesel- said:
I think scores are very important to a review, and I'm unlikely going to read a review that doesn't have a score on it. If there's no score on the review it implies that the reviewer is incapable of forming a conclusion as to whether he liked it or not (at least to me).
On the other hand, so many reviewers like to use absolutely stupid metrics like percentage scores, half-stars and decimal points. That's where things get stupid, you only need to rate it out of 5 (even out of 3 works). There is no way anybody can tell the difference between a 87 and an 88, but it's easy to tell that a 4 star game is a good one and a 5 star game is a great one (at least in the opinion of the reviewer). However rating a game out of 5 is VERY easy.
On the other hand, so many reviewers like to use absolutely stupid metrics like percentage scores, half-stars and decimal points. That's where things get stupid, you only need to rate it out of 5 (even out of 3 works). There is no way anybody can tell the difference between a 87 and an 88, but it's easy to tell that a 4 star game is a good one and a 5 star game is a great one (at least in the opinion of the reviewer). However rating a game out of 5 is VERY easy.
I would have voted for 2b (Too bad it wasn't 3b, or 3,1415).
"No, But they make an objective final point and are necessary in a complete review."
Only looking at scores will skew the results to the positive.
I think I remember reading somewhere people find it more intuitive counting on a ..something.. scale,
1.........2........3.......4......5.....6....7...8..9.10.
Rather than our learned one,
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.
Perhaps something similar tends to occur in reviews.
"No, But they make an objective final point and are necessary in a complete review."
Only looking at scores will skew the results to the positive.
I think I remember reading somewhere people find it more intuitive counting on a ..something.. scale,
1.........2........3.......4......5.....6....7...8..9.10.
Rather than our learned one,
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.
Perhaps something similar tends to occur in reviews.
Eh? They make an "objective" point in a wholly subjective reaction to a given work? Surely an arbitrary, abstract value that anyone can disagree with is about as subjective as it's possible to get.Vendor-Lazarus said:
Each to their own, but that outlook seems a tad depressing/dispiriting, to me. I'd say if there was no abstract numeric it would imply the reviewer believes that nuance and context[footnote]And if there's something this community/culture desperately needs to learn a few lessons in right now, it's in the importance of nuance...[/footnote] is what matters when discussing the quality of art/entertainment, and that they believe the reader's intelligent enough to assess those.Fishyash said:
Didn't Sterling do a piece on this? And was, for the most part, pro? I'm only coming at it on this post from the POV of a punter.
I'd prefer they were done away with, because it seems a rather unintelligent way to treat interactive art; is Spec Ops The Line a 10 for its narrative? Or a 6 for its gameplay? And doesn't a number in between fail to represent either?
That said, I do 'use' them on my main source of reviews, who score out of 10. I usually do what I gather a good deal of people do with numbers; scroll down to see what a given game's got, then either skim or read the review to see how they came to that general reaction. However, they do a succinct In Short/Pros/Cons with a sentence or two for each at the bottom, so I'd be entirely happy to get shot of the Score value - it doesn't take much more time to read a few sentences than look at a score, and you'll learn nothing from the number, but get a good indication of its perceived strengths and weaknesses from the text.
Scores are irrelevant and totally biased by so many factors. I've lost count over the years of how many times i've played a game and then read a review of it to find obvious mistakes where the reviewer has obviously not actually played everything he or she is commenting on. Nowadays i don't even bother with reviews at all because i have more experience than the writers. Writing reviews is for the reviewers ego, not for the readers information.
I haven't seen Jim Sterling's piece on review scores.Darth Rosenberg said:
To me a reviewer believes nuance and context are important if he/she wrotes a good review. Reviews are opinions, so really by writing the review you've already given it a score, whether you've shown it or not.
At that point it's just a matter of making your opinion informed and well written, and being able to summarise whether you liked it or not.
In regards to what you'd rate Spec Ops, just think about the game as a whole. If some aspects of the game were better than others, then it's surely a matter of what aspects of a video game are more important to you. If you think narrative is more important in a video game, you'd rate Spec Ops a 10. If you thought gameplay was more important then you rate it a 6.[footnote]As I said though rating out of 10 or more is silly, you can simply rate it out of 3 (liked it/mixed feelings/hated it). Rating out of 5 is more flexible though.[/footnote]
Scores provide a point form summary of a review. Without reading the review, you can't understand how the score was arrived at.
They are problematic insomuch as people read scores, not reviews, and then act surprised and concerned when the 9/10 game they just bought turned out to be Gone Home, and not DOTA 2 as expected.
They are problematic insomuch as people read scores, not reviews, and then act surprised and concerned when the 9/10 game they just bought turned out to be Gone Home, and not DOTA 2 as expected.
Weird, I didn't get a notice that I'd been quoted.Darth Rosenberg said:
Anyway, I only copied the poll choice. I should have removed "objective".
Actually, for movies I often go to IMDB and check: If its 6+, the movie is probably some kind of good if I like the genre. 3-6 probably bland and boring. And lower than 3? Probably comedy gold.
For video games I didn't find a pattern like that yet. So I usually don't care about the numbers. So I chose the third option.
For video games I didn't find a pattern like that yet. So I usually don't care about the numbers. So I chose the third option.
I don't find a numbering system to be very helpful. I prefer actually hearing the reviewer explain the pros and cons about the various gameplay mechanics, preferably while playing it. And even then it's still not 100%, because I've played games after watching various people review it, showing gameplay with the pros and cons on display, and still found the game to be a personally different experience than them.
For example, the new Thief reboot. I watched Total Biscuit review it, and he really liked it, and thought it was a fun game. Watching the gameplay, I thought it looked like it captured the feel of the original Thief series quite well. So I went ahead and bought it on Steam sale. Then I actually played it, and found my personal experience of it to be vastly different from TB's.
So yeah, a scoring system is meaningless, other than as a measure of the general opinion of a game, but the score doesn't really give you any details about what is good/bad about it.
For example, the new Thief reboot. I watched Total Biscuit review it, and he really liked it, and thought it was a fun game. Watching the gameplay, I thought it looked like it captured the feel of the original Thief series quite well. So I went ahead and bought it on Steam sale. Then I actually played it, and found my personal experience of it to be vastly different from TB's.
So yeah, a scoring system is meaningless, other than as a measure of the general opinion of a game, but the score doesn't really give you any details about what is good/bad about it.