The simple solution to the Metacritic problem

[Epic Fail 1977]

The problem is not the system in itself, it's the users, and that problem will not get solved so easily.

Solved, no. Reduced, yes. It'd be nice if you'd explain your reasons for disagreeing, rather than just stating that you do.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

 

[Gennadios]

Anything but simple.

You have 15 games ranked. To rank a 16th, you have to pick a number between 1 and 16. That's not simple?

The internets can't even work with numbers between 1 and 10.

 

[Nooh]

Solved, no. Reduced, yes. It'd be nice if you'd explain your reasons for disagreeing, rather than just stating that you do.

Because the original problems would still be there. A person did not give Modern Warfare 3 a 10 because it's a popular release, he probably gave it a 10 because that's what he actually thinks. If you make it a relative list, people could still fill it with a bunch of crap and put one game on top, or fill it with a bunch of their favourites and put a game they dislike (perhaps due to fanboyism) at the bottom.

Even if you make it a system based upon relative scores, it would still include scores. The game at the bottom of the 10 would still have a 1/10 score and the top one would have a 10/10 score.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

They should, but they aren't. My suggestion would replace useless data with useful data, not with perfect data.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Solved, no. Reduced, yes. It'd be nice if you'd explain your reasons for disagreeing, rather than just stating that you do.

Because the original problems would still be there. A person did not give Modern Warfare 3 a 10 because it's a popular release, he probably gave it a 10 because that's what he actually thinks. If you make it a relative list, people could still fill it with a bunch of crap and put one game on top, or fill it with a bunch of their favourites and put a game they dislike (perhaps due to fanboyism) at the bottom.

Even if you make it a system based upon relative scores, it would still include scores. The game at the bottom of the 10 would still have a 1/10 score and the top one would have a 10/10 score.

A couple of posts above yours:

If I'm going to bomb MW3 down, your way is not going to stop me.

My way requires that you either:
a) Put MW3 at the bottom of your list. This will increase the score of every other game on your list. If you're a frequent review-bomber then that means all your other bombed games go up in score.
b) Open a new account and rank about a dozen games with MW3 at the bottom. You'd have to do this for each new game you want to bomb. This would be considerably more hassle than the current system, which allows users to rate as many games as they like with a zero using just one account.

As I said, this system isn't perfect, but it's more difficult (i.e. time-consuming) to abuse it.

 

[mysecondlife]

What if writing user review for the game requires you to sync xbox live, psn account to the metacritic account? and you can only write review for the game when it recognizes that you've played the game

Based on MW3 user reviews, I doubt people who gave it 0 bought it.

I think it'd be interesting enough to give it a try.

 

[tippy2k2]

If I'm going to bomb MW3 down, your way is not going to stop me.

My way requires that you either:
a) Put MW3 at the bottom of your list. This will increase the score of every other game on your list. If you're a frequent review-bomber then that means all your other bombed games go up in score.
b) Open a new account and rank about a dozen games with MW3 at the bottom. You'd have to do this for each new game you want to bomb. This would be considerably more hassle than the current system, which allows users to rate as many games as they like with a zero using just one account.

As I said, this system isn't perfect, but it's more difficult (i.e. time-consuming) to abuse it.

I've never gone to Metacritic but I thought I would to test this out. You know how long it took me to register a new account? Less than 30 seconds. I said it once but I'll say it again: All your doing is complicating a system for members. This alone might make some of your legit members take off while only weeding out a handful at best.

I went to (approximately) the top twenty 0 bombs for MW3. I think three had more reviews than MW3 listed.

EDIT: This was sorted by "most helpful comments". So not only did these people successfully bomb a game, evidently the bombers find each other very helpful.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

If I'm going to bomb MW3 down, your way is not going to stop me.

My way requires that you either:
a) Put MW3 at the bottom of your list. This will increase the score of every other game on your list. If you're a frequent review-bomber then that means all your other bombed games go up in score.
b) Open a new account and rank about a dozen games with MW3 at the bottom. You'd have to do this for each new game you want to bomb. This would be considerably more hassle than the current system, which allows users to rate as many games as they like with a zero using just one account.

As I said, this system isn't perfect, but it's more difficult (i.e. time-consuming) to abuse it.

I've never gone to Metacritic but I thought I would to test this out. You know how long it took me to register a new account? Less than 30 seconds. I said it once but I'll say it again: All your doing is complicating a system for members. This alone might make some of your legit members take off while only weeding out a handful at best.

I went to (approximately) the top twenty 0 bombs for MW3. I think three had more reviews than MW3 listed.

The legit members don't have any extra hassle. Only the bombers have to jump through hoops. As for your 30 second test, did you also add around a dozen games to your profile and score them all?

 

[Olrod]

Take all the games you want to review.

Put them in order from best to worst.

Profit.

Want to review a new game? Then just slide into the best>worst list where it belongs.

I think that's what the O.P. is suggesting?

 

[RJ Dalton]

Or, you know, we could do away with assigning scores to games entirely and just expect people to write out intelligent reviews that give detailed discussions and analyses on the games strengths and weaknesses and then we just ignore the idiots who don't have the brains to do that.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

They should, but they aren't.

Yes, they are. That's the point of using a scoring system instead of a ranking system.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Take all the games you want to review.

Put them in order from best to worst.

Profit.

Want to review a new game? Then just slide into the best>worst list where it belongs.

I think that's what the O.P. is suggesting?

Correct.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

They should, but they aren't.

Yes, they are. That's the point of using a scoring system instead of a ranking system.

So, you think people scored MW3 zero based on its merits... okay.

 

[tippy2k2]

If snip

Snip

Snip

The legit members don't have any extra hassle. Only the bombers have to jump through hoops. As for your 30 second test, did you also add around a dozen games to your profile and score them all?

But it does give them extra hassle. They have to figure out a new system of ranking versus just clicking a number. They have to decide if they think this game, which they rate a 9, is as good as this game, which they wanted to rate as 9 as well. You'd have to have an intuitive way for people to rank and move games around, which I suppose could work but this is assuming Metacritic finds a good way to code it.

As for the 30 second thing, how long do you expect it for me to click 0 on the MW3 section? If I'm a bomber, I don't need to review a dozen games, just the one. If your system is forcing me to (which you say it doesn't in your first post) but if it did force me to choose 10 things to rate, I could just tab-open the top ten games or movies and just bomb them how I see fit.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

They should, but they aren't.

Yes, they are. That's the point of using a scoring system instead of a ranking system.

So, you think people scored MW3 zero based on its merits... okay.

They don't actually count. We all know, as soon as we see that score that the person is lying. See, your system, while limiting the score bombing, makes the data we get from legitimate users next to worthless. I don't care if this person thought game x was better than y, I want to know their thoughts on game x alone.

EDIT: To be honest, a much better solution would be to get rid of user scores altogether, nobody looks at them anyway (except for laughs).

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

But it does give them extra hassle. They have to figure out a new system of ranking versus just clicking a number.

Sliding your game up and down a list of other games is hassle?

They have to decide if they think this game, which they rate a 9, is as good as this game, which they wanted to rate as 9 as well.

Heaven forbid that users should give serious thought to their ranks. That might result in the ranks, you know, meaning something?

You'd have to have an intuitive way for people to rank and move games around, which I suppose could work but this is assuming Metacritic finds a good way to code it.

Slider?

As for the 30 second thing, how long do you expect it for me to click 0 on the MW3 section? If I'm a bomber, I don't need to review a dozen games, just the one.

Yes you do. Using my method, you do, because if there's just one game on your list then it isn't ranked at all because there's nothing else to rank it in comparison to. If there's just two games then they get ranked, but it wouldn't be 0 for the lower game and 10 for the higher one. The folks at Metacritic are no strangers to math, and I'm sure they could work out something suitable, but for the sake of an example we could say that if you have just two games then the better one gets 6 and the other gets 4. To push that 4 down to a 1.1 or a 0.7 or whatever, you'd have to add more and more games to your list.

 

[Donnie Restad]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

They should, but they aren't.

Yes, they are. That's the point of using a scoring system instead of a ranking system.

What exactly makes a scoring system better? Isn't it more relevant to say "I would rather play game x than game y," than to say "I would give game x a 9/10."

Judging a game based on its own merits falls apart when you reduce the merits to a numerical score, no matter how precise that score may be. Besides, the scoring system itself has proven to be far too arbitrary. Does an 8/10 mean that a game is great, but has a few flaws? Does it mean that you have a checklist of 100 qualities, and it fits about 80 of them? Or does it mean that you absolutely hated the game from start to finish, but it had a big budget and looked pretty?

Of course, we all know the answer to this in theory, but in practice that hasn't really proven effective; hence the metacritic problem. I say this solution would cut out the middle man. This idea promises to remove all room for misunderstanding. The rank would say explicitly, "I had a better time playing game x than game y, but not as quite as good of a time as playing game z, and my review will explain my logic behind coming to that conclusion."

Everybody wins.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Games should be reviewed on their own merits. This is an awful idea.

They should, but they aren't.

Yes, they are. That's the point of using a scoring system instead of a ranking system.

What exactly makes a scoring system better? Isn't it more relevant to say "I would rather play game x than game y," than to say "I would give game x a 9/10."

Judging a game based on its own merits falls apart when you reduce the merits to a numerical score, no matter how precise that score may be. Besides, the scoring system itself has proven to be far too arbitrary. Does an 8/10 mean that a game is great, but has a few flaws? Does it mean that you have a checklist of 100 qualities, and it fits about 80 of them? Or does it mean that you absolutely hated the game from start to finish, but it had a big budget and looked pretty?

Of course, we all know the answer to this in theory, but in practice that hasn't really proven effective; hence the metacritic problem. I say this solution would cut out the middle man. This idea promises to remove all room for misunderstanding. The rank would say explicitly, "I had a better time playing game x than game y, but not as quite as good of a time as playing game z, and my review will explain my logic behind coming to that conclusion."

Everybody wins.

I'm all for written reviews more than scores, but how many times do you see coherent thought in a metacritic user review?

Not that often, huh.