Ratings systems in videogames are a constant source of controversy. Every outlet uses a different scale — 100 points, a 10-scale with halves, five stars, you name it. And no matter which score you use, someone’s going to find fault because your score doesn’t match the score in their head.<\/p>\n
Recently OXM <\/em>took some heat for giving Crackdown <\/em>a 7 out of 10. OMG WE HATED IT, said the readers. But when OXM <\/em>gives a first-party game an 8 or above, OMG THEY R TEH BIAS.<\/p>\n So. After careful consideration, here’s the answer:<\/p>\n All games get one of two scores: 7 or 8. <\/strong>As already determined by the audience, 7 means the reviewer hated it. An 8 means the reviewer loved it. There will be no complaining, no arguments about whether a stealth game that gets a 9.8 is actually superior to a shooter game that gets a 9.9. You get a 7 or an 8.<\/p>\n When you think about it, every reader faces the same decision anyway: Is this a game I want to play or not? The intensity of the desire to play doesn’t factor in; it’s either fun for you or not. It’s either your kind of game or it isn’t. You either care to play it or you don’t care to play it.It’s a very personal but extremely binary decision at its core. Pull out your wallet and tell me it’s different: It’s worth your money or it’s not worth your money.<\/p>\n The rest is just lunatic ravings and nitpicking. When I see someone debating the difference between a 6.7 and a 6.8 — or even a 7.0 and a 6.5 — I realize it’s just people using someone else’s arbitrary scoring system to “prove” their opinion is the “right” one. They will keep looking around until they find a score that matches. This completely circumvents the nobler purposes of artistic critique, but then again, so does GameRankings. And people like GameRankings, because it turns most scores into a mushy pulp of easily digestible 7s and 8s.<\/p>\n That said, I’m intensely bothered by the fact that 7 is considered “bad” when it’s still “above average.” I am assuming that the rest of the world believes that 5 is “average” on a 1-to-10 scale, which is, I hate to point out, mathematically correct<\/em>. But we’ve gotten seduced into thinking that anything less than a 7 is a negative score, and although it clearly goes against all logic, it’s constantly reinforced by the audience, and the audience has the last word. That a game like Crackdown <\/em>can be given a 7 (and justified with the review text as to why) and therefore thought of as “bad” is, well, terrifying.<\/p>\n So, no more fooling around. If you can’t handle the freedom of gradiations of scores, away that freedom goes! Everybody uses the same system: 7 or 8. It tells you everything you need to know and it uses the numbers that are most commonly in use today anyway, the ones people seem to get really upset about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ratings systems in videogames are a constant source of controversy. Every outlet uses a different scale — 100 points, a 10-scale with halves, five stars, you name it. And no matter which score you use, someone’s going to find fault … Continue reading