A 7/10 is basically a complete failure, so why didn’t reviewers take my feelings into account before publishing their scores?
A 7/10 is basically a complete failure, so why didn’t reviewers take my feelings into account before publishing their scores?
Back in the old days of 8bit computing, I remember a few magazines used to explain their scoring system.
Most magazines reviewed a game out of ten. A score of five would be an average. The game is just ok. Not brilliant but not terrible either.
A great game would be an eight or nine. Very rarely would a game receive a ten as that indicates perfection.
In today’s world, the way people talk, it feels like a game needs at least an 8 (or 80%) or it’s not even worth touching.
Duke: Why the hell do you have to be so critical?
Jay: I’m a critic.
Duke: No, your job is to rate movies on a scale from good to excellent.
Jay: What if I don’t like them?
Duke: That’s what good is for.
It’s similar with movies and TV. I think a lot of people see a 50% rottentomatoes or a 5.0/10 on IMDB and automatically assume it’ll be unenjoyable, but that isn’t always the case in reality.
I’m not a fan of RT because I find their critic score absolutely meaningless. IMDB is much better for me, I find the average people score rating usually matches my appreciation of a movie. I am trying hard to remember a single movie with a score of 5/10 that I enjoyed though.
Rt critic scores are, imo, one of the best rating scales. Think of it as a percentage chance a fairly average movie watcher is going to like this movie. It’s not saying “this movie is 75% good”. It’s 3/4 reviewers felt it was worth watching, and does not comment on if they thought it was amazing or just okay. Marvel stuff tends to score high because mostly, despite not being some peak cinema, it provides an entertaining experience that earns a passing grade from most people. Movies that are more niche tend to get a lower score but that doesn’t mean they’re bad, just more niche.
I like this because it’s easy to understand what it means with a little research. Most game scores don’t do that and I find it annoying
The problem is that system lends itself to promoting bland but popular films. Like marvel movies. But gems have a much harder time on RT.
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Blazing saddles is a 7.7 but man that feels a bit too low even
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Yeah, especially for the way Rotten scores are made. Some of the most divisive work is the most interesting.
I don’t like the whole Rotten Tomatoes thing or judging a film by it’s box office numbers. If it looks interesting, watch it yourself and make up your own mind. 😊
Broadly, I agree with what you’re saying. Totally just devil’s advocate-ing and speculating to provoke thought, so feel free to ignore. I wonder if the enormous number of games available plays into this. I can almost always dig around and find at least one 10/10 game from the last couple of years that I haven’t played which is already on sale for cheap. Comparing that to a 7/10 game that just came out at full price… I’d almost certainly enjoy the 7/10 game, but I’d spend less money and likely have more fun with the 10/10. The newness factor may not be enough to bump the 7/10 game to the top of the queue.
With so many great games available an 8/10 might actually feel like a logical minimum for a lot of people, which may influence the scale that reviewers use. If people tend to ignore games with 7- scores and a reviewer feels that a game is good enough that it deserves attention, they may be tempted to bump it up to 8/10 just to get it on radars.
Meanwhile, back in the day there wasn’t such a glut of games to choose from. And with better QoL standards, common UX principles, code samples, and tools/engines, games may legitimately just be better on average than they used to be, making it fiddly to try to retrofit review scores onto the same bell curve as older games. To reverse it, I can see how an 8/10 game released in 1995 might be scored significantly worse by modern reviewers for lack of QoL/UX features, controls, presentation style, etc, or even just be scored lower because in modern times it would lack the novelty it had at the time it was released.
This ignores subjectivity. What is a 7/10 for most gamers could easily be a 10/10 for a specific type of gamer. Rather than focusing on review scores people should focus on the niche of games that they really enjoy.
And this is why I don’t read opinions from general review/gaming sites. For example, I judged whether I’ll play Starfield purely on overviews from YouTube creators who focus on Bethesda RPG-s (Camelworks, Fudgemuppet et al) and space exploration games (Obsidian Ant). The opinions of FPS folks, Fromsoft freaks and D&D diehards is irrelevant🙃
Or, as I’ve always said, if 2001: A Space Odyssey was made today, it would score 4/10 on IMDB and people would complain that it’s a slow slogfest with no action and boring dialogue.
Not to mention the subjectivity of what “7” means. I’ve tallied enough judges ratings to know that some people treat 5 as average, some people treat 8 as OK, and some treat anything below 7 as failing.
I don’t see older games being rated lower as a problem. Yes standards rise over time as games and technology gets better, that’s fine! If you took a mediocre modern AAA game and showed it to a reviewer 20 years ago, I’ll bet all my money it would be game of the year.
It makes more sense to let standards rise and adjust reviews to still keep a reasonable rating scale.
I blame the school grading system for it. 70% and below is already a failing grade in many courses. So by extension anything that gets rated 7 or below is asscoiated with failure.
I am not from the US, so I don’t know how long this grading system has been in use there but here in Central Eruope that’s a rather new thing. That’s why a 5/10 didn’t feel as bad 20 years ago while today a 7/10 feels worse.
Interesting take. I’ve been in educational institutions in South America and Australia and usually the bare minimum you need to pass is a 6, occasionally a 5/10. I think expecting most people to score a 7/10 to pass is a bit unrealistic, unless we are talking about school for gifted children or something. No idea that was the standard in Central Europe
It’s not the standard, it’s just something that started to pop up in some university courses. Anything before that we usually are just graded 1-6/A-F. But even 15 years ago when I attended University there were a few courses that required a 70%+ for passing and what I have heared this has become more common. It’s basically to weed out people and reduce the number of students since university is usually free.
I’m in college now and I haven’t taken a single course where 70% wasn’t the bare minimum for passing. I even took a comp sci course and it was the very first year that department lowered the passing grade from 80% to 70%. Apparently for the past 30 years of the comp sci department’s existance, a B- was barely passing.
I think I know some friends whose majors have 60% as the passing grade, but my major is a science and it’s all been 70%.
Fair enough, thanks for the explanation
I think it definitely depends on how the course is assessed, what content it covers, and how much of that content the student needs to have absorbed to be considered to have met the requirement to pass. I just completed one in the UK where, to put it in simple terms, you had to get 10/10 to pass, and you got higher grades if you went above and beyond. But that’s because each module had a set of criteria and you had to demonstrate proficiency in all of them at least once in the coursework, and you got extra credit if you demonstrated “very good” or “excellent” proficiency. (This grading system is unusual in this country, but it exists for very skills-focused courses, where demonstrating proficiency with doing something is more important than showing you know something.)
By that standard, a game with “only” 7/10 would have significant chunks missing in a way that would make it unplayable. A 10/10 game would be average: everything that’s meant to be in there is there, but it’s only done the bare minimum to make a functional game. Every part of the game that could be described as “very good” or “excellent” would earn it ratings above 10.
Not that I’m saying games should be graded this way. It’d be ridiculous and confusing. But it just demonstrates that what constitutes a “failing” grade definitely varies not only between countries, but between different courses. Which means I actually agree that basing game reviews on the grading system of the US educational system is flawed: it makes too many assumptions about what constitutes “passing” or “failing”.
But it’s not based on any educational system. That’s just the spin people erroneously attribute to it. It’s just a percentage, and it’s up to each person to figure out what number works for them or not as an acceptable minimum.
Same with movies, another commenter said a 5/10 movie was good enough for them sometimes, whereas for me the lowest enjoyable is a 6.
All that is fine, what makes no sense is to expect others to have the same standards I do.
My preferred approach is to ignore the number/percentage rating entirely, and focus on what the review actually says. Maybe the reviewer is marking it down because of stuff I don’t care about, and the good parts of the game are exactly the things I value highly. Or maybe they’ve given something a 9/10 but the things they love about it are things that would make me hate it. There are so many more important things when deciding if I want to buy and play a game than what overall percentage it was given in reviews.
Ah yes totally, and never stick to a single review. Ratings tend to be accurate when they are the average out of a large pool of ratings
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The you’re addressing here is The four-point scale, which exists primarily because rating a low score on a big developer’s game is a good way to ensure you don’t receive review copies ahead of release, something reviewers live and die on because their fans want to know ahead of time whether the game is any good. In that sense, it’s a bit of a paradox - you can’t be sure at face value whether the 4 out of 5/8 out of 10/83% was something that the reviewer genuinely levied against the game as a fair criticism of flaws and/or commendation of positive experiences, or if they give it a high number because they’re afraid of biting the hand that feeds.
That’s why when it come to score, i just look at the total score to see how many people dig the game, and only watch/read review that doesn’t include scoring and might have similar taste as me, and only read negative review in steam to see whether i can put up with the bad part of the game.
Yeah, and back then the review mags were just paid for advertising. Not much has changed.