The whole Web 2.0 concept (user votes & comments) is just a glorified publicity stunt.

Imagine a public internet poll on the latest Hamlet performance in your city theatre. There will be people voting 1/5 who not only hadn't seen it, but who actually think "WTF is that hamlet? who cares about a small village? they made a play about it?"

Another example: I've returned to watching old movies recently (back to childhood memories). I'm checking out ratings of certain 2 movies. One gets around 5/10, another 9/10. And I wonder why people choose one over another... as BOTH of them are NOT AVAILABLE to modern viewer (no private screenings, not shown on TV or released on home video). I doubt we have so many 90-year-olds (who could see the theatrical release) on the Internets?

If you saw the movies as kids then others might have too and voted on it. But the point is why do we seem to care so much about the scores....why does it affect us when something we like gets a low score? Herd instinct at play, a fear of being different from the rest, or a sense that we know better then others?

You really miss TA, don't you? :p

That's a bit of a misleading argument, Darth.

Say, I enjoy Myst games. I enjoy the convoluted puzzles and the lack of deaths. No need have trigger fast fingers either so if I was a 60 year old guy who just retired and bought a PC, it might just be my thing.

So a new Myst-style game gets released: great graphics, good puzzles, nice story. And it gets tons of negative votes by young gamers who give it comments like "boring", "no action!", "what a lame game", etc. How would that help me as a gamer who enjoys this type of games when the game gets bad votes exactly because it's that type of game. This has ZERO to do with knowing better, and everything to do with knowing what you enjoy yet scores being totally useless because the wrong kind of people vote.

In short, the public is too big a mass, and just like in democracy, the biggest group within that public will win. If they dislike a genre, they'll just give it 1/5 while people who do like the genre, and even if the game was mediocre, it would still get 2 or 3/5.

And yes, thumbs up/down have been proven to work better. It gives a more accurate picture of whether people in general like it or not - and it's not a score either. While it's still open to abuse, you won't see the problem of all the scores slowly creeping towards a 3.3/5.

You are still missing the point Red. Why does a low score for a game you like upset you? It doesn't affect the game or if they will make another (that is normally based on sales and the people who like the game will buy it no matter what) and reviewers scores are normally the ones that developers care about not users. There will always be good games that slip through the mass media nonsense and be hidden gems normally due to the marketing department for that game relying on word of mouth to sell their games. You will always find loud people making a big deal about how bad a game is and they are often very loud making them seem to be more then they really are.

There is also the natural way humans react to a good or bad experience, when someone doesn't like something they want to tell everyone they know about how bad it was (leading to people voting 1 on any game they did not like even if it did have some good features). People normally don't feel the need to tell people about a good experience unless it was a very very good one (leading to fewer votes of 3 and 4 and only votes of 5 really getting used a lot.)

Also can you please give me a current game that has had this low voting from people who don't like the genre lower it's game score amd on what site. You suggest that games that aren't CoD or MoH or their ilk get bashed all the time. However from my experience this is not the case, even indie games with new and odd concepts tend to get pretty good user scores.

You could always phrase it differently, like the "x number of games you might never have thought to play before." Without arbitrary rankings etc.

Just a thought.

YOU are missing the point big time Darth. If the scores are useless, why have them in the first place? And many people rely on user scores more than on professional reviews so they can send the wrong signal.

Once again just confirming what I said: that these scores are useless.

Metacritic is the best source for this - but isn't Abandonia good enough an example for you? There's hundreds of examples - seems pointless to spend effort finding them when it's so obvious.

I have never said that your point about the users scores being useless is wrong. I think they are useless for a different reason, I hate all reviews giving scores or points or thumbs or whatever. I pay no attention to them what so ever, if I like a game I like it, I don't need to be validated by a review score nor do I get angry when others don't agree with me.

Lulus idea is the best one so far, it solves all the problems. It stops this from sounding like people being elitist and might actually make people look at a game they never would have before.

However if this isn't really about having a part of the mag to showing off a game that others have panned but isn't really all that bad but rather about how you don't like user ratings then this isn't really the place for it. Peoples opinions will always differ and no matter how good a game is there will always be people who don't like it.

I recently read an interview with the guys from Dynasty Warriors, regarding DW7 and how they manage to keep selling games. He boldly confessed that their games don't really bring a lot of new stuff compared to the previous installments. The secret to their success? It's something we call niche, or a specific part of the demographics.

Now niche players are the ones least affected by scores, user or otherwise. They know what to expect from the game, and they will buy it, cause it is the only one that gives what they seek. DW games might be average when putting all the parts together, but when I want a game where I would kill entire armies with just two hands, this is the franchise that immediately pops in my mind.

Let's admit it, you can't have scores that suit all people, cause frankly we all have different tastes. So scores should usually apply to the bulk of the gamers, in other words mainstream players. That is if regarding from a professional site's perspective.

Wouldn't it be simpler to change it to 'Reviewer's Opinion' and 'Other's said:' opinion?

The number scale opinion rating was put in place (I think) because of the way everyone thinks things are great, or they suck. Opinion, nothing else. Politics, music, smell, taste... basically all.. fall into this category.

Face it! No vision of the world is the same when viewed by all others in a mix.
And we are all kind of fortunate to have our eyes, ears, hands and minds to criticize all of those things.

The world could be a much worse place to be in.