Thread: Rating System
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Old 21-11-2010, 06:33 AM   #8
TotalAnarchy
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Location: Chisinau, Moldova, Republic of
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Panthro View Post
How is having lots of 8's or 9's a bad thing, if the games are of sufficient quality?

If I gave Ultima Underworld an 8/10, but someone else said it was 8.5, which one is correct? Or should it be 9/10? Every reviewer will judge games differently based on their experience and tastes, so getting truly comparable reviews is impossible.

Certainly from my experience, even the same reviewer can be erratic in their grading decisions, based on mood or whatever.

You'll also always get far more reviews in the 7-10 range than you will ever in the rest of the range, partially because people self-select the games they review, and also because of the odd way the system works. People have the idea in their head that anything less than 6 is a terrible game, so in effect you only have a five point system anyway.

I don't much like numbered ratings, but perhaps a letter based grade would be better? A-F, like school grades? That way, it gives a general idea of the quality of the game, and if you require more information that is what the bulk of the text of the review is for.
If we get into this discussion about subjectivity in game scores, keep in mind that we can have only two scores "Good" and "Bad" and I can still prove a game that in your opinion is "Good" is in fact "Bad". This debate I think is pretty much pointless.

Reviewers determine scores based on their experience with other games. And while scoring a new game they would want to keep a hierarchy from bad games to good ones. If there are only numbers without any decimals, that means he'd have to rate with a 9 games like Silent Hill 2, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (for example). While myself I can accept Silent Hill 2 and Gabriel Knight to be at the same level, Call of Cthulhu is clearly weaker, mainly because of its unfinished state, but I don't want to give it an 8 because 8 means good, as in not exceptional, without many novelties; but upon closer inspection Call of Cthulhu is one of the few horror games that present something new like Eternal Darkness or the Penumbra series.

Clearly you don't see any difference between a 8.6 and 8.7, but what about the reviewer? Anyways a 20-point system looks ok to me. It should satisfy both the reviewers and the readers. And yes we have scores below 5.

Also about the letter-based score... I don't want to sound rude, but you do know that most of the world uses numerical grade systems, right? For example rating games with letters is completely alien to me... well and to the rest of the Continental Europe as well. I've looked at the other continents too and I haven't seen yet any letter-based system, except for UK, USA and ex-English colonies...

And guys, the discussion was fresh when the thread was created. There is no point in discussing it now, when we're in the last development phase.
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