As anybody who has been around the Escapist for any appreciable amount of time knows, number scores in reviews are roundly reviled. May I ask, what, exactly, is wrong with them? I think a score from 1 to 10 works pretty well - I will usually not play a game at all if it recieves an average score lower than 6. It is pretty bad if there's no actual review and just a number, but a number appended to a review? I see no problem with it.

If reviews have scores on the end, (some) readers might tend to focus more on the number than the actual review. That is a problem because the review contains comments that are much more useful to the reader, like what aspects of the game are good and what are bad and then you as a reader and gamer can see if you have a similar game taste as the reviewer and then decide. A review is after all a subjective piece of writing, it contains personal opinions and responses to a game. Giving a game an absolute score implies an objective standpoint which just isn't the case with a review. In my opinion a review is a piece of advice on whether or not to buy a game, and a score seems more like a judgement.

So leaving out a score forces the reader to read all of the review and contemplate the pros and cons of the game in stead of just looking at the score and the immediately turning it down if it gets a lower score than 6.

Because sometimes it's not so easy to boil down a game to a simple number. The may be a ton of pros and cons, but if you reduce it to an arbitrary number none of that matters anymore since the general audience will just check what has the biggest number this month/week/year.

This becomes especially pronounced as you go into the decimals. The 8.3 game is by default considered better than an 8.1 game, though the few decimals are mostly due to the reviewers mood at the time of grading.

Numeric grades from, say 1-5 (no decimals) are fair enough since they allow you to classify the game in a certain general quality category, but then again the reviewer could just say "It's good", "It's crap" or "It's meh"...

Reviews are the problem, not numbers.

A badly written review without a number is ten times worse than a badly written review with a number.

Because numbers are an utterly arbitrary way of ranking anything. A 5.3 is not a description of a games faults and virtues, it's just a number. If you've played games for any period of time, you know what is good and what is not about a game. At no point in a game has anyone ever sat around and thought "8.1!" when some enemy jumps out and bites their head off. Likewise, you've never played a game with disappointing visuals and thought "man, these are 6.2". You've more likely thought "man, these graphics look like shit."
That's why.

A number can mean anything. For instance, what does a game with a 10 mean? Is it a perfect it game with no issues, or is a game so good that the not so great aspects make are made up for?

Its just a number, and its not going to tell you whether your going to like this game or not.

I suppose an additional fact is that most people don't take the reviewer into account, but just stare at the number like it's some almighty rating; if your game preferences don't match with the guy what banged out the number, then it hardly has any relevance to you.

I got nothing against number ratings, myself, but i still question how close i am in preferred gaming to the reviewer in question, and thus i seldom pay attention to reviews to begin with.

harhol:
Reviews are the problem, not numbers.

A badly written review without a number is ten times worse than a badly written review with a number.

Is that so?
If a review is badly written that implies incompetence on the reveiwer's part and adding a number at the end of the review doesn't make it a better review. If a review isn't well written or talks about important parts of the game, I wouldn't take it's advide, and I certainly wouldn't think that a number made any difference. After all, any anonymous guy with a working internet can put give a game a score, but it takes more intelligence and knowledge to actually write a review and give good arguments for your standpoints.

I rate this thread 3.9

ThaBenMan:
It is pretty bad if there's no actual review and just a number, but a number appended to a review? I see no problem with it.

What is your explanation for this? If a number on its own is nothing, why does it further a text review? Why do you want to read a 5 after you've already read 'this game is pretty bad, with some nice touches that fail to make up for it'.

It's all subjective anyway. A critic can say that she liked a game, and give her reasons, and those reasons might convince you, and the fact that she says that it is a good game pushes you over the edge. But if she says all these reasons she thinks it's good, for instance, she likes it because you can ride a horse, but you think 'I hate riding horses, that would make it a bad game', then your review would be quite different. Numbers are black and white; they suggest that the game is something. Text maintains the subjectivity, and stops contradictions, like one critic giving the game a 7 and the other a 6. That makes no sense, but if one said that she liked the ability to ride horses, and the other says he thinks it would have been better not to have to ride horses, then that does make sense.

Numbers are bad because they're usually quite arbitrary. Upon playing a game, I've never really thought "These graphics deserve an eighty percent, the story a ninety-five, but the controls lose a few points and dip to a sixty-four."

It's difficult to go from a subjective review to an objective number. Also, I find a lot of reviewers seem to work on a scale from six to ten rather than zero to ten. Remember: a grade of 6/10, or 60% is still a passing grade. I don't give that out to a game that annoyed me.

If an example would help you: a lot of reviewers and such have done reviews of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. This game is widely touted (for good reason) to be one of the worst games of all time. It's still gotten scores as high as 1/10 and 1/5, despite not even working. One of five maps crashes the game, you can't collide with anything (not even houses), opposing trucks don't even MOVE (a later patch added some AI, but they always stop before finishing the race), you can accelerate infinitely in reverse yet stop on a dime, sometimes victory conditions can be met before you even start... this game deserves NO points, yet it still recieves some.

I don't think numerical scores are bad in and of themselves, it's more the people who use them that make them bad.

Numbers are also unnecessarily difficult. You can spend hours writing up a perfectly worded review, saying exactly what you did and didn't like about a game, and then reach the end and still not have any clue what number to give it. I ran into this a lot when I was doing movie reviews in the olden days. I had to constantly go back and look at what my rating criteria were, what I had rated other movies that had a similar entertainment value, etc. This is probably just because I am obsessive compulsive, but I'd already said what I had to say. finding a number to associate with it was just a PITA.

I've noticed recently that the system doesnt often work. Games that the reveiwer states are average are given score of 6 - 7. When an average game should be given 5.

The number is an excuse to skip the entire article like the lazy moron most people are. Just read the review. That way you know HOW the game works and WHY it might appeal to you, not that it was given an '8' by someone you don't know nor care about. Plenty of 6-8 score games may not appeal to a lot of people because of the genre or way it works. Just because I thought Kingdom Hearts was good doesn't mean everyone will, so if I ever review it, I would rather talk about the pros and cons of the game and who the game might appeal to rather than the graphics (ugh, enough already), soundtrack (mute the TV, blast AC/DC, problem solved), etc. JUST TALK ABOUT THE GAMEPLAY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I couldn't give a flying fuck if the game isn't realistic-looking, I just want a game that is fun to play. When gameplay is only one of many things being factored into a numbered review, then everyone involved gets screwed.

A. Focus on gameplay and B. Talk about who might like the game and why they might like it, don't give it a number so that lazy assholes can skip the article, let them buy cheap garbage on their own, they usually get it right.

When reviews conclude with numbers, I tend to just scroll right through it without reading it. With the exception of games I really have been looking forward to.

I guess you get the most out of a review if you actually take your time to read about the pros and cons, and then make your own decision. Whether you buy it, rent it or don't give a damn.

October Country:

harhol:
Reviews are the problem, not numbers.

A badly written review without a number is ten times worse than a badly written review with a number.

Is that so?
If a review is badly written that implies incompetence on the reveiwer's part and adding a number at the end of the review doesn't make it a better review. If a review isn't well written or talks about important parts of the game, I wouldn't take it's advide, and I certainly wouldn't think that a number made any difference. After all, any anonymous guy with a working internet can put give a game a score, but it takes more intelligence and knowledge to actually write a review and give good arguments for your standpoints.

At least a badly written review with a number gives you some kind of insight into the player's mind. Not everyone can articulate their thoughts & feelings into pretty paragraphs. There might be people out there who have played 1000s of games but who can barely string a sentence together. Their opinions matter just as much as someone who can write effusively but who has very little knowledge of games, arguably more so. Numbers are only inherrently bad when they are either (A) higher than 10 (or use more than ten denominations), or (B) used to score individual parts of a game.

I don't have a problem with using numbers, as long as the reviewer does a good job and isn't relying totally on the number. However numbering systems should only include ratings of out of 5 or 10. When a reviewer rates the sound design in a game as a 8.4, it is ridiculous. That kind of number was pulled out of someone's butt.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with numbers in reviews as there is nothing wrong with the lack of numbers in reviews. You have a choice of what type of review you want to read. What is so bad about choice?

fedpayne:
I rate this thread 3.9

ThaBenMan:
It is pretty bad if there's no actual review and just a number, but a number appended to a review? I see no problem with it.

What is your explanation for this? If a number on its own is nothing, why does it further a text review? Why do you want to read a 5 after you've already read 'this game is pretty bad, with some nice touches that fail to make up for it'.

A 3.9 out of 5? Pretty good, thanks :D

My reasoning in that quote above is that yes, I understand there needs to be an actual review in words with substance, but why not have the number too? I just think it's a useful tool that just adds a little something to the review.

And another thing - everybody is throwing around the word arbitrary. I just disagree, I guess. You should read the review, but it can be useful to have that number at a glance.

I think scores for games isn't necessary. A review in my opinion should just tell you about the game and describe any defining point's about it. In short a synopsis of the plot,major features and how it works. Scores cloud judgement on games and since almost every place allows you to return the game if you didn't like it within a week or something then scores are pointless. If I listened to reviewer scores I'd have less games lol. The reviews on The Escapist are good in my opinion and are better then Gamespots by a long shot.

As Yahtzee himself said, you can't boil a complex opinion down to a number from 1-10. Looking at a number does not tell you *why* that game got that number, just that it was given a number. People then look at that number, and assume that's accurate and valid and proceed to tell people their opinion on that game, argue for it, against it, or whatever solely on the score it got from some reviewer. The only scores I'll give a vague look at is meta-critics, but even then, considering that's an average of everyone else's scores, I'm wary of it.

harhol:

October Country:

harhol:
Reviews are the problem, not numbers.

A badly written review without a number is ten times worse than a badly written review with a number.

Is that so?
If a review is badly written that implies incompetence on the reveiwer's part and adding a number at the end of the review doesn't make it a better review. If a review isn't well written or talks about important parts of the game, I wouldn't take it's advide, and I certainly wouldn't think that a number made any difference. After all, any anonymous guy with a working internet can put give a game a score, but it takes more intelligence and knowledge to actually write a review and give good arguments for your standpoints.

At least a badly written review with a number gives you some kind of insight into the player's mind. Not everyone can articulate their thoughts & feelings into pretty paragraphs. There might be people out there who have played 1000s of games but who can barely string a sentence together. Their opinions matter just as much as someone who can write effusively but who has very little knowledge of games, arguably more so. Numbers are only inherrently bad when they are either (A) higher than 10 (or use more than ten denominations), or (B) used to score individual parts of a game.

If they want to express themselves but can't manage to write a decent review, then they should just pick a number out of a hat and just go with it. I could not care any more about it anyway.

I care more for video reviews because you can, in most of them, see how it is to play the game while the reviewer explains what he or her likes or dislikes while showing it to you through the video.

I see things being rated "Excellent!", and then get an 8.7 numerical rating. Now, when I get an 8.7 for a test I usually think I did awesome (usually because I never study for tests seriously) but when I see that little word "excellent" on my screen images of beuatifully performed ballet sequences or epic kung-fu fight scenes pop into my head, not an 8.7.

The system is pointless. No game these days gets any less than a 7 regardless of how bad it is.

I have my own ranking system for....well anything.

it goes from 1-3 exclamation mark marks and it has to be *decent* before it even gets one

for example a mediocre/crappy game gets nothing.
game worth playing: !
most ridiculus game EVER: ! ! !

I find that works the best - since it's easy for something to be distinguishable decent before it's even worth grading. Oh and it uses a scale where it gets progressivly harder to get higher scores. To get a score more than a ! a book/film/game has to be noticable and definitely above par and very good (in my opinion anyway) so it's easy to scale things (when you consider than "! ! !" is next to impossible to get)

But unless you have a system like mine then yes, numerical reviews aren't really worth much.
And even mine does have it's flaws.

A number score is normally the first thing you remember but it's better not to.

It's much better to actually remember points about the game, even if it's just so you could dis-credit some of them and give some of them a little more weight. Obviously calling a game obnoxiously difficult if it's in a certain genre might be a positive for you. I'm an average platformer and get frustrated easily at them so a harder platformer than super mario bros. isn't good for me. However, I like difficulty in an rts (although I'm not good), or a turn based strategy game (sometimes) as long as it has enough depth.

October Country:
If reviews have scores on the end, (some) readers might tend to focus more on the number than the actual review. That is a problem because the review contains comments that are much more useful to the reader, like what aspects of the game are good and what are bad and then you as a reader and gamer can see if you have a similar game taste as the reviewer and then decide. A review is after all a subjective piece of writing, it contains personal opinions and responses to a game. Giving a game an absolute score implies an objective standpoint which just isn't the case with a review. In my opinion a review is a piece of advice on whether or not to buy a game, and a score seems more like a judgement.

So leaving out a score forces the reader to read all of the review and contemplate the pros and cons of the game in stead of just looking at the score and the immediately turning it down if it gets a lower score than 6.

I agree with you completely, for gamers. The number still serves a purpose for those mothers/fathers/friends who want to buy a game for someone without understanding the basics, however.

If I was to buy a hockey club for someone as a christmas present and it just said "This club has great mymentricity and phiolontopy, without the hassle of other gomontical clubs," then I'd just sit there staring at the screen. Granted those are made up words (I think), but the point still stands.

ThaBenMan:
As anybody who has been around the Escapist for any appreciable amount of time knows, number scores in reviews are roundly reviled. May I ask, what, exactly, is wrong with them? I think a score from 1 to 10 works pretty well - I will usually not play a game at all if it recieves an average score lower than 6. It is pretty bad if there's no actual review and just a number, but a number appended to a review? I see no problem with it.

because as Yahtzee says, "i don't believe a complex opinion can be represented numerically"

I like reviews with numbers. The only problem really comes when you use one score to judge it AGAINST another game. And if that other game is completely different then it's not fair to say it's better or worse.

However, if I'm looking at a couple basketball games, for example, I know that each one is going to have the same basic idea. Pass the ball, put the ball through the net. Any features outside of that are purely optional and that's when you need to actually look at a box or read a review. But I can tell from a score right away that one game is better at the core parts than the other.
Same goes for a lot of racing games and fighting games, and - let's be honest here - half of the FPS games on the market.

The score on it's own isn't enough to completely sell it, but if something has a 16/100 rating from half a dozen different sources, do you really need to even bother reading the review? That is an instant "yes, buy this" or "no, don't buy this" moment. The numbers should be to make you read (or not) the review, not to say whether you'd like the game or not.

I just find that numbers don't really say anything about the game other than how much the reviewer either liked the game or was paid by the publisher. Numbers are useless at their primary function, which is to let readers know whether or not they'll like the game... they don't account for subjectivity in tastes in genre (maybe the reviewer was wowed by Barbie's Horse Adventures enough to give it an A++, but that doesn't mean I'd like it) or play style. Numerical scores are also fodder for fanboi-warz, as they squabble over decimal points for their favourites and/or use them as peen-meters.

Maybe, maybe, a site like Metacritic (which averages scores over a huge sample space) might be able to make scores actually meaningful... but in the end numbers really don't add much to a review. I prefer reviews that give me a text description of the game; that way I can decide for myself.

-- Steve

I don't hate the concept of numbered reviews, I just hate the flawed principle on which most operate. Especially ones like Gamespot that use a 6-9 rating whose final rating has nothing to do with the actual scores it rates the individual criteria. If you give controls a 6 and graphics an 8, why is it rated 9.5 overall? That's ridiculous.

I also don't trust reviews whose websites receive generous sponsorships from publishers. I like Kotaku's system for reviewing which outlines both what they loved and hated. If that is too much, then forget reading reviews and just look it up on gamerankings.com and leave it at that.

You can't really compare the scores them to other games, so Halo 3 gets a higher score in everything than valkyria chronicles, despite the perfection of the latter.

Numbers are kind of insulting in a way, they summarize that particular reviewers opinion without really giving you anything, people who merely glance at the numbers won't have any idea why it's numbered in that way, they just know that the low numbers are bad.

Some people go off of the numbers alone, which is a terrible way to find games they might have liked, but overlooked because it only had 6.8 and this other game got a 7.5. It's a pretty terrible way to compare games, especially games which, even in the same genre, can be very dissimilar.

I think that numbers are unnecessary and detract from the review itself, they sort of set up the feel of the review before you ever even read it, if a game has a high number you go into the review with high expectations and vice-versa.

I think the reviewing process would be better if people would just take the content of the review for what it was and not give so much significance to the number itself.

Numbered scores for games have, like all thing, their ups and downs. Their ups being that they, unlike the review itself, cannot be taken out of context as so many things are these days. Their downs, however, being that they reduce all the time and effort of the designers into a score that reflects only one person, or a small group of peoples' view on it.
It also seems that it's helping to dumb down our culture along with abbreviations such as the dreaded lol and horrific stereotypes shunted into the media.

Overall though, it's a matter of opinion and that's mine.

Reviews should leave you to make up your own mind.

Reveiws are based around an opinion of the reviewer, which is a Qualitative form of data. Numbers are a Quantitative form of data; its is very difficult to Qualitative data in a Quantitative way