On Review Scores for Games
Adam Sessler sent out a recent rant about scores, and that he doesn't like to include them. Which got me thinking: what's the purpose of those scores.
Now, there's the obvious, and can easily be translated to be problematic, answer: they are the shortest and clearest means of conveying how much one likes a game.
Sessler and many others don't like their reviews being bogged down to just a number. That number doesn't give the full story, and can be misleading under some systems.
But the more I thought about it, the more I think scores are important. One reason is the format in which we get our reviews.
X-Play is in one of the few formats where if someone wants a review, they are there to listen to everything. Television is where someone sits down, and watches what is in front of them. Even with video on the internet, they watch the entire video. However, the video HAS to be short online; no one is going to sit through half-hour reviews of even AAA titles.
Which gets to my point: most reviews for games are internet based. And when people surf the internet, they don't' often read entire articles. At best, they skim longer articles. And being most reviews do take up several pages, they only read so much before just skipping to the number.
The attention span of people while surfing is much shorter than if they read a paper for a movie review. While both formats get a very short time for the reader to decide if he/she will read the whole thing, with a paper the reader WILL read the entire review. The same is not true of the Internet, in which people will stop reading and go look at something else.
Scores are especially important for games because of time and money commitment. Think about it: with movies, you have around 2 hours committed toward watching the movie, and max of $20 to buy a DVD. Video games: 30 minutes per session (possibly more, not many have shorter to progress), and many more hours total, and $30-60 to buy it, depending on the system.
So, people need to know more which games are worth getting over others than other media. You can watch quite a few movies in the time span to play even the shortest of games. The time/price value may be better for games, but both are much higher. And people need prioritization.
If there is one problem with scores that I can't disagree with, it is sites like Gamerankings and Metacritic trying to combine all the scores. The reason is that most major web sites have different scales for the review scores. X-Play has a 5-star review (with 3-star being average), while IGN has 100-point (with 70 average), and 1 Up having letter grades (C average). Numrically translating those into one universal score often misses how much that review likes that game.
If anything, I'd like to see a site like Rotten Tomatoes, which only asks one question for each reviewer: did they like the product or not. It still isn't perfect (like it doesn't ask about prioritization), but on average it has a better numrical translation.
So as much as many of game journalists like Sessler do not like review scores, they're there for a reason and I don't see them going away anytime soon.
Now, there's the obvious, and can easily be translated to be problematic, answer: they are the shortest and clearest means of conveying how much one likes a game.
Sessler and many others don't like their reviews being bogged down to just a number. That number doesn't give the full story, and can be misleading under some systems.
But the more I thought about it, the more I think scores are important. One reason is the format in which we get our reviews.
X-Play is in one of the few formats where if someone wants a review, they are there to listen to everything. Television is where someone sits down, and watches what is in front of them. Even with video on the internet, they watch the entire video. However, the video HAS to be short online; no one is going to sit through half-hour reviews of even AAA titles.
Which gets to my point: most reviews for games are internet based. And when people surf the internet, they don't' often read entire articles. At best, they skim longer articles. And being most reviews do take up several pages, they only read so much before just skipping to the number.
The attention span of people while surfing is much shorter than if they read a paper for a movie review. While both formats get a very short time for the reader to decide if he/she will read the whole thing, with a paper the reader WILL read the entire review. The same is not true of the Internet, in which people will stop reading and go look at something else.
Scores are especially important for games because of time and money commitment. Think about it: with movies, you have around 2 hours committed toward watching the movie, and max of $20 to buy a DVD. Video games: 30 minutes per session (possibly more, not many have shorter to progress), and many more hours total, and $30-60 to buy it, depending on the system.
So, people need to know more which games are worth getting over others than other media. You can watch quite a few movies in the time span to play even the shortest of games. The time/price value may be better for games, but both are much higher. And people need prioritization.
If there is one problem with scores that I can't disagree with, it is sites like Gamerankings and Metacritic trying to combine all the scores. The reason is that most major web sites have different scales for the review scores. X-Play has a 5-star review (with 3-star being average), while IGN has 100-point (with 70 average), and 1 Up having letter grades (C average). Numrically translating those into one universal score often misses how much that review likes that game.
If anything, I'd like to see a site like Rotten Tomatoes, which only asks one question for each reviewer: did they like the product or not. It still isn't perfect (like it doesn't ask about prioritization), but on average it has a better numrical translation.
So as much as many of game journalists like Sessler do not like review scores, they're there for a reason and I don't see them going away anytime soon.
posted by SeanM at 11:47 AM
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