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KillerGremlin is offline
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Now Playing: my ding-a-ling
Posts: 4,566
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Re: Are Video Game Reviews Broken?
Yup.
I don't know what it is...I'm not a statistician. It's broken math and a broken game industry where reviewers are tied too closely (AKA in bed) with developers. Before I even proceed I just want to point out that this mother fucker only spent 15 hours playing the game before dishing out an 8/10. What the fucking hell, right? Until you have beat the game, decided on its impact to the industry, determined its replay value, etc., it is PETTY to even try to give a game a score. This is an industry problem. Games are not movies. Hell, music is not movies. Movies are the only medium that really benefit from rapid digestion, and doesn't necessarily warrant repeat viewings to rate. Furthermore, a movie's true brilliance is often written about in hindsight many years later. Many movies that received rave reviews would go on to become serious genre-benders or would leave a big imprint in Hollywood. Some movies that received poor reviews would go on to become genre-benders and leave a big imprint in Hollywood.
The point is movies can be rated using rapid reaction and short digestion periods. Games cannot.
The whole concept of rushing out a game review is only beneficial to the developer. If you can't see that you are a moron and deserve to part with your money. There's a reason IGN cranks out a score the day of the game's release: SO PEOPLE WILL BUY IT. Don't even try to pretend that the reviewers and the game developers aren't jacking each other off.
If you want an accurate, normal-ish distribution of game reviews, go read Amazon.com. These are user reviewers that typically represent a game accurately. The downside to this is that you often need to wait several months after the game is released to get a really accurate sense of what to expect.
The problem, I think, is that we use percentages from 0 to 100% or scores from 1 to 10. If you look at the US school system, we give scores like:
A 90-100
B 80-89
C 70-79
D 65-69
F 0-64
Look where the largest range of points is located: 0-64 is failing. Whereas 80-100 are A and B scores, or really really good.
I'm not really sure of the methodology behind the US grading system, I assume it tries to create some sort of normal distribution where most people get Cs, and some people get Bs and Ds, and very few people get As and Fs. And in order to meet this distribution the points are distributed as such where a 70-79 is average.
So here is this system that everyone in this country is raised on where a 70% or 80% is just average or okay, so anything that is good or really good should be a 90% or 100%. So we run into the obvious dilemma:
There's a lot of good games, they should all get 80%, 90% or 100%
or
We need to change the industry-reviewer standards so that a 60% or 70% is the new good, and 80%, 90% and 100% are reserved for those top-notch titles like OoT or Half-Life 2
or
Do away with this ridiculous 1-10 or 0-100% system and roll with a new system. I think doing a 1-5 scale would be good.
1 = Really shitty game. Not just shitty gameplay, but glitches and bugs.
2 = Really underwhelming. Game has serious flaws.
3 = Average. Does everything the genre is supposed to, but doesn't go above and beyond. May not have a ton of replay value, isn't changing the industry.
4 = This is a game is an impressive example of the genre. Has polished gameplay, might replay again. You would be doing okay buying this game.
5 = Top of the class. This is THAT ONE GAME that you will be talking about 10 years from now. This is a genre-changer, so innovative you have to replay it just to see stuff you missed.
With this system, the reviewer in BaB's article would probably give the game a 3 or a 4. And then the reviewer would have to write up a review that supports that decision. And people would have to actually read the review. But this isn't beneficial to the industry or the game developers. Also, in an ideal world, the review for the game wouldn't come out until a few months later to see whether or not the replay value, multiplayer, and online gameplay held up. It's a lot more work to write and read a review that uses a scale of 1-5 vs. a review that just shits out a percentage value that everyone in America is comfy with.
You could also use letter scores
A = Genre changer (OoT, Half-Life, GTA3, etc.)
B = Genre over-achiever (Vice City, Halo 2, etc.)
C = Genre average
D = Genre Sub-par
F = Abortion
It's the same, ordinal, 1-5 scale. The only problem is people immediately associate a percentage score with a letter grade.
I haven't read a single IGN/Gamespot/Big Media review since the Gamecube Generation. IGN can go fuck itself. The reviews are absolute bullshit and are completely contrived. I prefer Amazon, Yahtzee, or editorials by Joe-averages like me. In fact, I figured Youtube would do away with IGN by now. You can go check out video reviews by normal gamers on video sites, you can read opinions about games on social news sites like Reddit, and you have massive shopping sites with reviews like Amazon.com and *cringe* even Walmart or Best Buy.
And when someone eventually writes an empirical, educational book on video gaming (and they will because it has happened with Cinema and Music), I promise you they will point out how sites like IGN contributed to the orgy of sequels and rehash titles that plague the industry. It's just a huge circle jerk, and the two people who win are the game developers, and the nerdy game reviewers who get to play the title before everyone else.
Isn't that the incentive to review video games, to be first? Everyone else gets shafted, unless you're wise to the giant flaws in IGN's rating system.
Last edited by KillerGremlin : 09-16-2011 at 04:30 PM.
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