Right as rainy

I’ve been following a few discussions and podcasts lately, some of which dealt with the point (or lack of point) of scoring game reviews, in fact, any reviews. Now that’s a discussion that has been going around since the beginning of review scores. The debate however has gained new momentum with the advent of Metacritic, a site which aggregates review scores from different sites to present a kind of average which many people use to orientate themselves and, in the end, make a purchase decision.

I’ve written the odd review or two in my day and always had a problem scoring the subject of a review. The notion of being able to put a score on the bottom line of what essentially is an opinion, and have any claim of accuracy, escaped me at all times. At the end of the day any review can only be an opinion, a writer reporting his experience with a certain product. To put a score on that gives it an air of fact that no review can claim for itself. But even if you make the score a part of the opinion – which is the right thing to do in any case – how does it work?

There are a number of different scoring systems out there, from the 100 points scale (or percent scale), its quite popular derivative 10 with decimals, to school grades (A, B, C, D, F). What most of these have in common is that they have some serious flaws. Take the 100 points scale. There isn’t a journalist alive who could tell you with any degree of sophistication what the difference would be between a score of 83% and 85%. Is there even a difference?

Gameshark.com-Editor Bill Abner put it quite aptly when he said in a recent podcast that if your scoring system doesn’t use its full scale, it’s crap. And it is true for most scoring systems that their scale is a bit skewed. If a game scores below 50% on the 100 scale, it makes no difference if it scores 45 or 25 – virtually noone is going to consider buying it. On the other hand, the majority of review scores end up somewhere between 70% and 100% on that scale. Which is probably a good thing – but why have such a wide scale if most of it serves no purpose? Even on the school grades it doesn’t really make a difference if the game scores a D or an F.

Bill freely admits that he would love to change the Gameshark system to something along the lines of Siskel & Eberts Thumbs Up/Down rating – but doesn’t have the brass to do it.  He reckons that the readers want scores. But is that really the case? Yes, readers want something to gauge if they are going to spend their hard-earned money on a game. However, does it really have to be a 1-10 scale or even a 1-100 scale? Personally I am quite partial to what Ars Technica do – their game reviews get a Buy – Rent – Skip verdict. Clean, concise and to the point. Let’s be honest, it’s basically a mildly extended Siskel & Ebert scale – thumbs up, down and sideways, if you so will. A rating cannot replace a full review, there are things you just can’t put into a score, even if you do component reviews where Graphics, Sound, Gameplay etc. are commented on and scored separately (which is usually just done to conceal the author’s inability to put together a concise, flowing piece of writing). Looking at a score alone cannot replace the value of information that is – or at least should be – found in a review.

Besides, no journalist likes to type out several pages of text and then have people not read it because all they want is the bottom line…