I think its a fine idea. Applause and Kudos and much rejoicing seems to be a little overkill for what is the simple removal of a number. I mean, I hear ya that the numbers detract from the meat and potatoes of what should make a good review, but will the people that read reviews not just keep reading and those that like the figgerin’ keep looking at figures in other places? People use numbers constantly to make decisions in playing games, in pricing consumer goods, in sports competitions, in salary…numbers are how we gauge any, well, number of things.
It is all well and good to say all those numbers don’t matter and they are muddying the waters of the true meaning of life, but they are a helpful guide. If you focus on the numbers exclusively from one day to the next (i.e. money, always winning, 23 hours a day trying to beat Civ IV on one of those intermediate levels), then you have missed the boat. If you focus on just review scores, the same thing applies.
Wouldn’t the lack of a rating system just mean that the reviewer will feel the need to write another few sentences near the end of a review to say ‘about how good this game is to other games in the same genre’ or something?
I agree with this post 100%. I’ll also be more direct. Do people on messageboards realize how fucking agonizing it is to read threads about how no one does in depth articles, no one does anything more than bullet-point reviews, no one ever TRIES to make a better magazine… when you’ve been writing for one that’s been attempting to fill those needs for YEARS?!
Case in point… this month’s COMPUTER GAMES has a big article on PC RPGs. How many people do you think are going to ask on a messageboard about PC RPGs and then go on a rant about how they don’t come out so often anymore, blah blah blah this month alone? All of them will completely miss the fact this article is available for them in CGM because they simply don’t bother to read magazines. Those same people will be in other threads telling everyone how game magazines suck.
It’s absolutely ridiculous how many people go on and on about how awful the magazines are when it’s pretty clear they aren’t reading them in the first place and have no idea at all about the content within.
I’ve been buying every major game magazine for the last year in an effort to keep myself from being ignorant, and you know what? Most of the print magazines are pretty damn good and some of them are downright amazing.
I’m going to have to find some random cause to champion.
PC Gamer sticks it to gold farming companies by refusing advertising for all one of them! Yeah, take a stand! Stick it to the Chinese!
CGW takes a stand against ratings! Yeah, stick it to GameRankings!
We’ll take a stand against having too much advertising! Yeah, we’ll produce more edit pages than everyone else with a third of the staff! Yeah, we’re sticking it to… wait, we’re sticking it to ourselves. Damn.
This is excellent. I hope all game mags and sites do it, and then in a few years people can bitch how come the game industry doesn’t use a rating system like movies and music reviews do…
I know this is funny and all, but actually, ya know, this was not meant to be some big, glorious “LOOK HOW NOBLE WE ARE!” thing. It’s more just one piece of a larger puzzle I’m working on–the puzzle being, how to make a monthly magazine relevant in 2006. I neither claim to have all the answers nor claim any kind of righteous superiority, FWIW. Maybe this is a dumb move. I dunno. The point is, I came to this decision not in a “let’s stick it to the man! let’s keep it real!” way than in a “let’s re-think what we want to offer readers every month” way.
(Oh, also, we stopped taking IGE’s ads months before Gamer did. I just didn’t write an editorial about it. :) )
Indeed, but no more or less than the rest of us, that’s all I’d add. We don’t want CGW and CGM to go all temper-tantrum, say like TCJ’s curmudgeonly Gary Groth, and just turn bitch-royale bitter.
1969, we thought we were going to change the world, and here we are going on forty years later with The Patriot Act and the NSA and the United States of the Middle East (and beyond). Talk about people not paying attention. Get up and get to work. That’s all we can do. If CGM and CGW are out of business in five years, we’ve got our integrity and we’ll find other jobs. Murrow didn’t take shit from CBS, and ultimately he was forced to walk. That may be the price we pay. Speaking for myself, it’s worth it–kids, family, etc.–no matter what.
Instead of previews, numerous articles will be written detailing the new editorial policies based on whether or not sequels use roman or arabic numerals, if a game’s first or last disc is the “Play” disc, and whether the press kit for the game was printed with an inkjet or laser.
One review could have eighteen scores, each on a different scale, and twelve of them would be labelled “Fun Factor” in various languages, including the Alsace-Lorraine patois of French and German. The rest of the reviews could be graded as either “Editor’s Choice” or “Choice” or “Editor’s”.
The cover shot would be a screenshot of Temple of Apshai and be titled “OH CRAP BLACK MAMBA”, but there would be no corresponding story inside.
Pages will be named, not numbered. They will be named after the Billboard Hot 100 from 1983. I call dibs on “Far From Over” by Frank Stallone if we get up to the ex-“Page 94”. This of course would also necessitate that Three Finger Salute be renamed “Flashdance - What a Feeling” by Irene Cara Finger Salute.
Oh gawd, I hope you’re either snarking or not referring to the “I picked my nose and popped a boner while stomping prostitutes in GTA. Cat purrs. Light glints on window sill. Mood indigo. Then I had a coffee and took a dump” brand of NGJ. :-P
What Ryan’s referring to is the tried-and-true editorial practice of trying to make review text/tone match the magazine’s score–a rather inane but logistically unavoidable process, complicated enormously when you have freelancers juggling a dozen different scoring systems and personal writing styles to match. I’ve yet to read a review by anyone, anywhere, in any case, that’s ever matched the text to the number/letter bang-on. It’s a Sisyphean pseudo-scientific labor.
I have to apologize for my earlier post. “Far From Over” by Frank Stallone would be the new name of Page 93, not Page 94, aka “I’ve Got A Rock n’ Roll Heart” by Eric Clapton. And while I am currently sorry, if my proposals for new editorial policies are accepted, I will not regret the error.
I’ll only give this no ratings idea a 2.5 stars. 7.2 on the 7-9 scale.
Sometimes my eyes glaze over when I’m reading a review about a game that I don’t give a stuff about. Sometimes I just want a score and that’s all.
That’s why game informer is my only subscription right now, oh wait it’s actually because it comes free with that stupid gamespot game card. But anyway I love the scores at the end, even if I do disagree with most of their scoring. Not that I know the basis of the scoring because I can’t read a whole review anyway, that’s why the score is so important to me. Because I have a bad case of ADD when I’m reading mediocre writing about mediocre games.
Hey, it’s something different. I’m all for it. It might make some of the writers pay more attention to the points they argue in the body of the review instead of going through the reviewer’s checklist of things to touch upon.
I think I understand where Jeff is coming from too. It’s 2006 and print is really under attack from the web. It needs to differentiate itself in more ways than simply being portable.
Get up and get to work. That’s all we can do. If CGM and CGW are out of business in five years, we’ve got our integrity and we’ll find other jobs. Murrow didn’t take shit from CBS, and ultimately he was forced to walk. That may be the price we pay.
Of course, if this doesn’t work and sales plummet, and then you bravely stick to your non-numerically described guns and lose your jobs, it’ll be because you didn’t take any shit from your customers, whose general happiness is sort of the whole purpose of the thing. I think you can probably sneak the scores back in after they come for the gold farmers but right before they come for the jews and still retain your integrity.
We do have good writing about gaming. Just the suck outnumbers the not-suck by ten to one. And by suck I mean formulaic. Of which I am often guilty. But I can name a half-dozen people on this board alone who are first class writers about games. Some of them even good writers in general who just chose a strange subject.
But lets not pretend that the world of movie and literary criticism is all puppies and rainbows. I think that AICN - and its popularity - is testimony to how little many people care about good writing in the entertainment press.
