Extremely saddened by Waypoint being shut down. I just renewed my annual Waypoint Plus subscription and I can’t imagine Vice has any plans to give me my money back.
I loved the whole crew over there. Waypoint’s podcasts and streams were always a delight. It was always the home of some of the most thoughtful reporting and analysis in the space.
Oh man, the game shop where we used to go buy magic singles in college had a huge cardboard standee for GORKAMORKA, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Damn, that’s a big bummer. They were the only gaming podcast I was still listening to, and they all had some great insights.
Wow, this is monumental, especially by the standards of games journalism. Ostensibly about Gorkamorka (and it is, as a turning point) but really a condensed history of GW itself. Just finished part one after a few days of off and on reading. On to part two!
Edit two days later: ok, I finished it. What a ride. I really want to play some Gorkamorka now! Totally worth the time it took to read all that even just for being introduced (through circuitous ways) to this guy:
This is just a post to recognize a website, most of you will know it:
I hadn’t entered in years. Today I don’t know why, I remembered it existed so I entered… and I received a glorious view of no nonsense:
It works like 15 or 20 years ago. Just a summary of the news, previews, reviews etc of the day. No BS, no videos, no trying to plug in some other service.
Blue’s never left my RSS library. Beyond the nostalgic vibes, I too appreciate the no-nonsense/filler aspect.
I’ve been regularly visiting it the last 6 months or so as well.
Yep, never stopped being one of my main sources of game news. And as you said for the exact reason described.
So he says this:
It’s been eight years since Eurogamer ditched the 10-point review scale and we’re not going back to that - the argument then that it felt broken through overuse of its upper half still stands.
And then he says this:
Which brings us to five stars. It’s universally understood, simple to take in at a glance, and easily shared.
But how is 5 better than 10? Or better than nothing? Bit of a false dilemma at work here.
I know, stars are prettier than numbers.
In any case you’ll just end up w/ the higher range of stars being all that’s used, but since there are half as many as numbers I guess good and yeah!
Well, this essentially gives them another tier to work with. I’m fine with that.
Their system in these years has been a 4 tier system (Avoid, nothing, recommended, essential). By going to 5 stars, it lets them differentiate between two star games and three star games instead of just having no label on so many reviews, like he says in that editorial. That’s fine. A 5 star system is better than 4 stars, I think.
So now they will overuse the range of 2.5 to 5 stars?
If the problem was overusing the upper half as they say… why didn’t they stop doing that, and start scoring them around a true 0-10 scale, instead of using the solution of ‘removing scores’ ?
This is, of course, a rhetorical question. I already know why. It’s because they fall prey to the social pressure of scoring like the rest of sites on Internet, they don’t want to be the only ones giving low scores, and sticking out like a sore thumb.
Nope. No half stars, no zero stars. Their argument seems to be a psychological one - for review scores we’re conditioned to view things along the lines of the US education system (and maybe other places I can’t speak to) where anything below a 7 or 70 is bad, while with star reviews there isn’t quite the same stigma. We’ll see if they’re right.
Definitely not the case. 1- and 2-star reviews will have the same stigma, and most people will avoid 3-star reviewed games.
There’s really no way around what is essentially a 3-star system no matter what the actual system is:
So, AI written?
Another thing where American screwed things for everybody else! :P :P
Yeah, I agree. Three possible states:
Why not make it one more than 10? These go to 11.
Also known as the tortuous “Do You Like Me?” human review system found in middle school passed notes.
I see they stole the patented “Born in the Eighties” (my podcast)'s rating scale.
1-5 stars, no half stars, half stars are for cowards.
1 Bad
2 Meh
3 Ok
4 Good
5 Great
Simple.
It forces you to make some very difficult choices, but it is very easy to be consistent. Usually most stuff gets a 4 (because I am only usually playing/watching stuff recommended) but at lot of 3s and a couple of 5’s here and there.
I feel like the no half stars system makes the most difficult choice of “Is this a 5 star game?” No 4.5 stars to fall back on. It also gets difficult when stuff gets a 3, people will be offended, because I think there is a tendency to equate 3 with bad or mediocre. 3 is fine, it is above average! You can’t go wrong with a 3.
Good for Eurogamer.
