Actually, you do. His name is Tom.
I’m still waiting for someone to review games without scoring them according to some arbitrary scale. It would be a step forward for the medium and a finger to game rankings at the same time.
What would ever make you think they care about what you wrote? All any of them care about is the final score for marketing reasons. Its the same as movie reviews, only since they have previews and adds, they like to have thier one-liners out of context that makes them look good.
On another note however, I do look at 5 star scales as a 1 to 100 scale. I had no idea they were anything but that, and 3 of 5 to me, would clearly represent 60%.
Maybe these print mags and web sites need to have a small section printed each month on how to read game reviews. When I see something has 3 of 5 stars, what am I supposed to get from that?
In a world where game quality was magically dictated on a curve relative to all other games, with an even 50% marking the break point, that bit of math would be relevant to this discussion. In the real world, where a game falls relative to the rankings of other games is even more irrelevant than any of the other bits of useless statistical data that people have trotted out in this thread.
A majority of the games that get released, in my experience, are decent. A smaller percentage are bad, and a smaller percentage are excellent. Your 48% is square in the middle of “average to decent” territory. For anyone that cares.
(Note: if you actually do care–honestly care–about something this inane, please seek professional help).
Translation of Tom’s article into Hollywoodese:
It’s not like Tom’s review pulls any punches, so that’s a pretty unfair characterization. I hate grade inflation as much as the next person, but I likewise hate it when people equate overstated opinions (let alone overstated scores!) with good criticism. He loved some elements of the game and hated others, and that sort of strong but mixed opinion is difficult to boil down into a number, which is just one of many reasons why readers’ (and game developers’) fixation on scores is so frustrating to writers.
Amen, brother. Or as they like to say on the GAF: QFT.
I can understand that, too. Everyone would rather have their game get a great score rather than a middling one. But wanting a better score is not the same thing as finding legitimate fault with a review. It’s telling that Shelley doesn’t address any of Tom’s actual criticisms of the game, especially since Shelley’s main complaint (that critics are docking the game because it’s not “innovative” enough) is not even one of the criticisms that Tom made.
The 5 star rating system is one of the oldest around. It’s also the system used to rate movies on Netflix. I mention this because I often wish they’d let me half star stuff and they don’t. Anyway, I have always understood *=bad, **=subpar, ***=decent, ****=good, *****=great. I have never ever associated stars with percentile ratings, that just seems dumb.
I think we can argue about how well I know Tom. He’s some guy who posts here, correct?
Me neither. I like Ben’s word for three stars, though: middling.
Most do. The review sections of the three PC Game magazines almost always open with a “this score means this” type rubric. PCGamer even had an editorial a couple of months ago explaining that from now on, 50-60 means average - not bad. We’ll see if that breaks through the skulls of readers, though.
Troy
Its more than just the skulls of the readers - the writers often dont oblige by the scale. If PCG rates most of their games above 70% it really doesnt matter what they say their scale is. It used to be, and may still be, that two sections of IGN used completely different scales, and an IGN employee admitted to me the writers dont really agree on what a 7.0 means.
Right underneath the star rating (on Gamespy) is a text description of the rating. Right underneath that is a “How Our Ratings Work” link that goes into more detail.
The problem with a percentage system is that for the first twenty years of their lives, people are conditioned to equate 50-60% with a failing grade. I don’t think you can ever break that preconception, no matter how many times you explain that your percentage system works differently.
You see there might be a disconnect between those in the busniess and those that are not. I never made the connection between movie star raitings and game star ratings, mostly because I didn’t know what the movie star rating meant.
All I knew was that 3 stars was better then 2, but not quite as good as 4.
Troy: To bad I do not read print magazines anymore. I stopped reading them like 5 years ago.
My take on game reviews:
The scores are total bullshit. I am not saying ‘all scores’ are total bullshit, just the vast majority of them. I am interested in what the review has to say, not the number of stars or ranking he gives it. Really the trick is finding a rewview who you agree with most of the time and then seeing what they think about games you are undecided on.
Back in the day, when AVault didn’t suck, they were a good measure of PC games. At least I knew some of the reviwers and when I had a question about the game I could count on them to give me a good idea weather a game was worth the money or not.
Unfortunatly today, I do not know any reviwers like that. If Tom Chick gave AOE III a 3 star rating, and 3 stars means Decent… What does that mean? Does decent mean I should spend 49.95 on the game? Or does it mean, if it were 34.95 it would be a good buy? Its to subjective. That tells me nothing.
Based on the demo and Tom’s other comemnts here in the forum, not in any review he wrote, I have decied against AoE III. I would say that the demo has about 75% of the deciding factor, and Tom’s comments the other 25%. Maybe if he had said the real game was really good and that the demo didn’t do the actual game justice, I would have seriously considered buying it.
I think you are right about this.
Troy
That’s why you read the review, right? I mean, even a four-star recommendation from Chick or Bauman or Geryk doesn’t mean that I will automatically pony up the bucks.
Take Steve’s review of The Movies. 3.5 stars is a “quite good” rating, but not necessarily enough to make it a slam dunk. The text of the review, though, said things that appealed to my idea of what a game should do. Add in his mostly high “credibility factor” with me and I decide to take the plunge.
BTW, even the gaming websites explain their ratings. Gamespy has a “how our ratings work” link below the byline, Gamespot explains their review system in a link to the right of a score, etc. So saying “I don’t read magazines” doesn’t account for the fact that you may not read websites all that closely either. ;)
Troy
How does one quantify ‘fun’?
I have read such things on how they ARRIVE at thier scores, such as on game spot. But nothing on what they end scores really mean.
Nowhere have I seen that 3 out of 5 means you should buy it at 34.95 or that you are likely to get a good 20 hours of game play out of it.
The first review I’ve agreed with Tom on in a long time and the developers come out and say “it’s not fair?”… Will wonders never cease.
Nothing against the Ensemble guys, but I think they got a free ride with their last installment because of how good their previous games have been. I realize it’s all opinion, but imho, the latest Age game was just not as good. The engine was pretty interesting, but not only was it not all it was suggested it would be, the overall feature set just wasn’t up to par.
Either way, as someone else mentioned, sales doesn’t equal quality, for the love of all it does not.
I hope you aren’t serious about expecting price points in a review score. Hours of gameplay are often mentioned in review text, but I can’t imagine publishers would be all that thrilled if people started saying “Buy at <30 dollars” in their ratings.
And if this list doesn’t tell you what an end score means then I’m not sure what you are looking for in way of text to describe a general number that is assigned to hundreds of games a year.
Troy
It’s not like they hide it. Next to every rating is a link that says “About our rating system” that takes you to a painfully exhaustive explanation of what all the scores really mean.
Nowhere have I seen that 3 out of 5 means you should buy it at 34.95 or that you are likely to get a good 20 hours of game play out of it.
And that’s exactly the sort of unrealistic reader expectation that makes ratings so problematic. I’ll save you the trouble of looking: no rating system will tell you those things. That sort of qualified information is way beyond the scope of what a simple score can relay, which in turn is whole point of writing a review in, like, words.
When I was writing exams in the university 50-60% was a passing grade. 75-80%+ meant you aced it. There were no other grades. Swedish grading is so uncomplicated.
I don’t read the words in reviews unless the magazine or site has a box or a link explaining exactly what all those words mean. Come on, the same words are used to describe hundreds of games a year, how am I to decide based on that?
Tom should just stick to the Fun<>Not fun rating system and he wouldn’t land himself in trouble like this.
or use the Danish school grading system, which makes perfect sense:
00
03
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
13
Questions?