Who Is to Blame for the State of Game Scores?
August 12, 2008 14:28
What is Side-Quest? It's our weekly column that gets published Tuesday featuring opinions and editorials from the Tom's Games staff. I've had the intention of doing a weekly column here for a while but the "weekly" aspect has been hard to maintain. Now that the column has a name and, we hope, a somewhat regular schedule I think that will change. This week I wanted to talk about something I've addressed before - namely game scores - but this time look at it from a different perspective.
A lot has been written over the past year about the state of game journalism. There are, of course, the constant rumors of collusion between the press and reviewers - some of which are true, most of which are not - but it seems that most gamers out there find the biggest fault with the standard scoring system. Many forums have threads discussing the pros and cons of the 1 to 10 scoring system where posts will often call for abolishment of a numerical score all together in favor of either a more complicated scoring system with multiple scores, a simpler scoring system with levels such as "buy it," "rent it" and "pass it," or no scoring system at all. The popular theory is that a game shouldn't be filtered down into a single score and doing so is an injustice wrought by the reviewer. I disagree. Discontent from reading game reviews comes not only from the scoring system but how those scores are interpreted.
I look at games as an experience not unlike a movie, a book, a play or an album. They are content to be consumed. All content, regardless of its complexity, can be boiled down to a score along some axis that corresponds to the consumer's personal experience. Granted, a numerical score cannot possibly encompass the reviewer's true feelings for the product but that's why most reviews include all that text that, sometimes, seems to go unread. The meat of the review is the writing.
At the same time however, a score forces the reviewer to take a stand. It's possible to write around your true feelings for a game without actually coming out for it or against it. That makes for an easy position to defend once a debate starts since you can color the ambiguity of the review to fit the situation. Having a simplified version of the review - i.e. the score - puts the reviewer in a position to quantify their remarks. As a reviewer tasked with filtering an experience that can last six, 12 or even 100 hours down to a number, I have to admit it's a challenge to find a score that fairly represents a game's impact. But that's our burden.
Most, if not all, professional game reviewers get into the business because they love games, and that love can get in the way of being critical. This is one of the ways the industry unconsciously endorsed a 7 to 10 scale and how 7 and 8 have become the pariahs of the scoring community. This needs to change. It's our responsibility as reviewers to take back the middle and the bottom of the 1 to 10 scale by gradually looking at games more critically. It's OK to be hard on games. They can take it. There are entirely too many 9's and 10's out there.
Some forums took issue with our 8.5 score for Sony darling Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots despite it being a very positive review.
Unfortunately it isn't all on the reviewers. Some of the blame for game review woes can be squarely placed on the shoulders of the readers. Now let me explain before you take offense. With more and more information available to your average reader comes more and more opinions. Internet reading trends have shown that people prefer to read opinions that validate their own. Because of that they, consciously or otherwise, seek out opinions that align with what they have already decided about a product. The problem with gamers specifically is that we are passionate about our past time. When we read a review that criticizes a game we really like, the kneejerk reaction is to jump to the comments section or attached forum and begin combat. This isn't necessarily the best approach.
For example, reactions to review scores should never include words like "atrocity" or "appalling." We're not talking about genocide here. These are game scores. Consider that burning your own house down may not be a reasonable reaction to your favorite game getting a score lower than you would like. Consider that, just maybe, the reviewer didn't like it as much and that you may still be able to continue to exist in the same reality as said reviewer.
I'm not suggesting that all the readers start being nicer to game reviewers. We need that negative feedback to keep us honest and humble. But the flame wars surrounding high scores that aren't high enough to appease the hardcore fans have only served to push scores higher to alleviate that pressure. As reviewers we may need that negative feedback but we certainly don't want to encourage it, so subconsciously, scores have climbed.
So what am I suggesting? Reviewers, let's be harder on games. Let's spread those scores around a bit more and use some of that lower-end of the scale. Not every big title that comes out is the best game ever. When we look back at Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and even Metal Gear Solid 4 without the veil of hype obscuring our view we can see that there are flaws and those games may not be as super-terrific as we originally thought.
And readers, let's not melt down when we see 7's and certainly not 8's or 9's. Read the full review. Consider what that author didn't like. If we all agree that games are very complex pieces of entertainment incorporating gameplay, art, music, story, performance and technology which makes them difficult to score, we should also agree that a user's experience of that entertainment can vary resulting in a variety of scores that can all be right.
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