So, partly as a joke, in the recent twitter game score debate, I said that we should ‘fix’ the ’7 as average’ scoring system by doing the following: -5 from the score, and bottom everything out at a nice, round 0.
As an experiment, I’m going to do that. Here are some scores, by Australian gaming sites.
Firstly, of Halo 3:
- IGN: 4.5
- GameArena: 4
- Gamespot: 4.5
And now, Heavy Rain:
- Gamespot: 3.5
- GameArena: 0
- AusGamers: 4.4
How about Assassin’s Creed?
- IGN: 2.7
- GameArena: 3.5
- Gamespot: 4.0
And finally, Kane & Lynch 2…
- Gamespot: 1.5
- IGN: 2
- PalGN: 2.5
- GameArena: 0
Does it really make anything easier to get at a glance?
What sort of game scoring system do you prefer? Thumbs up? Out of five stars? Out of ten? Percentile? Out of a thousand? Or none at all?
Do they affect your decision to purchase a game? And, more importantly, do you ever skim review scores after clicking a link to a review, but then fail to read the actual review itself?
Tags: #gamescore, rohan
out of 10 is fine if it’s used correctly. if you do out of 5 and use .5 increments essentially you are just using a /10 scorecard with more dots
Sure, but mentally, when you see those scores expressed as /5… how much does seeing the absolute-0s at the bottom make you feel differently about the game?
I use them as a guide to reviews, rather than the other way round. If I’m trying to decide on a game, I’ll check out metacritic and read a review from someone who loved the game; someone who hated the game, and someone in the middle.
From that, I’ll usually get a good idea of whether the things people liked/hated would be the sorts of things that appeal/repel me.
Psychologically speaking, the difference between 0 and a non-zero number is huge for people. The effect is described here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational#The_Cost_of_FREE.21 – or for more read Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational (it’s awesome).
If that’s of any use to you!
What was #gamescore? I missed that controversy. Quick rehash or link?
In any event, I judge whether to buy a game the same way I judge whether to buy a book or a movie: check the reviews of Amazon. If 2000+ bog standard human beings rate a game 1 out of 5, I feel safe in ditching the idea. Likewise if they rate it 4.5 out of 5, I will look a lot closer at it, reviews etc. It’s spectacularly unsophisticated, but it hasn’t let me down once yet. The larger the sample size of ratings to aggregate, the better.
Actually, should have been 200+, but if a game garners so many ratings, all the better.
#gamescore was a twitter debate that happened rather randomly last week. You can do a search for the hashtag on a twitter archiving site like twapperkeeper.com to have a read. Most of those debating were Australian gaming journalists and enthusiasts.
hmm i personally i think it is fine the way it is or the way you do i dont like the rating system though because people could just make like 40 accounts on the same site and rate the same product as 10 out of 10 then a couple of people come along and put there modest judgement score of 5 and it would drop too 9.5 ish which is rather laughable
and another thing about the rating is that it can be affected by how much the actual review who writes the post whines or praises it