Editor's note: Similar to the "Are games art?" debate, the one over which review scale is best just...won't...die. Fortunately, Suriel intelligently breaks down the options out there and gives us the lowdown on each. What do you, the Bitmob community, feel is the best scale? -Greg
After mulling over the decision for a quite a while, I've decided that I will start adding scores to my reviews*. In an ideal world, I could just transcribe my opinion about a game and know that everyone who reads it will know whether the game in question is right for them.
Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and scores are, in my opinion, necessary. While many critics loathe having to quantify their thoughts on a game and assert that the review should speak for itself, and as much as I'd like as many people as possible to read my writing, as a critic, you're ultimately serving your reader; it's somewhat pretentious to think that everyone should be forced to sit down and read what you have to say. I'm not writing a long-winded essay about how the game reflects on our culture, I'm answering a simple question: should you buy this game?
I'm not exactly in the position to demand that sort of attention from my readers, either. I'm a relative amateur in the field of video game writing, so I must make concessions to the reader before I can expect them to trust or relate to my point of view. Rather than being a crutch, review scores are a way to hold myself accountable. My text and score should more or less match -- with a certain amount of wiggle room for interpretation -- and if they don't, then it's because of my failure to properly articulate my thoughts. I need something to keep my writing in check; otherwise, I focus on nitpicks and make a review take on a different tone than I intended it to.
But enough background. The point of this post is to try to decide what scale I should use from now on. The 1-to-10 scale seems fairly reliable, since it can tell you at a glance what the critic thinks of a game, at least in ballpark figures. The problem with this scale is that it is subject to too much interpretation: Is 7 a good or bad score? Since it's above 5 -- the average -- it's technically an above-average score, but in most school systems, a 70 (7/10) is a D or a C, which is either at or below average.
With that in mind, I decided to take a look at a number of alternatives to this scale. Many of them are already being used elsewhere, while others are mostly theoretical. Still, it's important to know your options before you commit to something, so here are some of the ways I've considered helping consumers decide which games they should or should not buy.
1-to-5
Though this scale is very similar to the 1-to-10 scale, there's one key difference: the lack of granularity. You don't have to worry about whether that 7 is good or bad when it isn't an option. 1 is horrible, 2 is bad, 3 is average, 4 is good, 5 is great/amazing/astounding/positive multisyllabic adjective.
With such a limited range of scores, it's harder for readers to get hung up on whether game X is better than game Y, so it's not the best for comparative shopping, but it also helps mitigate the fanboy forum wars about the difference between a 9.4 and a 9.6. It's best used when deciding on whether you should buy a particular game, which is the usually the situation anyway. If you're choosing between two games with similar scores, it's a personal decision that most reviews aren't going to help you with, and you're likely going to go back and buy the other game at some point.
It's also important to point out the difference between scales that use half-stars and those that don't. Using half-stars essentially turns a scale into a 10-point scale, but let's be honest -- most 10-point scales are either 20- or 100-point scales. I personally prefer the scale without half-stars, since it forces the reviewer to decide whether the game is simply good or great. People won't usually say, "This game is good and a half!" but nonetheless, both options are valid.
Doing away with numbers entirely, the letter grade offers a way to quantify the reviewer's thoughts on a game without having to worry about fractions or percentages. The benefits of assigning a letter rather than a letter are clear: they're much easier to understand than numbers. Since most of us are already aware of what the letters A, B, C, D, and F** stand for, seeing that grade attached to a review makes perfectly clear what a reviewer thinks. We all know that a C is average, a B is good, and so on. You don't have to wander in the 7/7.5 territory of whether something is good or great.
There are, however, some difficulties to overcome. When you add pluses and minuses to the scale, it can get a bit hard to interpret. What's the difference between a B and a B+? Though B+ is clearly a better grade for a game to receive, what's the threshold for purchasing a B game versus a B+? These things make it somewhat difficult for buyers to assess whether a game is for them.
Not only that, but Metacritic has difficulty with sorting that type of thing out. The way it changes letters to numbers is extremely shady, and while many critics loathe Metacritic on principle and would easily dismiss whatever they did to their grade, the fact is many people are going to simply glance at the Metacritic scores, where your C might turn into a 66, and it's likely that you'll disagree with this score. The letter grade is a great way to avoid the numbers game (excuse the pun), but it's something of an outcast in the number-fueled review world.
The system becomes a lot less confusing when you remove the modifiers, and this makes it much easier for Metacritic to turn your B into an 80, but at that point, you're essentially using the five-point scale. At least the modifiers give some wiggle room for the reviewer to argue with aggregator over the interpretation of their grade.
Dollar Amount
Ryan Conway is already experimenting with this system, and the results have been encouraging. Instead of giving you a score to gauge whether you should buy a game, Ryan simply tells you at what price you should buy a game, while also comparing it to the game's current price.
This system accounts for the variety of pricing available for video games. Ideally, a game's evaluated price and actual price will match, but since that's hardly ever the case, giving you a dollar amount to aim for seems reasonable. It makes a value judgment rather than a qualitative one, so it assumes you're already interested in the game and would simply like to know whether the game you're looking to buy is worth what you're spending. The scale is very consumer-minded, which, being a review telling people whether they should buy a game or not, it should be.With this scale, the arguments of which game is better die off almost completely. Giving you a dollar amount isn't saying that this is the greatest game ever made or that it redefines our medium, it just says, "You should buy this game at this price," which is what most people want. Though many people will buy most if not all of their games at launch day, plenty of people will wait until the game goes down in price, and this scale tells them when to start hunting for a game.
However, the value argument isn't bullet-proof. Will a game like Heavy Rain be a good value proposition? There's a difference between a game having a good amount of content to keep you busy and it being a great experience. Now, it's possible that a Heavy Rain will be good enough to merit its $60 price tag, but if someone were to look at a review of Fallout 3, for example, and saw that the game had received the same score, and picked up Heavy Rain thinking it would be the same value, it's likely they'll be disappointed by the lack of content. Still, it's a bold new direction in reviews that merits praise.
