IGN simplifying their review score scale to 10 points.

[Hecht]

How does a system like even make sense in a world were the price of games is completely inconsistent? For say, Apex Legends, what's the difference between someone trying and buying it? Would you not even review F2P games?

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Even without a financial cost, every game has a time cost - one can change it to "invest time in the game" or "give it a shot and see", but I feel like you're just trying to nitpick - I clearly gave a generic example that would obviously need tweaking for things like F2P games

 

[Karlinel]

Being IGN they only need 7, 8, 9 and 10.
And a 2, for God Hand Remake.

 

[Majukun]

don't like it

also noo reason at all to simplify what is pretty much a simple system

 

[Gotdatmoney]

Yeah what is that all about? Not sure when mediocre got a bad connotation.



Just because there aren't too many games that are reviewed doesn't mean those scores should be excluded or the scale modified. If you looked at the games you choose to play I guarantee they skew high. Why would you play a bad game? Well nowadays there are so many game releases, review sites like IGN will focus their resources on the bigger and better games people are actually going to play. If they wanted to review every shitty mobile game port added to Steam and the eShop, it would use the full scale and there would be plenty of 1-3. But it would also be a misuse of resources.

That's different than utilizing a subset of the scale where only severely broken games will get a 5 or less. I think this is a good move where more of the scale will be utilized and the scores will be honest and make sense.

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I don't understand the argument you are making. My whole point was that most sites don't waste their time reviewing games deserving of less than a 5. That doesn't mean that they should shift the whole scale as a result.

Like someone else said, not every data set is a normal distribution. People need to get the fuck over this.

 

[icyflamez96]

I dont like it. Either 20 points or no points.

 

[Deleted member 56752]

It's kind of amusing seeing people talk about how the 1-5 in the scale just being synonyms for 'bad' and therefore worthless also completely miss the point that the descriptors for 6-10 are all synonyms for 'good'. Why is there a need to differentiate good games but not bad?

The review itself without a score should be enough for a piece of criticism but we live in an aggregation world so most sites have some form of rating appended. 5 point scales are my preference but 10 is still fine.

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Because nobody cares how bad a game is. Like OHHHHHH it's only a 4. That must mean it's not that bad. Like no. People are going to see a sites tendency to only use 6-10 and be like "why would I ever buy this". The higher the score, the more need for differentiation because at that point, the consumer wants to know how pressing a buy this needs to be.

EDIT: they went back to the scale they are at now because they realized early on the other scale doesn't have any flexibility. You basically have 4 points you can use. Okay, Good, great, amazing. That's it. How can you possibly differentiate enough to capture every games quality?

I guess it doesn't matter now. I personally just follow people I trust and if they say they like the game I buy it. Review scores are pretty archaic now

 

[Majora85]

You can all pretend that there's no difference between an 8.1 and an 8.4, but we all know there is.

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Can you honestly quantify the difference between an 8.0, 8.1. 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4? Because I don't believe anyone who claims to be able to, it's completely arbitrary.

 

[thecaseace]

Yep. I don't see how this will help change things at all. This is just making every game an "x.0" on the old scale.

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The problem it seeks to address is that of internet discourse being driven by the difference between two games, in two different genres, reviewed by two different people, getting a score .3 points apart and it being used for endless fanboy debate about which exclusive is better.

This happens a lot. And for IGN it detracts from the hard editorial work they do.

Now a hypothetical fanboy looks at both of these reviews sees both with an 8 and then would actually have to fully read both reviews (or watch the video review) to understand the qualitative differences between two games, I think this is a correct move.

Though I think they should've gone the whole way a five or six point scale would be ideal because to be honest we could all probably categorise releases into a 6 point scale and come to the pretty much identical answers. It would highlight the quality of a game broadly with differences between two games being pronounced enough to be truly meaningful from the score alone.

 

[Acetown]

It's an improvement but a ten-point scale is still pretty hard to quantify and is probably going to cause score inflation. A five-point scale would be ideal.

 

[Cecil]

A step in the right direction, that should have been made years ago. 1-5 is all that's needed, but 1-10 is at least much more sensible then a 100 scale.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

I don't understand the argument you are making. My whole point was that most sites don't waste their time reviewing games deserving of less than a 5. That doesn't mean that they should shift the whole scale as a result.

Like someone else said, not every data set is a normal distribution. People need to get the fuck over this.

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I agree with not having a normal distribution of scores on the scale, but IGN's scale has been messed up for a long time and it's good to change. The lowest scores will still be absent but right now everything that is bad, mediocre, and decent falls between 6 and 8 distinguished by decimal points. Instead the average game they review won't be getting 7s and 8s, they should be getting somewhere between 5 and 7 and match up with the review wording better. Before this scale change it seems like any big box game on the shelf is rated good or better by IGN when that's clearly not the case to the average gamer.

Example: Death Stranding got a 6.8 and by the wording, the reviewer didn't like the game overall even though there were things multiple things he liked about it. 6.8 is OK but it's so damn close to Good which is not how the review reads. Rather than giving .8 pity points or whatever happened because it was a big game, just chop off the decimal and you'll see the review makes much more sense.

 

[Falchion]

This feels like it's long overdue.

 

[CenturionNami]

Will a .5 lean towards the lesser or the greater score?

 

[Leviathan]

Reviews exist to provide scores and final verdicts I can combine with the same from other sites to get a broad impression of a game. Makes no difference to me whether or not the numbers are whole.

 

[MakgSnake]

I am probably one of the few that would miss the 5.4 and 8.7 and 9.3 increments.

But anything is better than NOT giving a score at all and just writing the review with anything at all, which some gaming sites are doing.

I am glad IGN isn't like Kotaku and Polygon.

But I don't trust IGN at all. So all this doesn't matter. Lol

For some reason preferred Game Informer magazine forever.

So with all that change... Death Stranding would have been a 7/10 or 6/10 for IGN?

 

[Euron]

I agree with this since the differences between the smaller percentage points are completely arbitrary. Problem is the way IGN reviews we're most likely getting 8/10 for the majority of big games. Then again it's the text that matters.

 

[rochellepaws]

For as long as game reviewers refuse to use the scale below 7 I think narrowing it makes very little sense, they might as well not use a score system at this point.

 

[Turin]

While the 5 point system is most efficient, I think more people get it with 10 because of school grading.

 

[TechnicPuppet]

For as long as game reviewers refuse to use the scale below 7 I think narrowing it makes very little sense, they might as well not use a score system at this point.

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That would be preferable.