Lately, I've been wondering if I'm only one of the few who dislike people bashing official review outlets just because they 'gave a game the wrong score'. People would say things like ''websites are trusted to provide reviews that reflect the quality of games''. Here, I will explain why I think that's the wrong way to look at reviews. Huge essay ahead.
First off, all reviewers have different ideas about what constitutes a bad, average, or good game. Those terms are subjective, after all. And that's kind of my first point: there is no way to classify anything as being objectively good or bad. The only way that's possible is if you directly compare a game to a certain standard all games need to adhere to. Usually, there is no such standard except for the subjective one we hold in our minds.
Nonetheless, reviewers' score scales are usually comparable to each other, with a 5/10 being used for 'mediocre' games, for instance. It makes sense because mediocre means middling, and a 5/10 is right in the middle on a scale of 0 to 10.
At the same time, our experiences with games are all different. Many of us have played different games, grew up playing different games and now we all hold games to different standards... our own 'mental standards', so to speak. Because of that, there's no such thing as an objective review. If there were, my score of 6/10 for Fallout 4 would just be ''wrong'' because most outlets give it a 9/10 and give the impression that that's an evaluation of its objective quality. Coming back to my first paragraph, you can see that mentality in gamers too, who think reviews ''reflect the quality of games''. If that were the goal of reviews, reviews would be pointless. That's firstly because objective quality doesn't need to be pointed out - you don't need to be a rocket scientist to see whether or not something is factually good or bad (things like clipping, for example). Secondly, if all reviews needed to do was point out facts... then why do multiple reviews and reviewers even exist? If something is objectively good or bad, we don't need several reviewers to point that out... you could essentially have one 'Supreme Reviewer' to supply you with the facts.
So we've established that reviews, while they of course usually do contain facts of some sort, are subjective and exist for the reason of giving an opinion, not assessing the 'quality' of games. ''But'', I hear you ask, ''if reviews don't assess quality, why give scores?''. It's because scores better qualify how positive the reviewer is about the game in question. If a review writes something like ''this game is amazing''... what does that mean? How enjoyable was it to the reviewer? This is where the score/scale comes into play. Ignore the scores and the subjective terms attached to it like ''good'' - what's more important is the scale itself. Look at it like a bar that shows how much the reviewer ''liked'' the game. If the bar is slightly more green than red, it means the reviewer liked it more than he disliked it. To him/her, the positives outweigh the negatives. If the bar is very green, it means that he/she enjoyed it a lot. If it's 100% green (or a 10/10 score)... that doesn't mean the game is perfect, it just means the reviewer loved it so much that the negatives don't bother him enough to be noticeable.
Another way to explain it is this: if I find role-playing important and feel that Fallout 4 didn't handle that aspect well, that might be important enough to me that it largely overshadows the other, positive aspects of the game. That could result in me giving the game a 6/10. Another person who cares more about the shooting aspect (or any aspect that was done well) might award it an 8/10. Heck, that person might even disagree and think that the role-playing aspect was done really well and award it a 9/10. It's all about your priorities and likes and dislikes. So to summarize, scores/scales don't exist to explain how high-quality a game is, they exist to reflect the reviewer's feelings about how much he enjoyed it.
Finally, you might ask ''well, why do I care about a random person's feelings about a game?'' Well, we don't need reviewers to tell us the quality of a game, we need them to:
1. Give us a sense of how varied people's views are about games. The more positive reviews there are, the more likely it is that the game will be enjoyable to you.
2. Tell us their views, so that we can compare our own to theirs and make informed decisions based on how similarly we think to the reviewer. If you find a reviewer who's right for you, you can take their word for certain things. You trust them and suspect they have similar likes/dislikes as you. For instance, find a reviewer who considers RPG aspects to be as important as you do, and who has similar views. If they hate a game, chances are you'll hate it too. And so people should look for reviewers they usually agree with, in order to make an informed decision about buying or leaving a game.
If not everything was read, please don't reply saying you disagree, as you need the full picture to understand my point! I also don't think OpenCritic is doing the right thing perpetuating the idea that reviews assess the ''quality'' of games (how good a game is is subjective, meaning quality can't even be assessed in the first place). Now they're also trying to assign scores that won't make sense to a lot of people (how is a 69/100 a ''weak'' game?!) Largely positive but still ''weak''? Might as well remove the scores and replace them with 'like bars'.
( Edited 30.10.2017 06:00 by Guest )