Perfect Scores on Imperfect Games?

Sinizter

This is a topic that has been bothering me for quite some time and I just read an article at Gamealmighty.com about the same thing so i figured i'd express how i feel also.



I understand the need for certain people to fall into this arbitrary scoring system based on opinions to decide whether or not they like a game. It's bad enough that people take these numbers so seriously instead of just caring about their own opinion. As if the lower average on metacritic or gamerankings will somehow make them like the game less. It's also bad enough that some sites use completely different scales, but somehow they are thrown into the same average. For example, 1up has stated that they consider an average game on their scale to be 5/10, on the other hand, IGN, for example, considers an average game to be about 7/10. So how these two

scores could be averaged together even though the reviewers have the same opinion of the game is beyond me.



Anyways, onto my real rant. There seems to have been a recent trend of perfect scores on some of the big review

sites.



per·fect [adj., n. pur-fikt] entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings; accurate, exact, or correct in every detail



Although I admit that there are some very good, enjoyable games out there... there is no way that any of them are flawless, or perfect. No matter how good the game is, there is no way review sites should be giving perfect scores. There is ALWAYS at least one bad thing you can say about a game, and no matter how much the good overshadows the bad, its not perfect. You, as a gamer, might give your own favorite game a perfect score (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) but the review sites should be writing about these games with little or no personal opinion. Instead, we see sites that label games such as SMG, bioshock, Halo 3, and others as PERFECT.



By no means am I saying that these are bad games, but are they really PERFECT??



As the gaming industry grows larger, we see less and less true opinion from the major sites and more and more marketing propaganda. I wonder how many sites that give perfect scores are paid by the publishers?



What do you guys think? read this and let me know if i'm crazy or not.





http://www.gamealmighty.com/l/story-individual/story/Nothing_is_Perfect/

Draenor

there's no such thing as a perfect game.  So on a 1-10 scale a 10 should be techincally impossible...but why have a 1-10 scale if a 10 were an impossible score to achieve?  Therefore a 10 becomes the highest possible score without implying that a game that recieves a 10 needs to be perfect.  If you check the websites and magazines from which you are reading reviews, they'll usually have a short synopsis of what a score means when they give it out, almost all of them are very careful to say that just because a game gets  a 10 doesn't mean that it's perfect

Arndur

Places like gameinformer use the perfect score to mean show that is a game you need to play. In the CoD4 it got a 10 yet they picked out some nit picky stuff. its not perfect but its still not worth missing.

xxthecorexx

i think they get trapped into a relative scoring curve which makes it kinda tricky.

for example.. if they rate bioshock as a 9, what do they do with something like mass effect ?

was it better ?

is it perfect ?

it gets defaulted into a 10. maybe that wasn't the best example, but you can at least see where i'm coming from.

 

 

Draenor

I know for sure that that is true about IGN.  they gave Halo 3 a 9.5 (hahahahah) and then gave Call of Duty and some other AAA title a 9.4, I guess to show that they were Halo fanboys just a little bit more than they are Call of Duty Fanboys.

 

Halo 3, as a multiplayer shooter, sucks.  Yup, I said it...get to skill level 40 or so and tell me that it isn't just people camping in corners with one shot kill weapons, I dare you.

Sinizter

Originally posted by xxthecorexx


i think they get trapped into a relative scoring curve which makes it kinda tricky.
for example.. if they rate bioshock as a 9, what do they do with something like mass effect ?
was it better ?
is it perfect ?
it gets defaulted into a 10. maybe that wasn't the best example, but you can at least see where i'm coming from.
 
 

Very good point

Nihilanth

There's really no perfect rating system.  The 1-10 scale makes it hard because you ultimately have to give some games 10's that aren't necessarily perfect in every way.  At the same time, the 1-100 scale is almost too specific.  What's the difference between a 94 and a 95?  Virtually nothing, and at that level it becomes so subjective it's pointless.

Personally, I think the 1-10 scale is the best, but to give a perfect example of how it is still flawed, the following two games got the same score at GameSpot (I know it's not always the best review site, but this is just an example):

Game 1

Game 2

Murais

Originally posted by Nihilanth


There's really no perfect rating system.  The 1-10 scale makes it hard because you ultimately have to give some games 10's that aren't necessarily perfect in every way.  At the same time, the 1-100 scale is almost too specific.  What's the difference between a 94 and a 95?  Virtually nothing, and at that level it becomes so subjective it's pointless.
Personally, I think the 1-10 scale is the best, but to give a perfect example of how it is still flawed, the following two games got the same score at GameSpot (I know it's not always the best review site, but this is just an example):
Game 1
Game 2

      Wow, that is a bit "flawed." However, I don't think most reviewers take their past ratings into consideration when they rate a game, thus, in a slower game season, an above average game may be able to pass off as a great game, and a mediocre game as an above average game, etc.

 

      It happens, but I still prefer the 10.0 system. I believe it works quite well, despite the flaws, and remains fairly accurate for most sites and magazines, though I believe certain reviewers forget their logic at times.

thorwood

Whether you like a game or a movie is a subjective judgement. 

The 1-10 scale is rating scale is good as any other subjective rating scale.  I do find that it gives a good indicator of whether a game is worth playing.  I also look at the game description to see whether it falls within my personal preferences.

You also need to check how many people voted.  The bigger the sample size, the more likely that the overall rating reflects what most people think, and less chance that those voting are mostly from a small minority with a particular view.  That is, the score is more reliable if a large number of people vote.

I have noticed that sometimes an  unscrupulous person will skew the vote by voting multiple times.  The suspect votes  usually all have the same rating (eg.  all 0/10 votes or all 10/10 votes and sometimes some bot generated advertising text). This makes a rating for that game unreliable until either those votes are deleted or so many people have voted that the relatively small number of supect votes have little impact on the total average score.

Godliest

Nothing will never become perfect therefore giving a perfect score indicates that the game is as close to perfect as it can be. If you never use the perfect score it won't be considered the highest score any more as you never use it. Therefore the perfect score will constantly fall down.