Review scores are important and every website needs them – Reader’s Feature-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Not everyone gives a score (pic: Metacritic)

A reader argues that websites that don’t have a score for their reviews are playing into publishers’ hands and giving bad games an easy ride.

There’s been some very interesting debate recently, about the current state of video game reviews and whether critics are using the full scale available to them. I don’t think many people would argue that they are, since we’re stuck in the absurd position where 7/10 is considered average and anything below that is assumed to be unplayable and broken.

It’s crazy but it’s always been like this, which is why so many people don’t even recognise how broken it all is. I doubt it’ll ever change either, specifically because people are used to it and I’m sure publishers enjoy the fact that it’s almost impossible for a game to get a bad review score. Or at least bad from a sane perspective.

GameCentral touched on this in their article about why they didn’t consider God Of War Ragnarök to be a contender for game of the year but what I found most interesting about the feature was the section about websites that don’t have scores and how they’re giving publishers a free ride.

The point being made was that the only websites that don’t have scores are the more highbrow, sensible ones. So places like Eurogamer and Polygon where, no matter what you think of their opinions, you have to admit they know their business a lot better than the no-name wesbites you always see listed at the top of Metacritic.

And that is the problem. Because these better websites can’t be used properly by Metacritic the overall score for everything is higher. Smaller sites, that are just trying to suck up to publishers, can happily give 10/10 scores out like candy but the ones that might have scored the same game a six or seven don’t have any influence on the Metacritic score at all.

GC didn’t touch on why they don’t have scores, no doubt out of a sense of diplomacy, but as far as I’m concerned it’s pure pretention. They always make an argument about scores being distracting and people only paying attention to them and missing out on the actual review but… surely that’s their business? Are you so precious about your review that you have to enforce how people read it?

Don’t get me wrong, I do think people should read the whole thing but if they don’t they’re the ones that are losing out. But not having a score affects everyone, the whole games industry you might say. It not only becomes easier for bad games to slip by without proper criticism, but it means that the scores become meaningless, making the problem of not using the whole scale even worse.

So I call upon these websites to get over themselves, ignore the fact that people aren’t necessarily always reading the whole of your reviews (hint: now they just skip to the last paragraph) and just go back to having proper 10 out of 10 scores.

As has been said, this isn’t how movie reviews work. It has to be a really good film to get above 7 and even all-time classics have dissenting reviews – not trolls but people that argue their point that the film isn’t all that.

Although you could say the wider point is why do movie reviews, even at respected newspapers and the like, still have scores? They don’t seem worried that some people aren’t going to read their reviews properly. People complain that video games aren’t taken seriously as an artform but when you can’t even give a game a score out of 10, for fear of people taking it the wrong way, maybe the naysayers might have a point.

By reader Terry Gold

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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