It’s really quite interesting to see how the medium of game reviews are so number focused. Sites like Game Rankings and Metacritic provide a good service for anybody interested in aggregates of reviews and offer an overall opinion of a game within a single digit. But how much thought really goes into these scores and do they really matter in the grand scheme of things.
The truth within this area of the specialist press, most readers check out the number before anything else. Regardless of how much time goes into preparing the text, the general consensus is that readers want an opinion straight away. You can see why certain outlets like Kotaku have opted to disregard the tried and tested method of using a score because it takes focus away from the actual opinion. A six out of ten is simply an average score but it could be a competent six, a flawed six, an innovative concept six, a great game but light on content six.
Another reason why reviews outlets might opt towards a non-number based score is due to the uncalled for and simply ridiculous controversies that can come with it. Although I hate to bring it up, last years big story related to the gaming press was the aptly named Gerstmann-Gate. It might not have been the sole reason because we’ll never really know the full reason but it seemed like Jeff Gerstmann then of Gamespot was fired for giving Kane & Lynch a bad review. Well it was supposedly a bad review because in actual fact Jeff made numerous comments throughout the text that mentioned the great ideas that were present and conceptually a lot better than the end result.
It wasn’t a particularly bad review but it was given a rather low score of a six. Which is odd considering on a scale from one to ten, six is better than average. Most press outlets do operate on a 10 point scale or something similar, yet we see seven as an average score for a review. Surely a five should mean an average game yet if a high profile game was to be given a five among any of the top press sources it would cause a stir even if it was generally mediocre.
Earlier in the year the team at 1up decided that it made more sense to move to a letter graded system for the same reason. They were giving out fives as an average when most reviewers gave out trusty sixes or sevens. The new letter grading system has allowed them to be more ‘brutal’ when handing out scores. C- doesn’t look all that bad on the site but compared to other reviews on Metacritic, 1up tend to be lower down the list yet the letter grades aren’t easily comparable to the widely used number system. Were, in my opinion, 1up have failed is that they allowed people to make calculations, based on the old reviews, to convert from letter to number. Thus defeating the whole shift, that combined with the fact they occasionally post meta reviews. 1up are helping the overall opinion of review scores by moving away from what the industry can easily judge to more of an abstract letter graded approach. Although it could be said that moving to a simpler five star scoring system would make criticism a lot easier to handle.
As much as the number or grade slapped onto a review does decide the overall fate of the reader maybe it would make more sense to put more emphasis on a summary or pros/cons section. Although it is impossible to sum up the whole of a game within a sentence, it would give the reader more of an opinion of the game instead of a single figure. Gaming press is still fairly young when compared to the ruthless film or television press but the one constant between all mediums is a score. It might not be ideal within the widely opinionated nature of games reviews but the only real way around it would be to put a bigger focus on a brief summary rather than an uninformative single digit.
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