this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
165 points (100.0% liked)
Gaming
30429 readers
188 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Back in the old days of 8bit computing, I remember a few magazines used to explain their scoring system.
Most magazines reviewed a game out of ten. A score of five would be an average. The game is just ok. Not brilliant but not terrible either.
A great game would be an eight or nine. Very rarely would a game receive a ten as that indicates perfection.
In today's world, the way people talk, it feels like a game needs at least an 8 (or 80%) or it's not even worth touching.
Duke: Why the hell do you have to be so critical?
Jay: I'm a critic.
Duke: No, your job is to rate movies on a scale from good to excellent.
Jay: What if I don't like them?
Duke: That's what good is for.
It's similar with movies and TV. I think a lot of people see a 50% rottentomatoes or a 5.0/10 on IMDB and automatically assume it'll be unenjoyable, but that isn't always the case in reality.
I'm not a fan of RT because I find their critic score absolutely meaningless. IMDB is much better for me, I find the average people score rating usually matches my appreciation of a movie. I am trying hard to remember a single movie with a score of 5/10 that I enjoyed though.
Rt critic scores are, imo, one of the best rating scales. Think of it as a percentage chance a fairly average movie watcher is going to like this movie. It's not saying "this movie is 75% good". It's 3/4 reviewers felt it was worth watching, and does not comment on if they thought it was amazing or just okay. Marvel stuff tends to score high because mostly, despite not being some peak cinema, it provides an entertaining experience that earns a passing grade from most people. Movies that are more niche tend to get a lower score but that doesn't mean they're bad, just more niche.
I like this because it's easy to understand what it means with a little research. Most game scores don't do that and I find it annoying
The problem is that system lends itself to promoting bland but popular films. Like marvel movies. But gems have a much harder time on RT.
IMDB is especially useless when it comes to comedies, they hardly ever reach a 7/10. Hot Shots - 6.7/10, Ghostbusters2 - 6.6/10, Naked Gun 33 1/3 - 6.5/10, Gremlins 2 - 6.4/10, there is a whole lot of amazing movies hidden in the 6-7/10 range.
Blazing saddles is a 7.7 but man that feels a bit too low even
The thing is most comedies aren't great. The films you listed were all just ok in their times except Hot Shots which was a great spoof film but was not a great film overall.
Yeah, especially for the way Rotten scores are made. Some of the most divisive work is the most interesting.
I don't like the whole Rotten Tomatoes thing or judging a film by it's box office numbers. If it looks interesting, watch it yourself and make up your own mind. 😊
Broadly, I agree with what you're saying. Totally just devil's advocate-ing and speculating to provoke thought, so feel free to ignore. I wonder if the enormous number of games available plays into this. I can almost always dig around and find at least one 10/10 game from the last couple of years that I haven't played which is already on sale for cheap. Comparing that to a 7/10 game that just came out at full price... I'd almost certainly enjoy the 7/10 game, but I'd spend less money and likely have more fun with the 10/10. The newness factor may not be enough to bump the 7/10 game to the top of the queue.
With so many great games available an 8/10 might actually feel like a logical minimum for a lot of people, which may influence the scale that reviewers use. If people tend to ignore games with 7- scores and a reviewer feels that a game is good enough that it deserves attention, they may be tempted to bump it up to 8/10 just to get it on radars.
Meanwhile, back in the day there wasn't such a glut of games to choose from. And with better QoL standards, common UX principles, code samples, and tools/engines, games may legitimately just be better on average than they used to be, making it fiddly to try to retrofit review scores onto the same bell curve as older games. To reverse it, I can see how an 8/10 game released in 1995 might be scored significantly worse by modern reviewers for lack of QoL/UX features, controls, presentation style, etc, or even just be scored lower because in modern times it would lack the novelty it had at the time it was released.
This ignores subjectivity. What is a 7/10 for most gamers could easily be a 10/10 for a specific type of gamer. Rather than focusing on review scores people should focus on the niche of games that they really enjoy.
And this is why I don't read opinions from general review/gaming sites. For example, I judged whether I'll play Starfield purely on overviews from YouTube creators who focus on Bethesda RPG-s (Camelworks, Fudgemuppet et al) and space exploration games (Obsidian Ant). The opinions of FPS folks, Fromsoft freaks and D&D diehards is irrelevant🙃
Or, as I've always said, if 2001: A Space Odyssey was made today, it would score 4/10 on IMDB and people would complain that it's a slow slogfest with no action and boring dialogue.
Not to mention the subjectivity of what "7" means. I've tallied enough judges ratings to know that some people treat 5 as average, some people treat 8 as OK, and some treat anything below 7 as failing.
I don't see older games being rated lower as a problem. Yes standards rise over time as games and technology gets better, that's fine! If you took a mediocre modern AAA game and showed it to a reviewer 20 years ago, I'll bet all my money it would be game of the year.
It makes more sense to let standards rise and adjust reviews to still keep a reasonable rating scale.
That's why when it come to score, i just look at the total score to see how many people dig the game, and only watch/read review that doesn't include scoring and might have similar taste as me, and only read negative review in steam to see whether i can put up with the bad part of the game.
Yeah, and back then the review mags were just paid for advertising. Not much has changed.