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Words Of Wisdom on 13 February 2009
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famousringo said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
famousringo said:

IGN recently gave a 0.8 to one piece of shovelware. I'm sure few other reviewers bothered to look at it, and there are many other shovelware games which even IGN didn't want to waste paid labour and bandwidth on.

Why was it a 0.8?  Why not a 0.9 or a 0.7?  Why not a 1.3?  What's the difference between all those scores?

 

Would it be too obvious if I answered that it was because the reviewer thought it was better than a 0.7 and worse than a 0.9?

And the reason why VGC is using a "meaningless" numerical system is because they did a poll of VGC users, and a plurality of voters asked for a 100-point scale, more than doubling the votes cast for any other grading method. People want the clarity of numbers over letters, and they want enough granularity in the scale that they can distinguish between a game which barely made it to the 80s and a game which almost made it to the 90s.

 

Results - 26/11/08

 

How should VGChartz score its reviews?
Keep the current letter grade system (A+, B-, etc. 244 13.49%
 
Score out of 100% using each point. 787 43.50%
 
Score out of 10 using half points. 349 19.29%
 
Score out of 10 using whole points. 103 5.69%
 
Switch to a 5-star system. 88 4.86%
 
Don't use grades at all, just text. 238 13.16%
 
1,809

 

Letters are no more inherently meaningful than numbers.  Choosing between them is essentially choosing between the useless mainstream scale or the useless nonmainstream scale.  Yay.

You get no clarity from either system because the actual numbers have no meaning.  There is no truly objective difference between an A and B nor a 9.1 and a 9.4.  It doesn't exist.  People argue about scores all the time because scores mean different things to different people. 

Those scales work in the educational system because I can objectively give you a 90% on a test because you got 2 out of 20 questions wrong.  Video games lack that quality (or it's just that no one has ever come up with a solid enough rating system).