Review numbers are ridiculous. I now pledge I will not use them at all.

[famousringo]

The_vagabond7 said:

famousringo said:

 

What does objectivity have to do with it? It's a matter of ranking, not objectivity. You can deliver a list of pros and cons for two games along with an explanation of why you list those attributes as good or bad, but you won't answer the the most important question people want to know between these two games: Which one is better?

That's what the number is for, and why the number is more clear when you have more granularity in the scale. That's why people want to see 8.0 and 8.9 instead of just two 8s. Just because there's no objectivity in any of these numbers doesn't mean that knowing which game ranks better in the subjective opinion of a group or individual is worthless information. The only real problem is that people think an aggregation of subjective numbers alchemically makes those numbers objective.

The immature sense that ranking is objective is absurdist though. Why is Tales of Symphonia DOTNW objectively one point out of a hundred better than Infinite Undiscovery? Why is Killzone 2 Objectively a 92 out of a hundred? According to metacritic. There is no objecitve way to rank one game as being better than another, and no point to doing so other than to fuel fanboy wars. I like No More Heroes about a bajillion times more then Uncharted Drakes Fortune. I love Disgaea 3 waaay more than I like Fallout 3. According to Metacritic, I'm an idiot and it should be the reverse. So either I am playing the games wrong, or there is no point in ranking one better than the other because it is inherently subjective. There numbers, the rankings, the whatever you want to call them don't do anything that the body of the text can't do except incite flame wars over arbitrary numbers.

Just to be clear, I am making no argument that review numbers or aggregate review numbers are in any way objective. Like I said above, there's nothing objective about review numbers or aggregate review numbers.

But I don't think that information is worthless just because it's subjective, either. Look at the number as a summary for the sake of clarity. A quick, easily digestible nugget of information on one person's opinion of a game. Some people will only accept information in small, ADD-resistant bites. So review scores are going to stay because people want them to stay.

Like I said, the only real problem is that some people think an aggregation of subjective numbers somehow makes those numbers objective.