I'm pretty sure this topic has been discussed a lot before, probably even on this forum. Personally, I never engage in online gaming discussions, so please enlighten me on the subject:
Why are gamers so obsessed with having their games reviewed in a scale of 1-100, when it's okay to have music and movies reviewed in a 1-5 scale system? Everybody knows that the percentage system used for video games is complete crap and doesn't make any sense. Everything with a score below 75 is considered not worth buying, and everything below 65 or so is considered terrible.
Games rarely get metascores below 60. Out of the 254 games released within the last 6 months 37 got a metascore below 60, and all the rest between 60 and 95 (source: GameRankings). So, in essence the games are reviewed in a scale of 60 - 100.
The intention of a review is to give the reader a subjective impression of the quality of the product. Should you spend your money on it or not? If you have to attatch a number to the review it should be either 1-5 or 1-10 (whole digits). The percentage system makes room for meaningless discussions like "game x is better than game y because game x got 91% and game y got 90%. 1 percent = nothing, no quality difference.
In the first case it would be 1 (terrible), 2 (bad), 3 (average/good), 4 (very good) and 5 (excellent). In the second case it should be terrible (1), very bad (2), bad (3-4), average (5), good (6-7), very good (8), excellent (9) and perfect (10). I know Edge magazine is using the second system, and most gamers simply don't understand that their scores arent on a scale of 60-100. And giving a "good" game a 6 is very strange to someone who is used to see "good" games reviewed to scores between 75 and 85 percent.
These are my opinions. Please discuss. :)
