The Critic's Plight

[vlad321]

Runa216 said:

vlad321 said:

I already said this once, it's not about what MY taste is or the next guy's when it comes to the score, for some reason you keep ignoring that. Also an industry where games have a similar value and worth can all be normalized easily, to be centered around the 50 point, not the 75. That is how you have a broken scoring system.

You know what the best part about the normal distribution is? It holds true even if you look at just the "good."  Among the good games there will be ones that are worse, and ones that are better, and a lot are in the medium. I just realized that you may not understand the math behind the normal distribution, such as the ability to normalize just about any other distribution, and I highly suggest you read up on it before you continue this terrible argument with terrible statistics. Finally, I will have to reiterate that this is one of the reasons why gaming is such a laughable part, and game reviewers are more or less the bottom feeders of entertainment reviewers in general. I mean shit, they can't even keep an accurate scale.

again, you're turning it into a math equation.  it doesn't matter how much you argue about true math and normalization, the fact remains, you're fixated on making 'average' be 50%, the only thing this strictly mathematical method would change is the average game score.  

If you want to make a thread about the numerical values given to reviews, go right ahead.  if you want to go through all the pain of "normalizing" existing review scores so that they fit this model, go ahead.  this thread has almost nothing to do with the math involved in normalized review scores.  I don't know why you insist on pushing that agenda here, especially since I've said time and time again that it doesn't NEED to be normalized in that manner, since review scores can be calculated any number of ways, with any chosen values, and everyone has their own methods.  You're getting too hung up on the numbers and are apparently forgetting what the numbers mean.  That's what really matters.  as long as people know that "80 means it's a very good game", that's what's important. 

Did you read what you wrote at all?

"The only way to be a successful game critic is to be as neutral as you can, and don't you dare give it anything more than an 8 or less than a 7, or fear the wrath of the internet!"