| Torillian said: the idea that you can't have fun with a game below 7 is a large part of why there is score inflation that people often blame the journalists for. 6.5 means decent, and a decent video game is still pretty fun. |
Scores are arbitrary and meaningless. There is no standard across which all games are judged by fixed criteria--this isn't figure skating or gymanstics-- and thus score inflation is every bit as arbitrary and meaningless. (After all, a 9 to IGN may not fit the same, theoretical, criteria as a 9 from GS.)
Now, that said, if the gaming media has constructed a world where a 6.5 to 99% of the readership is mediocre (it is, and GS is part of that problem) then they need to assign their arbitrary scores with this in mind instead of using it as a way to drum up traffic.
(Personally, I prefer no scores at all since they are almost always 100% arbitrary and rarely even adhere to the stated standard of the particular outlet doing the rating, nor are they even consistent across the *same critics* milieu...granted, this wouldn't be solved by nixing scores since, if nothing else, game critics are mercurial, fickle, and eager to please the right audience, whether it's their boss or a slice of their readership, but it would at least *force* people to focus on what the critic is saying rather than some meangless letter or number.)
(And I speak from personal experience on all of the above, having been the EIC of a game mag/website (yes, print) in the late 90s/early 00s.)
