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mjo011 on 17 September 2013
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hsrob said:
Kane1389 said:
mjo011 said:
Makes me emabarrassed to be a gamer. The wole point of a review is that it should be subjective.


No, the whole point of the review is to review the quality of the game and that isn't subjective. I can not like a certain game or genre but i shouldnt deny its quality if its there

Game quality isn't subjective?  What universe do you live in?  If quality wasn't subjective each game would get the same scores from every person who reviewed them because they would be scored against a standard, structured, metric with no need for a narrative component. Anyone who thinks game reviews conform to this standard and are a legitimately objective assessment of a game's quality is kidding themselves. In the real world all reviews, in all types of media, are just opinion pieces, the scores are just for the benefit of people with short attention spans.

If your purpose for reviewing a game is to attempt inform others about whether the game is worthy of purchase for them you might attempt to limit the impact that particular personal preferences of yours affect the review (and score) but it is impossible to separate this out completely, it is human nature. Furthermore if a particular aspect of a game annoys or troubles you, not only should you mention it, it is your obligation to address it in the review because in the big wide world of gamers there will be a whole host of gamers who will have similar predilections and will place value on this particular bit of information.

If she had said the game was objectively great but I don't like the overt sexism so I'm giving it a 5, people might have some cause for complaint but at the end of the day it is still her opinion and if you don't like it, you move onto the review of someone who's thoughts and opinions are more in line with your own.

You would not see this attitude towards a review of any kind anywhere except in the gaming industry, and I agree, it is embarrassing.


Completely true. While a review should always objectively describe the product at hand, the main point of the review is to describe its quality. And as you said, quality is always subjective. People may claim that quality is objective, but that makes me wonder if they are either 9 years old or if they never learned about writing this genre at school.

And if say, GTA IV has a metascore of 96, then every reviewer that hands out a different score is wrong? Their opinions don't count? Makes no sense.