Title is misleading on purpouse because technically, i dont hate the concept, i hate the users.
In theory, i dont have a problem with the use of a metric system to rate art, because in theory, it wouldn't be the end all of every review. In a paralel universe were people would actually care about the point of a discussion, it would be understood that the number at the end of a commentary is complimentary, and its there more for the purpouses of indicating how much the person in question enjoyed the product or not, and also offer a way to show what the reviewer is more found of.
In that sense, a score woud not so much be a literal judgment of the quality of something,but more like a direct contribution to the more relevant parts of a review, which are the actual paragraphs in which the writer shows his perspectives on how the mechanics and general idea of the game works, and maybe even how his unique experiences in life make him interpret those same ideas in a different way. In that vein, a score should be contrasted against the text that accompanies it, and not so much with other scores, because its not meant to be a standard of judgment, is a visual help to compliment to tone of a piece of criticism, and looking at it outside of context should make no sense.
That would be in that nice dimension,but nonetheless we're on this blue jail for the foreseable future with no wall to build speed for 12 hours and escape, and here i think what actually happens is that everything anyone gives a shit about is that number at the end, and how you can compare it to other numbers to discredit someone who disagrees with you. The way scores actually work on practice is that they're distracting tools that have been gaining the focus since a loooong time ago, and because of that the actual written part of a review, which one would guess its the point, has been getting more and more poorly written over the years.
I know some won't agree with me, but this is not just doing the same thing in reverse, this is fundamentally making the entire process of analysing art more simplistic and dry. When you go out of your way, to creative a lot of checkboxes in which you will then try to fit a product on("6 is a game that is good but did this and this and this, 7 is a game that did that but also this and this and this, etc) you're not thinking on how the game is by itself, but instead creating a imaginary standard (that isn't really anything more than subjective most of the times, unless you only specifically cares about lighting and graphics in general, which can be quantified) that you will then try to cram any new experience on it, and then execute some sort of pseudo-mathematics, give it a number and call it a day.
This is the reason i think most of the reviews read like complete garbage, because the journalists that write them aren't really thinking about the games on themselves, they're trying to fit them into the metanarrative of consensus and outside scores, not only theirs. They dont try to interpret the point of having a character play one way, or animate one way, and how that interact with the story. My problem is not that they're trying to judge the game with numbers, my problem is that, because they only know how to use numbers, they can't even think in enough reasons to justify why they rated the game that way.
Of course, i know some people dont think like this. I know that, for some of you, objectivity is a thing and all that a review should do is just list what is on the game, and if he likes it or not. I know that some people will just try to find hypocrisy on what the writer says when he actually tries to give anything close to an interesting criticism, specially on ign, gamespot or any of the bigger sites. And you can actually do that, because i can't tell you how to live your life. You can create imaginary standards and believe they are objective, you can just look at scores and not the text and just agree with them or not, you can just call the game dogshit and go away and that is all valid.You can even believe that, just because something is very popular, it is a metric of unquestionable quality, and everyone else's opinion is valid but "not the truth". It's just not interesting to me, and i would never actually bother talking with you about anything, but i can't say that i'm right, because i am aware of how this would contradict what i just wrote.
