Wyrdness said:
I'll try, to start off a verdict system gives greater context of the the reviewers reception of the said bit of media they're reviewing and puts more emphasis on the substance of the review. To highlight this point two of the most often used scoring scales out of 10 or 100 have reviews that will label a game mediocre but give it a 6/10 and an average game 7/10, what this means is that you have over half of the scale is redundant because they're just different numbers for how bad a game is and as a consumer do you really need to know how bad games measure up to other bad games? You don't even need to know how average and mediocre games compare to each other tbh all that's required is knowing if a game is of sound quality and this is the range where an argument can be made to know how game in this tier compare to each other. The is also the age old situation of another reviewer even from the same outlet can say a different game is decent but not great and give a 7/10 resulting in reviewers using the same scale but giving the same score a different quality value which ends up with mixed messaging something a verdict system won't have as the context is more universal in what category the reviewer sees the game in. This is the issue in why I feel it's outdated and why consumers in the modern era aren't as influenced by scores and averages like they were years ago due to this as they're trying out games that averaged in the 7/10 aka 70% range and finding them great in fact some games even averaging less than that they're enjoying and finding decent as to them what's the point when the numbered scaling is not translating to what they were being conditioned to expect from it. On another note it'll also help weed out bait and troll reviews. |
Thank you for this very thoughtful post. First of all, I am all for directing attention to the substance of the review. I maintain the biggest drawback of a scored review is that a lot of readers will scroll past the the text and go right for the number at the end.
As for your comment about outlets refusing to use the full 10-point scale, I also agree this is a problem. Unfortunately, a lot of outlets publicize a 10-point scale, but in practice only explore the range from 5-10. That said, I don't believe that's a problem inherent in the scale, or in scored review in general; rather, it's a problem with the culture of video game criticism. And not every outlet is guilty of that. I'm proud to say that the writing team at VGChartz is firmly committed to using the entire scale. A 5/10 on VGChartz means middling; a 7/10 corresponds to a solid game worth buying.
Of course, the fact that VGChartz uses a conservative scoring methodology only proves your other point -- that there is no uniformity across outlets. A bad/average/good system would remedy that somewhat, since the audience wouldn't need to consult a scoring methodology page to translate the results. That point is very well taken. But, at the same time, such a system is far less precise. Right now, on VGChartz, we use 1-10 with half points. That allows us to really focus in on the game's specific quality, relative to other games. And I believe there's value in that. I disagree with your argument that you don't need to know how decent, mediocre, and bad games compare to each other. The difference between a 5 and a 6, for example, is a big deal for me.
It's a tough one. I think all systems have their pros and cons. I still lean toward scored reviews, but I fully understand the skepticism around them.
