Well, you have to specify who is handing out the tens. I'm not saying my definition of 10 is used by anyone else, but it's used by me. Notice that I've never given a 10.

Using your 10-point scale, the only game I've reviewed for the site that would be a 10 is Skyrim. I think the description of a 10 that I gave applies to Skyrim.

No, just some reviewers are!

A common theme comes and goes in the community is the problem with review scores. What do the numbers mean? Do they deserve that number? Do they even matter?

One comment that always comes up is that 5 should mean that a game is average. However, setting 5 as an average game is as arbitrary as 7 being an average game.

The real average is the average score from a reviewer. Each reviewer likely has a different average. Also each reviewer has different tastes. If someone likes rpgs and they have to review a non-rpg game they probably won't give it a 10.

IMO, and I've said this before, game reviews shouldn't taken too seriously. They're only worthwhile when they describe the various features objectively, almost like an ad. Games have an element of habit forming. Games that require the player to adopt a new play style can generally ruin the experience for gamers who play too often.

5/10 is most like above average. If every game that came out was reviewed the average score would probably sit at a 4/10. There is a lot of trash out there that reveiw sites dont touch. They tend to only review games that they think thier readers might have some interest in.

On a different note. Even though a game is broken, the review might still have a great time with the game and give it a good score. In my case I would give Condemned 2 a 9/10, but warn people that there is a game breaking bug that might erase your save file. This happened to me just as I got to the final level of the game. I never started over, because I was so upset. But I still really like the game.

Of course it's stupid. Everyone knows that, even those who review them.

There are two problems:

-It's entirely subjective. Can't avoid that. Everyone has their own unique standard for what makes a good game. One man's "4" is another man's "10". As such, you can never know if a game is good simply by looking at scores or even reading an in-depth review. You have to find people with similar tastes as you and see what they thought of the game.

-Not only is the review subjective, the scale is subjective. Two people who enjoyed a game equally may give it two entirely different scores, with one giving the game a 6/10 and the other giving it 7.5/10. They both agree 100% on all aspects of the game, but anyone reading the reviews will get the impression that the first guy liked it less. This is why sites like Metacritic are fundamentally flawed.

Movies and Shows are ready follow the correct way of rating.  Games just doesn't

I think review scores should be scrapped altogether as it discourages people from actually reading the review. A number or a grade letter score doesn't inform you on what's good or bad about a game. Instead of a score a short summary listing pros & cons and a recommendation on whether you should buy, rent or skip the game would be much better.

The ideal form of the review includes no score whatsoever.

If a score is necessary, then the fewer increments the better. 4-point is superior to 5-point, 5-point is superior to 10-point, and 100-point is an abomination passed down to us by a cruel and uncaring God.

I don't think the problem is with having a scoring system.

Go on Rotten Tomatoes and look at different sets of reviews for each movie. Just among the stuff out now, there are films with average ratings of 3/10 or 5/10 across 60+ reviews; the worst rated movies have average scores of 1.1/10. At IMDB, among the top 250 movies ranked by registered users, only 3 movies out of the thousands and thousands featured on the site have ratings of 9.0 or above and only 50 have 8.5 or above. Meanwhile, the bottom 100 has reviews as low as 1.5/10.

Yet as you said, gamers immediately grab the pitchforks and the Molotov cocktails when a big release gets less than an 8 or something.

I think the main problem here is that the critics, players, developers and publishers are wedded way too closely to the reviews, which creates an invisible wall that pushes too many games into the 8 and 9 ranges while blocking ratings below 7--especially for big releases. You can't have a situation like the Transformers franchise, to where critics can beat the movie mercilessly and each one still pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars anyway.

The ideal situation would have games rated in the 6's be seen as decent or average...but people are FAR too invested game scores for that to happen anytime soon. Just goes to show that for all the advances, and games like Modern Warfare pulling in $1 billion in a few weeks, games are still on very shaky ground.