Where I went to school (in Oz), it was:

85-100 - A
70 - 85 - B
50 - 69 - C

Now based on that scale a 70 is not too bad (B). But in my view, I only have so much time to play games, and across PC, PS3 and PS4 there will always be more games than I can play. For that reason, I tend to prioritise what games I play to 1), what I'm interested in and 2) which of those scored the highest. Once I do that, I find I almost never play a game thats less than a 75, so a score of 70 for me is a 'don't buy this game score'.

Thats not to say its a bad game, and that others wouldn't buy it, but for me I can't see when I'd have the time to play all the other higher rated games in my backlog and get around to playing a game that scored 70. It does make my game vetting system reliant on review scores, but I've found a few reviewers over the years that seem to have a similar taste in games as me so I''m usually happy with how they review games and can rely on their scores.

in Colombia
0-74= F
75-84=C
85-94=B
95-100=S

What the Reviewer sees their score as is one thing but what the reader percieves it is another. To the Writer, their score of 50 seems fair and average, to that reader looking at it......he/she cannot help but think it must be aweful, as they have been conditioned to not accept anything less than 70%.

Whether this hinders that reader from ever pursuing that game could be questioned, but if they do play the game, and they see it as average, they will wonder why the reviewer gave it a 50%, This discredits that reviewer or entire site to that reader now.

Reviews can be quite damaging to the success of games, so I believe. To ignore this "discrepency" between perceptions I think is hazerdous to the industry.

Reviewers should basically adhere to the same grading structure that is expected from their audience. 70% or above is good, anything below is very bad. If the game might interest someone, maybe not you, but someone might really find it entertaining........it should not be getting a 5.

Also, I think reviewers who only give Whole and Half  grades should be shot. They give a false aggregated score. 3/5 is a fucking 60%. From reading the review you can kinda see what the writer describes is really about a 75%. Yet because they are too lazy to deal with decimals they round. One of the worst practices in the field.

Anything below 80 is shit really and not worth playing.I am not being sarcastic.

NieR is 68. So I voted for 60+.

For me,

92-100 = A+
84-91 = A
76-81 = B
68-75 = C
60-67 = D
0-59 = F

Using this scale my Wii U game collection is: 2 A+'s, 3 A's, 4 B's, 1 C and 1 D

Anyone who plays Japanese games will know not to trust reviewers. They seem to give low scores to good games just because they're Japanese (and feel off or unfamiliar). I've played quite a few low rated games and had tons of fun, so I always try to keep an open mind. My school grades were always good and anything below a perfect 10 was a personal disappointment, so it definitely doesn't work the way the OP suggests at least for me.

I don't get how people prioritize quality over fun. I'd play a fun game over a technically good one any day and I do care about graphics, A LOT. One thing's for sure: people not giving low rated games a chance are missing out.

Reviews are all opinionated. I have played many games rated below 70 by IGN and Meta-critic. They were worth while than most games that average in the 90's.So, I say to hell with some reviews.I try my best to get my own opinion about games before using someone else's.

Well deciding which game to buy isn't really the same as working to get high grades at school. Buying a top rated game requires no work to be done if you know what I mean.

If a gamer goes out to buy a game then why buy a 7/10 game when you can buy a 9/10 game for the same price? I'm talking about "casual" gamers that hears about reviews, but don't really know anything about quality themselves of course.

When I went to school a 69 and below was an F.

Anyways, to people who use the whole schools grading system as why everyone considers such and such a bad game excuse. Like others have mentioned though, their grading systems are completely different. Depends on where you live.  Why is it then that anything outside of video games uses a grading scale that a 2/5 isn't horrible, but it's not very good, and movies, books, etc, that is rated 3/5 are good, they're just not your classics. Why is it that just games have this skewed rating scale?

The whole scoring system is skewed. 80% of retail games score 7/10 or higher, 19.9% are 6/10, and another 0.1% are below that. Why even use the 10 scale if it's going to be like that? Why not just a 3/3 scale. 1/3 is bad, 2/3 is good, and 3/3 is a must own.

The reason why using all 1/10-10/10 is best, is because it makes it that much more clear how good a game is compared to another.

If Final Fantasy 1-10 were the only 10 RPGs ever made and there were never any other games in the genre made, then how would you score it? Does it make sense to score all the majority of them as 8-10? In my opinion it doesn't. Each one of those games in each persons opinion are going to be better than the other, so if Final Fantasy 6 is to score a 10 and Final Fantasy 4 isn't as good as Final Fantasy 6, then obviously it has to score a 9 since there are only 10 games.  Final Fantasy 1 an 8, Final Fantasy 9 a 7, and so on.

Hopefully my description in the above paragraph makes it clear why I score how I do. I rate all games in a genre against all that I've played, not based on whether it's portable or console, not whether it's NES or Wii U. I also don't rate a game on how much it costs or what the games length is, because it may only be a couple of hours, and if a couple of hours is too expensive for you, just wait several months for the price to drop. Price and length shouldn't have any effect on scoring. The only time length would have an effect on scoring is if the game overstays its welcome.

Scoring is simply a comparison with numbers.  The higher the number, the better it is to you compared to others.  There are different genres though, so a shooter that scores a 9/10 might not be better than an RPG that scores a 7/10 to the person who rated both.