The complicated world of game reviews
By: Thales Costa
Tags: Gaming, Review, Games, Features, Videogames

The Review Format

If you’re interested in gaming news, you probably have a favorite media outlet and therefore you’re used to how they approach reviews. If you decide to change your source of news, you might have to get used to a whole new review system. The reason behind why games are reviewed and scored in different scales is not as simple as ‘someone wanted it to be this way’, so the media outlets go into detail regarding their choices.

All three selected media outlets have an editorial article or section to explain their review process and scoring system. These explanations are not linked in reviews, which means a person that just check the review wouldn’t understand the process, unless they wanted to know and searched for it. Some of these can give good insight and are a must read for anyone that cares about reviews.

“Remember to read the text, not just the score!”

That is the first thing you’ll read when you open ‘About Gamespot reviews’. The website changed their scoring system and the reason is that they didn’t feel the need to be granular, and to simplify things they decided to be on a 10 scale, instead of 20 (1 to 10 with half points in between). With a simpler score metric, the text gets more value, but it might be naive to assume most people will even read the whole review, since the score end up being the big gravitational pull.

They key word here is simplify. When describing what each score means, all the editorial gives is a word attached to each number, making it even more subjective. Being simple and non-specific could definitely work in their favor when reviewing a game, but it definitely makes it easier for someone that doesn’t understand reviews, to complain. These characteristics are something the other media outlets, IGN and Easy Allies, distanced themselves from.

In Easy Allies case, they ditched the 10 point scale (5 stars with half-starts in between) to adopt the 20 scale. The reasoning behind it is explained in a video on their Youtube channel, it mentions that initially the star system allowed them to“nitpick less and focus more on the overall experience”, but ended up not allowing for a true expression of their opinion. This is an interesting point of view, the score itself represents the reviewer’s experience better by being a little less streamlined.

When it comes to being more expressive, IGN tries to take a step further. Instead of using a 20 point scale, which they tried at some point, the outlet uses a 100 point scale. They justify this decision by confirming that a simpler score does elevate the text/video part of the review, but goes on to say that it’s possible to achieve an “expressive score” while maintaining the other aspects’ depth.

The other reason on why more numbers works best, is the possibility to rank the games better. Thankfully, the editorial reassures that not every game can be ranked against each other, but this just adds another complicated layer into the subjective world of reviews. When describing what each score means, they make sure to go into detail and explain what would make a game a “Amazing” or “Okay”, giving examples of game that received that score. This is a contrast to the other media outlets, and it definitely makes it easier for someone to understand peacefully why a game got the score it did.

“That being said, there’s also a by-line on every text you see, and we encourage you to follow our writers on Twitter, get to know them on their IGN pages, and try to get an understanding of where they’re coming from based on their pros and cons and recommended games.”

The Reviewer

It may seem like common knowledge but when it comes to reviews, it appears that the audience forgets that every person is different. The reviewer that is either criticising or praising a game is a unique human being, that comes from a different background and played different games growing up. I’m sorry to break it down to you, but every reviews has a dose of bias.

I’ll use myself as an example. When it comes to 2D platformers, I’m the worst player there is and because of that, I don’t enjoy playing them. If I were to review a game in this genre (it shouldn’t happen, we’ll get to why), my arguments and criticisms about the game would be different from other reviews.

Given the amount of genres and game franchises, it’s difficult for a person to be familiar with everything. Because of that, it’s important that media outlets select reviewers that are knowledgeable about the game they are going to evaluate. By having past experience with games in a genre, or in a franchise, the reviewer is capable of presenting a complete analysis. This situation is ideal, but if it the reviewer doesn’t have a lot of knowledge on the game, it doesn’t invalidate the review, it’s their opinion with a different point of view.

Since the reviewer represents an important piece of this subjective puzzle, media outlets should disclosure/have information on the person that wrote the review. Gamespot have an “about the author” section, where they give a little bit of context and background about the writer. IGN doesn’t have an area dedicated for this. Easy Allies also doesn’t, but their situation is different since they have a smaller community that tends to know the reviewer’s background better (having the info wouldn’t hurt though).

If reviews are important to you, make sure that you know and follow the person responsible for the review. Try to understand where they are coming from, based on things they like to play and have experience with. The more people that know the reviewers role, and the subjectivity of it all, there’ll be less personal attacks in online comments.