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[Manuel Magalhães]

I was on my Twitter when I saw a link to a Dear Escher review from IGN.
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1218568p1.html
I clicked and went to see the final score which, not surprising, it was an 8*. I kinda said lol to that score, but that's an another story.
But I was really intrigued with the scoring distribution: 

Is it fair that every category counts the same for the overall score? The game does have some splendid graphics, but it's boring as heck, so who wants to play that?
So what I ask is:
-Do you think that any aspect of a game such as graphics, mechanics, etc should count the same for the game's overall quality? If not what are the aspects that you find more important and does that you find less important?



*I did the math and it gave me an 7.6, so I don't know where they got the 8. Either way I'd say that even a 7.6 is too high for a game with little to no mechanics.

[Tumetsu]

Is it fair that every category counts the same for the overall score?

No. IMO it should vary with game. Some games doesn't need that good graphics, or sound if they are irrelevant for game in question. Since you got 7.6, I think they perhaps emphasized some points which they thought to be important for this style of game.

The game does have some splendid graphics, but it's boring as heck, so who wants to play that? -- Either way I'd say that even a 7.6 is too high for a game with little to no mechanics.

I don't want to bring this into endless debate of art games again but I think I disagree with you with these kind of statements. IMO review can emphasize other points than those you mentioned. That is, game doesn't need to be "fun" in a way most games are to earn good review (or indeed be good) if they manage to offer me something else. This goes with mechanics too. Of course one could argue that they aren't "games" then but so far I haven't found better working term.

Oh and I haven't played this game, just answering on general basis. But in this case the reviewer seemed to appreciate the atmosphere and graphics which gave him perhaps a meaningful experience to warrant 8. I don't see anything wrong with that.

[s0]

*I did the math and it gave me an 7.6, so I don't know where they got the 8.

ign scores are not averages afaik

also wikipedia says they changed their scoring system to .5 increments in 2010

[Theophilus]

Maybe they rounded it?

[shig]

The problem is you really just can't separate those categories at all. The overal score is the only important score in the end. The other categories might be interesting as curiosities, but forcing Gameplay and Lasting Appeal, for example, into different categories obviously fucks everything up.

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often.

[DavidCaruso]

Depends on the game and what's important to the reviewer. There are some games with relatively rudimentary mechanics that I can still enjoy a lot due mainly to "atmosphere" stuff like audiovisuals and story, even if they're only really playable at most once or twice. Dear Esther doesn't look like one of them to me (I liked the concept better when it was in Myst/Riven and had puzzles.) The reviewer's justification for why he thinks this game should be evaluated on 90% aesthetics ("there's not much else there" and "well, for the price...") isn't very good though, and the commenters pegging any opposition as CoD fanboys aren't helping either.

*I did the math and it gave me an 7.6, so I don't know where they got the 8.

ign scores are not averages afaik

no but their actual reviews sure are

(drums)

[Manuel Magalhães]

also wikipedia says they changed their scoring system to .5 increments in 2010

Ah, now that makes sense. I thought before that was a rounding thingy, but I had forgotten to write that on the OP. The review from IGN was just an example of the issue, anyway.

[The Monster King]

scores are stupid anyway

[SirNiko]

Scoring the attributes differently from the overall score does give you the opportunity to make your own judgment. You're free to weight things as you please to come to your own conclusions. The overall score is helpful if you like that reviewer in particular and tend to share his opinions on games.

It's impossible to be objective with game reviews without spoiling the entirety of the thing because there are too many interwoven features and metrics to consider. Your best bet is to pick a few reviewers who share your tastes and get game recommendations from them.

You know what would be handy? If you had a gizmo where you could personally rate your top 20 games and it searched a bunch of reviewers and tried to pair you up with a bunch who seem to score games similarly to you.

[phubans]

I wasn't aware of this game, and I was wondering how a game could get 4/10 in gameplay and such high marks in the other areas and still finish with such a high overall... I thought this was a case of style winning over substance again, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This looks more like an interactive film/narrative where you move the camera and decide the pace and what the camera gazes at. I think that sounds interesting, and maybe worth the price of $10... Though I think I'll pass and wait for it to drop to $5 since I'm cheap like that.

[baconman]

Presentation = Writing
Graphics = Art
Sound = self-explanatory
Gameplay = Technical
Lasting Appeal = Design

*looks at Developer section of forums*

Yup. Looks pretty spot on to me. Although again, many releases are highly subjective to individual taste - that's why major releases often offer a "second opinion" spot. At least in good mags/reviews.

[Manuel Magalhães]

It's impossible to be objective with game reviews without spoiling the entirety of the thing because there are too many interwoven features and metrics to consider. Your best bet is to pick a few reviewers who share your tastes and get game recommendations from them.

I'm not disagree with you on that, in fact I agree with you 100% on that. I'm sick of "bias" talk when referring to journalists and their scores. I just think that IGN should give to the reviewers the possibility of emphasizing a game in a certain category rather than just round an average. I don't find anything wrong with the category scores.

[s0]

people who complain about "biased" or reviews havent understood the concept of reviews

i think a lot of the problems of mainstream gaming journalism can be explained by the fact that it caters to kids

[cynicalsandel]

people who complain about "biased" or reviews havent understood the concept of reviews

i think a lot of the problems of mainstream gaming journalism can be explained by the fact that it caters to kids

I think the problem is the concept of 7 being the average. I don't think scores utilize enough of the 10 point scale.

[s0]

thats not a problem its a symptom  

[Fallsburg]

people who complain about "biased" or reviews havent understood the concept of reviews

i think a lot of the problems of mainstream gaming journalism can be explained by the fact that it caters to kids

I think the problem is the concept of 7 being the average. I don't think scores utilize enough of the 10 point scale.

This is actually a very wide-spread problem.  Humans don't actually like to work with that much precision when it comes to subjective measures, so scales like this with 20 values wind up with a lot of clustering.  Typically, 3,5, or 7 point scales are desired as they allow for low-middle-high with varying degrees and depending on the question at hand can offer plenty of granularity. 

[:^)]

Darn, I thought this thread was bringing all y'allz perspective on how a game's quality should effect it's price. (VALUE)

But quality is kind of whatever you want it to be.

Oh you guys are trying to figure out what quality is.

Well what if the creator truly believes his game to be of high quality despite every else on planet earth opposition his belief? Is he wrong?

Should everyone hype their game as the best thing ever or should they objectively look at it and decide the level of hype it deserves. (By objectively look at it I mean look at everyone else and compare it to what's considered successful by the majority of people) Because, you know, hype level is totally up to the creator. Not really, I was joking. Does hype sell games? Or does money sell games? If money sells games is it an elitist system?
Are all systems elitist?

Does money buy hype? Or does it come from the quality of the game? How many diamonds are there in the rough? Oh right. Quality is whatever you want it to be. Well what's the general consensus on what makes quality?

And I don't just mean in indie circles, I mean for everyone.
Because if we really want to be happy we should be grabbing for the biggest piece of the pie.

We should probably be making MW rip offs if we want to make money.
What do people do for fun?
Is money fun? Does money buy happiness? Or just temporary highs?
What if you snorted money? Can money cure depression? Is fun what makes you happy?
Or is happy not dependent on any sort of external source? Can a corpse be happy?
Games are supposed to be fun right? Or... well maybe not everyone wants to have fun.
Maybe they want to learn. Maybe we just want different things. Maybe life on this planet doesn't really stick to anything for long enough for us to accurately measure it.
Maybe we try too hard to know things that are unknowable. Life is variable and we are searching for constants.
Maybe we should just hang out with each other instead of trying to find the best ways to take advantage of our temporary desires and whims.

Would that makes us happy?

[SirNiko]

Another dilemma with judging games is that our perceptions are hugely impacted by other games we've played. A person who has never played a game from a genre before might rate it highly for the originality, whereas a person who has played hundreds of games from that genre is likely to rate it very poorly. This is especially an issue for people like me who grew up with an Atari, but may be reading reviews from people whose first console was a PS2.

Or once you've played a game like Okami with a really distinct art style, or 16 bit era games with huge, beautifully animated sprites it's really hard to take a modern game and praise it for its graphics even though they are really sharp and lovely.

[PleasingFungus]

How come no one ever talks about rating movies more scientifically? I mean, most reviewers just rate out of four stars! That's just 5% of the precision that game reviews have. Pathetic!

First, movie reviewers need to start breaking things down into components: they need to have scores for plot, characters, cinematography, sound, and 'other', for anything else that those don't cover. The scores will obviously be decimals out of 10, or percents, just the way all the best games reviewers do it. Then we can set up a highly advanced heuristic (using principles from machine learning) to set up the best possible average between the different components, and between different reviewers, too: we'll need to have a truly objective movie rating if we're going to determine the exact percentage difference in greatness between Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring and the Hurt Locker.

As a bonus, after all this, we can just discard all that pesky 'review text': I mean, a lot of the time it doesn't even seem to bear any relation to the scores games receive! Much better to focus on the numbers. Words are obviously subjective, but numbers are objective.

tl;dr: this discussion is a complete waste of time, read the fucking reviews instead of skipping to the numbers at the end, you illiterate morons

[:^)]

I don't know about anyone else, but I did not find that fungus pleasing in any way.