Eurogamer Drops Review Scores

[Sheikah]

The thing is though, reviews should give you a verdict. You go to them for judgement on a product. The way they've done it is so ambiguous you don't really know how much they liked it/how good they thought it was. I really think it's too much of a cop-out.

Sure you do, just read the review.

 

It's kind of funny, the way people are talking it's as if the removal of the number has led to the review being incomprehensible, illegible almost. Maybe this change will herald a time on their site where their readers will actually take the time to enjoy a good review rather than primarily form their own judgement based on whatever they perceive a number to mean.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Sheikah

[Mr-Paul]

See, there you are picking out one part of my post, and ignoring the rest. Of course the review is going to tell you what they think. Of course it doesn't become incomprehensible. But I think you equally need a strong conclusion, a verdict. A score is a good way to do that. It's a good way to rank quality. (I'm not going into metacritic at all here.)

 

Eurogamer have said many games, say updates of FIFA etc. probably won't be recommended. Say you want to buy a football game. You go to Eurogamer, look at FIFA, and PES. It's probably not going to tell you which one they think is better. I feel this is doing a disservice to the reader. I know you'll say that you should get which one is better by reading the reviews, but I don't think that it should be down to the reader to decide which is better from the review. You're going to the review for an expert opinion, and their judgement. You're not getting a full judgement unless they recommend it, they think it's essential, or they think it's crap. If you have review scores, you have both the body of the review and the score to help you make your own judgement. By removing them, you're being actively less helpful.

[Sheikah]

See, there you are picking out one part of my post, and ignoring the rest. Of course the review is going to tell you what they think. Of course it doesn't become incomprehensible. But I think you equally need a strong conclusion, a verdict. A score is a good way to do that. It's a good way to rank quality. (I'm not going into metacritic at all here.)

 

Eurogamer have said many games, say updates of FIFA etc. probably won't be recommended. Say you want to buy a football game. You go to Eurogamer, look at FIFA, and PES. It's probably not going to tell you which one they think is better. I feel this is doing a disservice to the reader. I know you'll say that you should get which one is better by reading the reviews, but I don't think that it should be down to the reader to decide which is better from the review. You're going to the review for an expert opinion, and their judgement. You're not getting a full judgement unless they recommend it, they think it's essential, or they think it's crap. If you have review scores, you have both the body of the review and the score to help you make your own judgement. By removing them, you're being actively less helpful.

 

It's called trying to prevent epic long posts, especially useful when I'm not even replying to the rest of your post since what I have to say doesn't really relate it.

 

I picked our part of your post that I found strikingly untrue which is absolutely fine to do so long as it's not taking anything out of context, which it wasn't. I mean, you clearly said that the way they've removed the scores makes the review so ambiguous that you don't really know how much they liked it. That's simply not true if you read the review, and at the very least by reading the text you're more likely to know what they did or didn't like than looking at a number, which could be the result of anything. Yes, you argue for both, but the number is if anything a smack in the face to the review. A 7/10 may as well be considered toxic waste, painting the eyes of the reader before they even read the review (because let's be honest, most people look there first). The score morphs people's expectations - a quick glance at comment boxes and you'll often see 'reads like a 7' or similar. You argue for using both, but then argue that the removal of score makes the review ambiguous. It is the latter comment that I strongly disagree with, and I can pick up on that if I like.

 

Your FIFA example is really bad man, because you've also got to take into account the generations. Theoretically, they should be improving every single title as it's generally a very iterative series. And for the purpose of this argument, let's say they do. So here's the problem, how do you know if the game has improved on the version released last year? If FIFA started out as 7/10 then the only way to present the case that the next game in the series improved, on an /10 scale, is to award 8/10. You see the problem here? Eventually it'll be 10/10. Even if you argue that every game would stay at the same level (ie. 7/10) then that tells you that they stay around the same quality, which is exactly the same thing you'd assume in EGs current system if every game gets no recommendation.

 

With regards to comparing PES and FIFA, it's extremely rare that such a comparison would not be made in the text of whichever review came second; assuming they bother to review both. If one was clearly worth getting over the other, I'm sure they'd mention it. So again, I'd have to disagree with you that you don't get this from the text. Although not quite the same comparison, the nearest thing I can think off about comparable games was Dark Souls 1 and 2 (in the text of DS2 they said it wasn't as good as 1, but still great). With regards to this pretty specific example though, I find it pretty unlikely that most people would care too much for a FIFA review (again, most people) as it's the kind of game people just buy anyway, or buy to play with friends, so this example again seems pretty crappy.

 

With regards to not getting their message... EG typically summarise their thoughts on a game in a conclusion paragraph at the end, and whether they think a game is worth playing or not always comes across in their reviews.

 

With regards to criticising me for ignoring parts of discussions, I'd have to say you're pretty guilty too given you're still arguing the case for review scores without commenting on the negatives Bard just presented. He provides a very compelling argument against both review scores in general and their use in metacritic. To my knowledge, they are also not separate things since I believe having review scores is what enables them to be listed metacritic, and I'm not sure there's even an option to be excluded from it.

Edited February 14, 2015 by Sheikah

[The Bard]

The thing is though, reviews should give you a verdict. You go to them for judgement on a product. The way they've done it is so ambiguous you don't really know how much they liked it/how good they thought it was. I really think it's too much of a cop-out.

 

Yeah you can get the feel of what they thought from what they've written what they thought, but you're not getting a real committed conclusion, if you know what I mean? It shouldn't be down to the reader to determine the verdict for themselves. Yes, I believe the body of the review and the critique is very important, but I feel the conclusion and verdict is equally essential to a good review, for the reader.

 

The bottom line is that review scores are great for products judged by merit of their utility, like a toaster or a washer dryer where the extent of your engagement with it is really very simple; does this contraption make my bread brown, what is the efficiency with which it does so, and how does it compare to other bread browning devices? Also a review sits between description and interpretation. The description of the game might be enough for you to make a purchasing decision on, but then there is also the interpretive aspect, which is the experience of playing the game filtered through the reviewers subjective lens. You'll get a good sense of both the experience, as well as the reviewers predispositions from this, allowing you to decide whether your own predispositions align with the reviewers or whether the things she's describing would tweak you differently. Finally, almost every review for anything under the sun has a paragraph in summation, giving a verbal verdict on whether the game is purchase worthy and for what reasons.

 

The entire edifice of numerical evaluation falls down for something that you can only really get a sense of through an explanation of the experience. The only purpose scores serve when the text already exists, is for compulsive people to create a mental list of the critically sanctioned heirarchy of quality games: Ocarina of Time has the highest metascore of all time, which must mean it's the best game of all time! And reasoning of that ilk. This heirarchy then becomes an easy validation of any given person on a forum's preferences - "Oh my favourite game sits four spaces above yours in the rankings, it must be better." Er...who was it that made the woefully ironic Appeal to Authority claim somewhere above? Well here it's recapitulated specifically because of the fact that review scores can superficially be aggregated in a way that actual verbal opinions can't. What I'm advocating is actual dialogue about games, rather than number touting.

 

Isn't that why people read reviews in the first place - to read the thoughts of someone who is employed in a capacity to critically engage with the experience presented by the game? If not, if you really don't want any insightful commentary, or to find out something about someone else's experience with it that might in turn augment your own understanding, then metacritic still exists. So do hundreds of other sites where you don't even need to glance at the text so much as take a scroll straight to the number. Eurogamer are trying to do something different, and godfuckingspeed to them. Removing review scores is both an easy and helpful way to circumvent the bad habits espoused in the gaming industry both from the press and publisher sides.

 

@Sheikah, keep fighting the good fight, but I think you've made all the points it's possible to make about the subject, and the continuing discussion is just people failing to read properly.

[Mr-Paul]

I'll have to respectfully agree to disagree with you. You don't seem to be getting that I'm all for high quality criticism, I just think review scores can be useful, too. They aren't exclusive of each other. You seem to be insinuating that if you see some value in review scores, you don't care what the review says. Not true at all.

 

There's no need to act high and mighty and belittle people because they don't hold the same opinion of you.

[Josh64]

The problem I had when reviewing Boom Street was that I couldn't put 11 out of 10.

 

I think we should start doing it in Smash Bros. percentages, the higher the percentage, the more you'll be blown away with Sonic Boom being a good 10% whilst Mario Galaxy could be a 'Sudden Death' type 300%.

[The Bard]

I'll have to respectfully agree to disagree with you. You don't seem to be getting that I'm all for high quality criticism, I just think review scores can be useful, too. They aren't exclusive of each other. You seem to be insinuating that if you see some value in review scores, you don't care what the review says. Not true at all.

 

There's no need to act high and mighty and belittle people because they don't hold the same opinion of you.

 

I don't think I was acting high and mighty at all, I was making an argument. I don't think you can accuse a person of acting in an affected manner at all if all he's doing is listing facts. Could you specify exactly what I've said that you disagree with?

 

Also you neglected to address the parts of this and my previous post about the negative incentive structures created by scores and score aggregates, which are more pronounced in the gaming industry than they are elsewhere because the audiences, for whatever reason, are more likely to buy a videogame that scores highly than they are to watch a movie or buy an album that scores highly. Publishers then use this mechanism for their own gross ends (I think I'm repeating this for the third time). Another factor thrown into the powder cake is that gaming publications subsist almost entirely on endemic advertising; they advertise the very games they're supposed to be critiquing. I think the negatives for the reader should be more than apparent.

 

Now the simple reasoning over which so many words have been expended is this; there is nothing a score can add to the text which a literate person can't see for themselves in a far more nuanced manner. Secondly removing the score, removes the possibility for amalgamation into aggregation sites and thus also removes pressure from publishers for these review sites to tow a narrow line.

 

Often times what you're getting with a review score is more a reflection of the pressures of endemic advertising and the strain on a publication caused by knowing that if they shitcan a game in a review, the publisher will be displeased and then not invite them to developer events, and disallow them access to their future games.

 

Also the fact that the score distracts from the text is pretty well documented, and evidence is readily available. Look at the comments section of any review on a major site. There is almost no engagement with the ideas, just fury or vindication at the fraction at the end of it. You can expect that a site with some slightly higher aspirations to want to be shot of the whole ordeal, no?

 

So there we have it, the benefits and negatives have been talked about to death. You can go over the previous morass of posts, because I do actually think that most of the finer points, as well as some of the broad points have been missed by most of the people having it out here.

[Mr-Paul]

You essentially said that those who weren't agreeing with you or Sheikah can't read properly. That's pretty high and mighty to me.

 

My posts had nothing to do with publisher incentive schemes etc., I wasn't even replying to you yet seem to be chastised for not replying to your points! I was just saying how I like them as a reviewer and that I personally find them useful as a consumer. Is that ok?

 

I respect that you have your views. I understand your reasons. But I respectfully disagree that review scores are inherently bad.

[The Bard]

You essentially said that those who weren't agreeing with you or Sheikah can't read properly. That's pretty high and mighty to me.

 

My posts had nothing to do with publisher incentive schemes etc., I wasn't even replying to you yet seem to be chastised for not replying to your points! I was just saying how I like them as a reviewer and that I personally find them useful as a consumer. Is that ok?

 

I respect that you have your views. I understand your reasons. But I respectfully disagree that review scores are inherently bad.

 

I didn't say "can't," - that connotes an incapacity. I said "failing to," by which I meant "not exercising their ability to." Which is definitely true, because there are arguments being made, but people are picking out phrases, and neglecting to address the whole argument.

 

As for not replying to me, sorry, I just assumed you were because your post was directly after mine and you didn't quote anyone else.

 

Nothing is "inherently bad," in the game industry, but unfortunately, scores for certain sites have been made bad, in both a utilitarian and a moral sense, by the culture surrounding them. Like I said in my above post when you see a 9 from, say, IGN given to something, you can't then assume that this proves its excellence. All you can assume is that publisher pressures enforced a normalising 7-10 effect because they don't want one person's opinion dragging down a Metacritic rating.

 

I should also remind you that Metacritic amalgamates scores based on different grading rubricks. For example, a 6/10 in EDGE could very easily equate to a 9/10 in IGN. And so on. Different games are also reviewed by different sets of publications as well, so there's that further bastardising complication added to Metacritic's meaningless number.

 

Also you're not engaging with the argument. I have no problem with you or anyone disagreeing, but you're not saying why. You're just insisting that "no, I don't agree" contrary to all the evidence and reason presented, without elaborating.

[Sheikah]

I'll have to respectfully agree to disagree with you. You don't seem to be getting that I'm all for high quality criticism, I just think review scores can be useful, too. They aren't exclusive of each other. You seem to be insinuating that if you see some value in review scores, you don't care what the review says. Not true at all.

 

There's no need to act high and mighty and belittle people because they don't hold the same opinion of you.

You might say respectfully, but that actually seems like a pretty disrespectful response. Rather than address his points, all of which certainly have merit and he has justified, you're falling back on the 'you're taking the high and mighty' card. And to not address his responses after criticising me for selecting just a part of your post to address is a bit rich, don't you think?

 

The biggest problem here is that Bard is making these points, but you're essentially ignoring them (or at the very least not addressing them) and saying 'but I like them' (to that effect). Well that's great, but that does not solid argument in their favour make. Maybe some perspective will help - you may like them for whatever reason, but ultimately the case against having them is very strong, because of all the negatives they bring.

Edited February 14, 2015 by Sheikah

[ReZourceman]

We don't score things in our every day lives

 

Speak for yourself.

[flameboy]

 

Speak for yourself.

 

For some reason first thing that popped into my mind was "bet he scores his shit" then I realised you probably meant Food Review UK

[Goafer]

I think ReZ should drop scores from his reviews.

 

Then the actual reviews.

[dwarf]

"I want to drive petrol cars. I like the sound petrol engines make."

 

"Yes, but by driving them you are contributing to CO2 emissions and therefore climate change, which could have disastrous effects in the future. We should look at alternatives."

 

"Oh don't get all high and mighty with me. I like my petrol cars, so with all respect we will agree to disagree."

 

"..."

 

--------------

 

All we're missing is for Daz to come in and say the words, 'straw man,' and thereby win the argument automatically.

 

P.S I'm high.

[Sheikah]

All we're missing is for Daz to come in and say the words, 'straw man,' and thereby win the argument automatically.

 

P.S I'm high.

 

Don't forget the customary exclamations that you must be 12 years old.

[dwarf]

The Zechs 'APPEAL TO AUTHORITY' retort tickled me enormously.

[Ronnie]

Dropping review scores is pretty stupid and is a reflection of the childish nature of the industry.

 

You have it all wrong. It's the childish nature of the industry that caused Eurogamer and others to drop review scores.

[Rummy]

Tbh I don't see why @Mr\-Paul is getting stick here, as I'm not struggling to understand his point at all. He, as a reviewer, likes to use scores - is he not entitled to? Why should the way other people(ie metacritic, which I'll come to) stop him doing that? Scores were around before metacritic, before all this bonus stuff etc, and all mr-paul seems to be trying to express is that he, as a reviewer, feels it's something he wants to provide to his readers as they'll appreciate them. Ofc as I've stated already I like scores myself. I don't have syphilis afaik, but I'll try to explain why I like them.

 

Flaw - scores aren't perfect. What someone might give a 7, another might give a 6, or an 8, or in some circumstances even a 10 or a 2. It's all about taste, it goes with the text but in general, I think the 1s, 2s, 10s, will be outliers in a wide range of reviews. I think the majority of scores for a game will cluster around a point, giving a fairly average opinion. I like metacritic for that, even though it has a wide range, I like the average as a starting point and then tend to look further into individual reviews - it's actually good at collating summary reviews in a single place. Devs/pubs etc using metacritic and reviews for scores should not be put down to the reviewers, as they came first, someone else came in and turned it to their agenda.

 

Coming back to a point I made earlier - the other reason I like a score, especially from someone like mr-paul and most of the reviewers here, is that I know you guys from the forum. Even if I didn't, but I came only for the reviews, and say read all of mr-pauls reviews and found them good for me - I'm interested to know where he 'scores' a game. I can put in context how he ranks the games he reviews, and given I'd be reading his reviews because I respect his opinion, it's nice for me to think at the end 'ah, well after all he still gives it an 8, putting it above game X that he gave a 7, interesting'.

 

There is, without a doubt, certain people on the forum whose tastes I identify with a lot and I really value what they think of games I don't know about. A score is another way of putting that together for me. It isn't even necessarily their tastes, but their ability to be fairly objective, and for me, a score just kinda sums up what is, as people have said, a complicated view. An analogous but interesting situation is what occurred in the Zelda Wii U thread - Blade iirc had opinions on Zelda and I asked him to rank them in his opinion, lots of people then followed suit - whilst not scoring the games directly, it does place a sliding scale of value on them, which I consider a review score analogous to. Why were so many people keen to do so if it's such a pointless or irrelevant thing?

 

"I want to drive petrol cars. I like the sound petrol engines make."

 

"Yes, but by driving them you are contributing to CO2 emissions and therefore climate change, which could have disastrous effects in the future. We should look at alternatives."

 

"Oh don't get all high and mighty with me. I like my petrol cars, so with all respect we will agree to disagree."

 

"..."

 

Tbh I think this is completely unfair as well. Driving a car(again, like reviews, around before we knew the extent of pollution/metacritic) is a fair enough point to make, but the b-product of the pollution and disastrous effects is unfair because it is other people with agency who are choosing to use metacritic to then decide how to pay money/shape the industry etc. To correct your example, it'd be more akin to other people not driving your car deciding to actively cause climate change and potentially create disastrous effects in the future.

[Sheikah]

The effect of reviews on metacritic is just one piece of the pie. And yeah, we can expect reviewers to change their system because of how their reviews can be used and interpreted. You think publishers are going to change? If something good can come about from it then is it right to wash our hands of it and say "not my problem" how scores are used? Honest question there.

 

The other piece is what Bard has been saying - a number simply doesn't convey the subjective complexities of a game (unlike something like a toaster - it must brown toast efficiently), and the current system is stacked at one end. In my opinion, removing the score gives a much greater incentive for people to read the review, so I'm pretty happy about it. They've still got recommend/essential to flag up games to people with less time who don't want to read reviews of games they don't think will be good.

Edited February 17, 2015 by Sheikah

[peterl0]

The comments sections for the reviews that do not have a rating at all on EG seem to have replaced fanboy style score numerical arguments with arguments about scores. I guess that might die down.

 

It seems to me that there will always be things to argue about pointlessly on the Internet, with or without scores, Publishers will always find some way to put pressure on games developers with or without metacritic and readers will always want summaries of reviews, be they scores, recommendation systems or closing paragraphs.

 

I personally like a score out of ten for those times that the review leaves me on the fence about a game. Alongside a description of why a game might get a score such as that it can push me one way or another. I am interested to see how the new system at EG will change my perception of their reviews in the longer term.

[Sheikah]

The comments sections for the reviews that do not have a rating at all on EG seem to have replaced fanboy style score numerical arguments with arguments about scores. I guess that might die down.

 

It seems to me that there will always be things to argue about pointlessly on the Internet, with or without scores, Publishers will always find some way to put pressure on games developers with or without metacritic and readers will always want summaries of reviews, be they scores, recommendation systems or closing paragraphs.

 

I personally like a score out of ten for those times that the review leaves me on the fence about a game. Alongside a description of why a game might get a score such as that it can push me one way or another. I am interested to see how the new system at EG will change my perception of their reviews in the longer term.

 

I noticed that on the current EG review comment sections. I agree that it will probably die down, a lot of it seems pretty tongue in cheek in trying to condense everything into a number. It's kind of funny but really highlights what a lasting effect having numbers has had on the mindset of people. Like the first thing they think to say isn't about how the game sounds/whether they're excited about the game or not, but what number they think it would mean.

[The Bard]

It seems to me that there will always be things to argue about pointlessly on the Internet, with or without scores, Publishers will always find some way to put pressure on games developers with or without metacritic and readers will always want summaries of reviews, be they scores, recommendation systems or closing paragraphs.

 

But do you not feel that arguing about a complete abstraction like a score out of ten given to convey all of the nuances of a game is actually pointless, whereas arguing or discussing the ideas or actual design of a game is absolutely worthwhile?

 

Also, publishers don't give a shit about your review if it doesn't have a score attached, simply because it can't be assimilated by an aggregation site. Publishers have found a correlation between Metascore and sales, and that's all they care about. Of course, this could prospectively create a pressure the other way, in that publishers would have little incentive to give a site or publication access to their games or their developers for interview, if they don't stand to gain a little free advertising in the way of a positive, scored review in return.

 

@Rummy, there are likely few in the way of the same established incentive problems with scores on N-Europe though, because they're not aggregated on Metacritic or Gamerankings etc. At the same time, scores on here seem hyper inflated, to the point where you see some truly trashy, generic games getting 9s, and some of the reviewers have absolutely no sense of proportionality. And even though the same industry embedded problems don't happen with scores on this site, they still don't mean anything beyond what the text can already relate to you. Although of course this being a fan site, you do see reviews that pretty much bash whatever game they're reviewing in the body of the text, and then give the game an 8. At that point, you should probably be taking not only scores, but the text with a mountain of salt.

 

But I get your point; if you want an instant indication of how likely you are to enjoy a game were to you to buy it, then I suppose scores might be fine for you, especially if you're intimately familiar with the reviewers predispositions already. The thing is I want more than a purchasing guide from games writing. I'm going to buy whatever I buy based on word of mouth from friends, and the general buzz around a title anyway. I go to the reviews and features after the fact to maybe gain some insight into any given game from a more knowledgeable, or more thoughtful perspective than mine, which is what any critic that works in a professional capacity should aim to be giving you, rather than a monosyllabic reduction of a complicated piece of entertainment into a single digit.

[peterl0]

I do agree that arguing about the game design is not pointless and arguing about the score generally is pointless, but the same type of person that argues about the score will quite easily find another topic in the same area I would have thought (reviewer is biased towards a platform, type of game, etc.)

 

I think my point about publishers is that they desire the outcome that a game is critically acclaimed - otherwise why not tie bonuses directly to sales. I can only assume they want this for overall brand recognition (the publishers themselves) or marketing of the game itself. If they were not to have metacritic because all sites dropped scores, I think they would just find some other way of doing this and then tie it into developer bonuses, because it is the sort of thing managers in businesses do.

Edited February 17, 2015 by peterl0

[Goafer]

Christ, I wish people debated this passionately IRL about things that actually matter. What is it about the internet that brings out intense passion for trivial things?

 

And as for the petrol cars topic: fuck you, I'm going to go out and do some donuts in my ancient, fuel inefficient car out of spite. Then fuck some sluts. Because I'm a man. #smashnicelookingbirds.

[Ashley]

I think this is a good example of a game that doesn't need a score: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-20-mean-girls-the-game-review

 

Read it, get a sense, decide for yourself. One person's 9 might be someone else's 2 at the end of the day.