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MetaFuture Talks Review Inflation
MetaFuture, a game journalism analysis site, has recently refocused on review scores from the big gaming sites. The author takes an interesting approach, taking a look at Gamespot's review spread and IGN's tendencies. Unsurprisingly, both sites tend towards the 7 to 9 range, making it debatable whether their numbers are actually useful. The site's eventual goal is to normalize the review scores from the major sites, and actually make them useful. From the article: "Games will still get an average score from all contributing reviews. But a site's contribution to that average will depend on that site's own individual normal curve-- with the immediate left and right of the bell's tip signifying three stars on a scale of one to five. Watch the drama as the biggest sweethearts see their 8.4 score for Gun and Car IV get pegged as three stars." This is the reason Slashdot videogame reviews don't have numbers anymore.
So, the question is, conditional on nonrandom selection of games to release and nonrandom selection of games to review, what should we expect the distribution of quality to look like? My guess is that this distribution is nonormal and is skewed with more observations in the higher quality tail. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the reviews are "fair," but it suggests that the question is more complicated than a simple "grade inflation" argument.
Note that I am also making an assumption that quality is judged in some sort of absolute terms, and not relative to the other games that are released. There are probably some other assumptions lurking in there as well. Just my $.02
I swear I saw this, somewhere else already.,
Just looking at the end score in the review for ANYTHING is useless. The usefulness in a review is in reading the comments of the reviewer and understanding the reviewers preferences in games by looking at their reviews of other games you're interested in. The trick is to find a reviewer with similar thoughts on genres and such as your own, that way their review is relevant to you. The other trick is finding well thought out, well explained reviews--ones that tell you EXACTLY what the shortcomings and pros of the title were, this way you can decide if the shortcomings are shortcomings to you or if you just think the reviewer is being anal.
Read my blog posts on usability.
I gave up on game reviews when I worked at a game company and my boss explained his frustration with the review industry to me. He hated having to use dishonest means to catch the reviewers' attention - in particular, photoshopped preview game stills - but he said this was the only way to compete for those exceedingly rare "Game of the Month" etc. spots. He showed me a six page "exclusive preview" by a competitor and explained the only reason it was that big (as opposed to a small paragraph somewhere) was that the competitor had moved the preview session to Florida and paid the expenses of half a dozen editors for an extended weekend. How much sense does Florida make, when you're a European software developer and neither the game not the magazine are released in the English language? Now editors don't need to allow these tactics to work, but they evidently did. And worst of all, the magazine was the most respected (perceived fair) one in that market. Others were way more blatant about their corruption and deception of readers. The one that eventually made ours Game of the Month did so because we'd agreed to give considerable amounts of merchandise to readers who participated in a lottery.
When I want opinion on a game, I turn to a friend with a good taste in games, a fat pipe, and lots of time.
blow your mind already
Zonk says: This is the reason Slashdot videogame reviews don't have numbers anymore.
And here I thought it was because everyone was always giving you shit for rating everything 8/10...
This guy's the limit!
A friend of mine is a reviewer for a gaming site that does their reviews on a [1,10] scale. Apparently the editors tell the writers to rate them on a [1,5] scale, then they just tack on a bonus 5 points to whatever the writers say.
There's already a site that does this. metacritics
I've been finding game reviews increasingly irrelevant. I still like Edge's, but sites like Gamespot and IGN are generally pretty useless for figuring out whether a game is fun or not. I often go by the internet community's response: frequently random forum posters make far more insightful points than reviewers.
Bear in mind that the games industry is not static. Not only are the technologies and concepts used in games and development constantly evolving and improving, but the budgets and resources being thrown at them far outstrip those seen 20, 10, even 5 years ago.
Inevitably this causes the leading edge of the games market to progress faster than our sense of cynicism and ennui, so we are more and more impressed with each new release. That's what ultimately gives a game a great score - how impressive is it? Scores for big releases will tend more and more towards the higher end (especially if we try to rate games comparitively with other fairly recent releases).
The term review inflation is surprisingly accurate in that regard but, while steady economic inflation is not a problem, it is troublesome in reviews where there is a fixed range of possible scores. The dollar can become worth 1% of its original value and there's no issue - as long as it's in line with market growth and currency values in other economies - becuase its value is defined by the market-perception of its value and has no technical limits. The star-rating system in reviews is inherently fixed, so inflation is a bugger.
Allowing the rating-system to inflate freely would get around this problem, but then you're looking at free-flux exchange-rates between reviewers and the issue of fitting 210 stars into a box-out and, frankly, the only sensible answer is for peeps to grow up and take everything they read with a pinch of salt. Hey, it's a valuable life-lesson. Learn to read, dammit.
Meta will eat itself
I think what reviewers say going in is that, "okay, 5 is average, if you get above 5, hey, you're doing something right." But then they hand out 6's and 7's and the companies are like "OMG!!!! totally unfair!!! That's a failing grade! And it's a good game!" (I think this actually came up in Electronic Gaming Monthly about 10+ years ago when they wanted to defend giving a game a 7 on just that basis - it *was* above average, but that's not "good enough" a reason to leave it at 7. Maybe the game was Super Empire Strikes Back.)
To answer your question, you *should* see a 1-10 bell curve peaking at 5. But they won't use a genuine 1-10 scale because people will read it like an (American) grading scale, where 6 (of 10) is failing. So what you should expect in reality is some sort of bizarre pseudo-logarithmic asymetric scale: "normal" is 6 or 7, and you have to get disproportionally better or suckier to get to 8 or 9 or to 4 or 3.
Like with grade inflation, no one is really served by that. But it doesn't help that there are no objective, well-defined units for an inherently subjective experience. What exactly does it mean that a game is "twice as good" as another? Or that a game is "one point" better.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The percentage system is something of a mystery, but it does correlate fairly closely to how the US A-F system, translated to the 100 point scale, is supposed to be applied to grades in big US Universities.
The center of the distribution is supposed to be around the high 70s/low 80s. (C+/B-).
Back when I was the TA monkey handing out grades, the recommended distribution was 40% Cs (70s) 33% Bs (80s) 10% As (90s), and, well, the Fs (
The distribution looks pretty much like that. Incidentally, the same system can be seen for wines as well.
Bottom line, these guys are tough graders; or the industry pumps out a lot of schlock.
I prefer the Michelin system: if it's worth bothering with, describe the game. If it's particularly good, use the star system:
* - A good game in its category.
** - worth ordering
*** - worth a trip to the store
...or wait, those more cynical could use pirating/buying.
I think a big part of the problem that people have is that they simply don't know how to read game ratings properly. I know that, personally, I usually find that when I look at the ratings for a game, along with the text of the review, it can lead me to a fairly accurate understanding about how well I will like it.
The first thing is that I think people think of the ratings system in terms of absolute "10 is a great game" "5 is mediocre" "1 is crap" scores. That's not really accurate. In general the score must be considered from within it's genre. A football game with a rating of 10 might be excellent for people who like football games, but I certainly wouldn't enjoy a football game with a 10 rating any more than a football game with a 1 rating, because I don't like football games. Likewise I might enjoy an RPG with a score of 7 or 8, but other people would find it tedious, because they don't like RPGs.
The other problem is that I think people expect scores to fall in a fairly normal distribution. The problem is that game quality isn't a normal distribution. There are a lot of games that are made that people might not consider fun, but they are at least semi-playable. If you consider a game that might get a 1 or a 2 rating, it would have to be something with severe software flaws that kept the game from even being playable. On consoles at least, no matter how bad a game is, it's rare for a game to be so bad that a determined person couldn't play it (even if they didn't enjoy themselves.). If you look higher in the ratings, it's similar. Most games tend to be clustered in the 7-9. To understand why I think you need to really understand what the ratings in that range mean. When I'm looking at a review, and I see a game with a 10, that tells me that the game is well executed and should appeal to the majority of gamers even if they aren't particularly fans of the genre of the game. A 9 generally says that the game is on par with the best games of that genre, and introduces some new concepts to extend it. A rating of an 8 generally tells me that the game is solid and people who are fans of the genre will probably enjoy it, but it might not appeal to people who aren't specifically fans of the genre, or of the series. A game with an 8 might either have a few flaws that lower the overall experience, or it might be a solid game that fails to offer anything innovative. A rating of a 7 generally says that the game is weak. A 7 tells me that someone who was a big fan of the genre or series might enjoy the game, but that there are probably some flaws that other games in the series or genre have fixed, and that the game either has some fairly large flaws that non-fans won't be able to over look, or its very formulaic and will be boring to someone who isn't a huge fan of that forumla. Finally, looking in the mid range of 3 to 6, you generally see games that are lacking something that generally a game should have, but which doesn't render the game unplayable (when I say unplayable, I mean physically the game won't run, as opposed to the game having responsive or intuitive controlls). A 5 or 6 for example says that a game probably has some severe playability issues that interfere with enjoyment of the game, as well as having some bugs and lacking features that are standard for the genre. A 3 or 4 generally says that either because of various bugs or lack of features, there isn't much "game" to the game at all.
What I think it boils down to is that games first of all need to be rated only within their own genre, because it's hard to set a single scale for games across different genres. Using a normalized scale seems intuitive, but it doesn't work because the quality of games isn't a normal distribution, instead it's skewed so that there are generally a lot of "Ok" and "so-so" games in the 7 to 8 range, a lot of games that lag behind because of various problems, and a very few gems that get the coveted 9's and 10's. It's also hard to quanticize fun. A reviewer can really only rate a game based on what he
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I don't know. What's a `strategic actor`?
Atari has openly paid for reviews in the past. Anyone remember the plethora of 9 and 9.9 scores for Driv3r? I am not bothered that most games rate a 7-9. I'd assume that most AAA titles should be on the good end of the scale. What bothers me is how many games receive a 9, 9.9 or 10. Shouldn't those be reserved for the truly exceptional? Or are there 10 games released every year that are TEH GREATEST EVA?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
X-Play still does the most honest ratings with their 5 point scale.
The vast majority of games actually ARE average and hence receive 3 out of 5. There are two spots above a 3, and two spots below a 3.
If they give a game a 4 or 5, then you know it's a good game. But just because not everyone likes every genre, it is not thier fault if you also don't love every game they give a 4 or 5.
People should rely more on reviews from people that have the same gaming opinions as they do instead of some number. Consider: How many poorly rated movies do well at the box office, and how many highly rated movies do poorly? A lot. Check out Yahoo! movies or similar site and compare the critics to the people. They are never the same and rarely similar. Why? Movie critics see a lot of movies, so are biased towards the storyline and acting instead of a big action sequence. So, they view movies differently than I do.
Extending that to video games; a reviewer who enjoys FPS games is going to give a high rating to the latest shooter with great graphics. I like older FPS games, but hate the direction that the industry has gone with newer games. So, if a reviewer is a fan of the genre, and I'm not, should I use their review? Of course not! I hate RTS games, so even if one had a 10 rating I wouldn't buy it. However, maybe someone does something new and it is worth my time and money to give it a shot. How do I know? I need to find a reviewer who doesn't like RTS games and get their rating - if they give it a 7 or 8, but they don't like RTS, then I should look into it.
So, how do you find these reviewers? Give ratings to the games you have played, maybe separated by genre, and then go looking for reviews that are close to your own and look at the name of the reviewers. Then search by reviewer to see how close their ratings are to your own, pick the closest (or some sort of combination - Alice for RTS and Bob for FPS). Now you have some reviewers you can trust will like the same games you do, and you can shop accordingly.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Do away with the 1-10,5 star, or 100% rankings I say (god that PC Gamer 100% scale is rediculous, what exactly is the difference between a 95% and a 96%, or even 90% for that matter?) The text is whats important, I say if the reviewer wants a quick capsule summary, make it a 3 point scale: "Buy it", "Rent it", "Avoid it".
All you people who are harping on about the quality of games not being normally distributed have a point, but you are missing a big point too in that while the quality of games may or may not be normally distributed, the quality of gaming review sites have no such restrictions. There are be some payola, pushiver review sources, other hard-nosed perfectionists, with the majority of game reviewers falling somewhere in the middle. Indeed, I felt likt that was the whole point of the article in claiming that the big guys (eg. IGN or Gamespot) skew their ratings.