Eurogamer has dropped review scores

[Deleted]

Starting today with our review of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, Eurogamer is making the biggest change we've ever made to the way we review games. From now on, we will no longer be scoring games out of ten.

In place of scores, we'll have one-line summaries for every review, and a new recommendation system whereby some, but not all games will be considered Recommended, Essential or Avoid. As a result of these changes, we will no longer be listed on the review-aggregation site Metacritic.

What do you think of this? Should all the big sites in the industry follow this behavior too?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-review-scores

[Cattleya]

Anything that makes Metacritic less relevant gets a thumbs up from me.

[unbound]

So, basically, they are replacing a 10 point system with a 3 point system. I guess it is needed for the math challenged out there?

[Gallahadd]

I actually like it. I mean let's face it the whole "Score out of ten" thing just doesn't work anymore.

[Deleted]

Great. A score is arbitrary and meaningless once you realise that all sites score differently, and even within sites, different reviewers will score differently. Steams system started doing it right. Either recommend it, or don't and say why.

I really wish that metacritics user rating would at least follow steam, give it a yes or a no and then give it a score based on the percentage of people that voted yes. Saying "95% of people would recommend this game" or "62% of people would not recommend it", is more useful to me than a score.

[Fencers]

Excellent. The practice of review scores is faulty.

Good for them in trying to establish a more thoughtful review process.

Although maintaining a practice of recommendation is still problematic. Reviews as engines of advice rather than dissection are gross. Still a step.

[bergmann620]

What do you think of this? Should all the big sites in the industry follow this behavior too?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-review-scores

I completely agree with doing away with numeric reviews. That said, I don't like saying 'no' to traffic, so I would just have given each of those recommendations a set number to have something to post to Metacritic.

- - - Updated - - -

Great. A score is arbitrary and meaningless once you realise that all sites score differently, and even within sites, different reviewers will score differently. Steams system started doing it right. Either recommend it, or don't and say why.

I really wish that metacritics user rating would at least follow steam, give it a yes or a no and then give it a score based on the percentage of people that voted yes. Saying "95% of people would recommend this game" or "62% of people would not recommend it", is more useful to me than a score.

That's better than my suggestion.

Basically Rotten Tomatoes for games.

[Blueobelisk]

On one hand I feel like there's a lack of information in this scoring system. The difference between "avoid" (don't play at all) and "recommended" (we lie this game so you should play it) is pretty high. What if there's a game that's not worth $60 but when it goes down to like $20 it turns into a recommended?

That said, I think scoring systems before weren't that useful anyway.

[Fencers]

What if there's a game that's not worth $60 but when it goes down to like $20 it turns into a recommended?

This is foolish and disrespectful in the extreme. Value per dollar is not an indicator of quality or thoughtlessness of art.

If a game is well made or notable in the review it is well made and notable regardless of pricing. That is the entire point of "score-less" reviews, reviews are not recommendation engines or value assessments.

[Deleted]

On one hand I feel like there's a lack of information in this scoring system. The difference between "avoid" (don't play at all) and "recommended" (we lie this game so you should play it) is pretty high. What if there's a game that's not worth $60 but when it goes down to like $20 it turns into a recommended?

That said, I think scoring systems before weren't that useful anyway.

I don't think "value for money" should be included in a review process personally because how do you put a label on value? For some, $60 is less than an hours work, for others, it is $10 work. How do you put a value for money statement on a game? I think they should include how many hours a game takes to complete and how much replayability a game has in the details - that allows everyone to make a personal assessment of whether you feel like it's a good purchase at its current price.

I would never not recommend a game just because someone else finds it expensive, I would recommend it - and it's up to them to find out the price and decide whether they want to spend money.

[zealo]

So, basically, they are replacing a 10 point system with a 3 point system. I guess it is needed for the math challenged out there?

Honestly, when the scale for what is a mediocre game starts at 7 and ends at 9 with what is a great one its not much changes in reality, although its a nice thing they drop arbitrary scores in favour of actual descriptions.

[Joathen]

This is foolish and disrespectful in the extreme. Value per dollar is not an indicator of quality or thoughtlessness of art.

If a game is well made or notable in the review it is well made and notable regardless of pricing. That is the entire point of "score-less" reviews, reviews are not recommendation engines or value assessments.

Oh dear- would hate to hurt the feelings of a special snowflake artist by telling them that the mobile copy of Tetris they published isn't worth $60 even though it's "art". Saying price point shouldn't have an effect on the review is absolutely disingenuous; when you review something you can bet your ass it's going to be compared to other titles- especially within the same price range, and when a price is set higher than what the market feels comfortable paying than that is a detractor from the game and will sure as shit effect peoples' decision whether to purchase.

It's common and efficient to say "Title X may have it's upsides- but pales in comparison to Title Y which is cheaper and more accurately nails points Z, M and N." Sometimes titles aren't worth the money- or are only worth looking at if it happens to be in the bargain bin. Yes, SOME people might think nothing of dropping $60 on every title that hits the shelves- but those reviewers aren't writing for them, they're writing for the common masses who would think twice on shoveling money over for horse shit.

Then again- this from the same person that thinks opinions on games don't matter and have no merit.

[Beazy]

I always loved the GamePro magazine rating system. Screaming Red faces for a good game, happy orange faces for a decent game, and green sad faces for a shitty game.

[Edge-]

So we've got Joystiq dropping them before closing down. Kotaku doesn't use them. Now Eurogamer won't use them.

And for Evolve reviews, it actually seems like most sites posted initial, scoreless, reviews from their pre-launch playtime but are holding off on any scores until they get a chance to play it online in a live environment.

I like where this is going, hopefully we can do away with review scores altogether and people will actually have to start reading reviews again.

[Deleted]

If they also do constant updates to the scores then I'm fine....sort of 6 and 12 months down the road!

Still all comes down to ones own opinion of a game, LOL is a mega world hit but I hate that type of game, so if I was reviewing it I'd give it the avoid sticker

[Edge-]

If they also do constant updates to the scores then I'm fine....sort of 6 and 12 months down the road!

Polygon does that and it...kinda works. The problem is that Metacritic (which is unduly important to many publishers) only posts the first score. So, for example, with Sim City (2014), you would see Polygon giving it a score of I believe 9/10. When in reality, within 2 days of launch, when they were playing in a live environment and not on private media test servers, the dropped the score to 4/10 due to the fact that the game was horribly broken.

Even then, for many games with long tails and years of DLC/updates (especially MMO's), it's damn hard to keep someone, especially the same person, working on the game and updating the review with each bug fix patch or DLC.

[Blueobelisk]

This is foolish and disrespectful in the extreme. Value per dollar is not an indicator of quality or thoughtlessness of art.

If a game is well made or notable in the review it is well made and notable regardless of pricing. That is the entire point of "score-less" reviews, reviews are not recommendation engines or value assessments.

I don't think "value for money" should be included in a review process personally because how do you put a label on value? For some, $60 is less than an hours work, for others, it is $10 work. How do you put a value for money statement on a game? I think they should include how many hours a game takes to complete and how much replayability a game has in the details - that allows everyone to make a personal assessment of whether you feel like it's a good purchase at its current price.

I would never not recommend a game just because someone else finds it expensive, I would recommend it - and it's up to them to find out the price and decide whether they want to spend money.

Well price was just one parameter I was mentioning as an example. But to "recommend" or "avoid" a game is a poor system. You mostly compare games to other games (and not to itself). So maybe one month I'll have extra time or money to play/buy video games. Going to their website, there are a couple of "recommends." Okay, which is better in their opinion? I don't know, the information isn't quantifiable. Similarly, maybe I played through a bunch of "recommends" and have time for an "avoid" game. But which one? Are they all "never give these people a penny of your money?"

Either way, really how good a game is is a big factor in purchasing games, but in the real world people are going to be more selective so things like price per hour of gameplay or price per how good the game is is a major factor in whether or not a game is a worthy purchase over another.

[Zelk]

This is foolish and disrespectful in the extreme. Value per dollar is not an indicator of quality or thoughtlessness of art.

If a game is well made or notable in the review it is well made and notable regardless of pricing. That is the entire point of "score-less" reviews, reviews are not recommendation engines or value assessments.

Video Games aren't art lol

[Wilian]

Arbitary scoring is bullshit. This is step to right direction.

[Deleted]

More detailed the review is, as in points, more info you can get about buying or not buying. So big NO to this dumbing down.