Ranking of Harshest, Kindest Game Reviewers 23
GameDailyBiz has an interesting feature up right now discussing which sites and magazines are harshest and kindest with their game reviews. Surprisingly the study shows that, overall, the multi-platform online sites aren't terribly biased, with some being somewhat nicer than the average and some somewhat harsher. Single console gaming magazines end up having the most forgiving coverage, with mainstream news sources being the harshest critics.
Surprize! (Score:5, Funny)
No way! In a group of sources, some are above average and some are below? Who could have guessed?
Re:Surprize! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Surprize! (Score:2)
You idiots (Score:2)
Re:You idiots (Score:2)
Hell, I've had a year's worth of AP Statistics in school - probably more than most people are ever exposed to - and even I'm confused by them. :)
Re:You idiots (Score:1)
Scales? (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at GameSpy. Their overall scores are out of five stars, with the possibility of half stars in the score. The overall score that a game can get is severely restricted, and as long as it's decent, it's almost guaranteed to get seven stars or higher - a score that most of us would consider to be "good."
On the other hand, look at the mainstream media. Papers like the USA Today [usatoday.com] and the Detroit Free Press [freep.com] grade games on a scale of one to four. This is even more restrictive...but not in a good way. A game can only get one of two positive scores - a three or a four - and it's usually got to be bloody amazing to reach the four star level. Most of the games that I see get revieved in papers tend to get scores of two or three stars. That's not terrible, but I know that most of the people I know tend to think of a 3/4 as being much worse than a 7/10. Maybe it just seems harsher. I'm not sure why that is, but observations that I've made over the years seem to back that up.
The scoring systems vary from site to site and from one kind of media to another, and that could be enough to make up the difference.
Re:Scales? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think in many ways it's good to limit it in this manner. There is a significant amount of error in all these ratings, and they are trying to give a quantitative score from qualititive opinions. If one site gives Halo 2 a 9.5, and Half-Life 2 a 9.6, does that mean Half-Life 2 is than Halo 2? I think the scale gamespy has is very reasonable, and it gave both games 5 stars. There is no way numbers could tell you which of these games you'll like more, but they do reflect that they are both excellent games. If you want to know which one is better and for what reasons, you are just going to have to go read the review.
Re:Scales? (Score:3, Informative)
I used to go straight to gamespot, cause they have a history of being tough. Now, I can legitimately compare all scores at the same time with gamerankings.com. They throw out magazine scores sometimes too, just not the review.
Re:Scales? (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're doing is what I use GR for too - seeing a list of all scores in one convenient place - but it gives me a chance to bring up a practice that a lot of people use GR for that I think is really bad, and that's simply looking at the average score for a game and taking that as a definitive rating. GR themselves encourage this by heavily feat
Re:Scales? (Score:1)
I think it was supposed to be 7 half stars out of 10 half stars.
Damn lies about statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
According to TFA, multiplatform magazines were the most forgiving. Single platform magazines were the second harshest, right behind mainstream media.
That said, I would like to see some more information about how Game Daily came up with these absolutely magical numbers. In particular, I'd like to see how all four of the categories of publications could score below average. Is there some secret "fansite" category that isn't shown in any of the graphs but is clandestinely throwing all of the numbers all out of whack?
Re:Damn lies about statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
If you RTFA closely, you'll see that they're comparing it against GameRankings.com. So, yes, it IS the secret, hiden, fansite category that's throwing off the numbers.
Who Cares? (Score:1)
Personally, I rely on word-of-mouth review way more than game site reviews or newspaper reviews. (Those are the inky paper thingums, right?) I would be far more likely to buy or not buy a game because of some off-hand chatter in an IRC chat than because of any review site.
And then there's the tried and true way: Rent it or play it at a friends house, decide for yourself if you like it, then decide if you want to buy it, or borrow it, or wait til' it's cheap and buy it, and not buy it and all. Or whatever.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:1)
Bah (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Read the article earlier... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one of the main things I look for when reading a review. Descriptions of the game, storyline, etc, are relatively useless information to me in a review. I'm more interested in understanding how they relate to the game in terms of other games they've liked, or what they were personally thinking during their first impressions.
Most reviews are too kind (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe this may have come about due to the American educational system's common method of ranking student work wherein 70% is average and anything below 50% is ignored as being poor.
Meh. (Score:2)