Dear readers, thank you for your patronage. This blog has experienced its fair share of ups and downs, but loyal readers like you keep it running (and keep its editors happy.)
I have a brief announcement for you, and it involves the rating guide for video game reviews on this blog. Since I started Don't Blame the Controller early last year, I and other reviewers have used a ten-point scale with half point intervals to score games. The system has worked well so far, but for a number of reasons I've decided to change it.
I've become increasingly disillusioned by video game reviewers on websites and in dedicated gaming publications. There seems to be some serious score inflation going on. Who knows what the cause of the problem is. Maybe there are too many games and too few journalists, and reviews suffer because any given reviewer can't spend an appropriate amount of time with a given game. Maybe corporate leadership or advertising departments put pressure on reviewers to give high-profile games inflated scores. Or maybe the corps of professional video game critics is simply not very good at what they do. It's a prickly, difficult question with no easy answer. But I feel confident about one thing: the 100-point scale and the 10-point scale (which this blog formerly used) doesn't help.
With a scale that runs from 1 to 100, or 1 to 10, there is a tendency -- whether conscious or subconscious -- to use only part of the scale. Let me explain. It's very easy to fall into a trap where a ten-point scale works in the same way as an academic grade scale, i.e., A, B, C, D, or F. In this trap, 90-100 are A's; 80-90 are B's; 70-80 are C's; 60-70 are Ds; and <60 is F. In effect, the 10-point scale -- which runs from 0.0 to 10 -- is reduced to 59-100. Thus only a fraction of the scale is used, and scores are inflated. Does every reviewer who uses a ten or 100-point scale fall into this trap? Not at all. But I worry that many do.
My solution is to start grading games in the same way I grade movies. On a four-star scale. I find the four-star scale to be less inelegant and awkward than the ten-point scale, and less open to manipulation -- intentionally or otherwise.
According to the new scale,
**** = Masterful
*** 1/2 = Excellent
*** = Good
** 1/2 = Fair
** = Poor
* 1/2 = Bad
* = Awful
1/2 * = Dreadful
ZERO = Unplayable
I will NOT be changing the old scores, and will keep the old scoring guide at the top of the home page for reference. All future games will be scored according to the four-star system.
I hope this new system works well for the blog and for you, the reader. And I hope it inspires other critics to adopt such a scale.
Sincerely,
Evan
Editor-in-Chief
I have a brief announcement for you, and it involves the rating guide for video game reviews on this blog. Since I started Don't Blame the Controller early last year, I and other reviewers have used a ten-point scale with half point intervals to score games. The system has worked well so far, but for a number of reasons I've decided to change it.
I've become increasingly disillusioned by video game reviewers on websites and in dedicated gaming publications. There seems to be some serious score inflation going on. Who knows what the cause of the problem is. Maybe there are too many games and too few journalists, and reviews suffer because any given reviewer can't spend an appropriate amount of time with a given game. Maybe corporate leadership or advertising departments put pressure on reviewers to give high-profile games inflated scores. Or maybe the corps of professional video game critics is simply not very good at what they do. It's a prickly, difficult question with no easy answer. But I feel confident about one thing: the 100-point scale and the 10-point scale (which this blog formerly used) doesn't help.
With a scale that runs from 1 to 100, or 1 to 10, there is a tendency -- whether conscious or subconscious -- to use only part of the scale. Let me explain. It's very easy to fall into a trap where a ten-point scale works in the same way as an academic grade scale, i.e., A, B, C, D, or F. In this trap, 90-100 are A's; 80-90 are B's; 70-80 are C's; 60-70 are Ds; and <60 is F. In effect, the 10-point scale -- which runs from 0.0 to 10 -- is reduced to 59-100. Thus only a fraction of the scale is used, and scores are inflated. Does every reviewer who uses a ten or 100-point scale fall into this trap? Not at all. But I worry that many do.
My solution is to start grading games in the same way I grade movies. On a four-star scale. I find the four-star scale to be less inelegant and awkward than the ten-point scale, and less open to manipulation -- intentionally or otherwise.
According to the new scale,
**** = Masterful
*** 1/2 = Excellent
*** = Good
** 1/2 = Fair
** = Poor
* 1/2 = Bad
* = Awful
1/2 * = Dreadful
ZERO = Unplayable
I will NOT be changing the old scores, and will keep the old scoring guide at the top of the home page for reference. All future games will be scored according to the four-star system.
I hope this new system works well for the blog and for you, the reader. And I hope it inspires other critics to adopt such a scale.
Sincerely,
Evan
Editor-in-Chief
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