Many media outlets from blogs to professional outlets have some sort of rating scale for their reviews. Publishers release games early to these outlets to give them an ample amount of time to conjure their thoughts and post their reviews around the game’s launch date. These reviews often come with a review “score” usually something along the lines of a 1- 10 rating scale.
This is where we get to a moment where readers generally seem to just look at the score not the actual content of the review. We’re going to look at this argument with the idea that the video game industry could easily do away with the “scale” of grading a game. A game in this day in age has everything from a story, characters, gameplay, multiplayer and all sorts of features to be taken into account when judging a game. If the video games industry were to do away with a grading scale, words would then be judged on the review. This becomes important because it not only judges reviewers integrity but their facts and content. It would take away the useless and baseless argument over “why game X got a better score then game Y” when each game is different.
If a reviewer can clearly state in their review why the game lacks or excels in certain areas and provide a well thought-out review without adding a score, more power to them. If you add a score to that review, people generally will simply gloss over your review, look at the score and then comment and criticize your review score if you are different then the rest of your fellow outlets without looking at your reasons for backing up that score. People have become to obsess wondering what this particular outlets score is going to be or what grade a new title will receive.
Games should not be automatically guaranteed any kind of score right out of the gate no matter what the “journalist” or publisher dictates. It appears from the way triple a titles have been “graded” scores don’t seem to go below a 6/10. If we got rid of review scores all together, readers will undoubtedly be concentrated more on the effort put in the review. “Journalists” would then be judged to a higher degree and there would be a greater amount of quality and not quantity within the industry. Publishers and developers also need to realize that they shouldn’t concentrate so much on the idea that they need to make a game as best they can so they can earn a certain score among the media. They should be concentrating on making the best game they could possibly pull together and gamers should be excited for a new game and not the “score” of the game.
