Build a Better Review System, Templates might help -- but they just as easily hinder Options

[ZarroTsu]

Wanting to write reviews, I decided I'd use the strategy discussed by one Yatzee Croshaw here.

The problem is that, because I don't give an "overall rating", this kind of review is rejected from the forum.

What reason is there for there to be an "overall rating"? Isn't it suppose to be what I think of the game? Giving it an overall rating because that fits your format is fine. But forcing me to follow this strategy isn't asking for what I think of the game; it's asking me for what you WANT me to think of the game. And that defeats the purpose of writing in general.

Moreover, their presence from a reader perspective is solely to ignore the rest of the review and judge the game on a given number. Some here might say they don't do this, but often times even they are guilty of it. Even I do it. But if these numbers don't exist, then it compels me to actually read the review. So...


Generic forum discussion question for the reasoning impaired:
Why do "Overall Ratings" exist? Are they there to help, or are they there to defeat the purpose of writing a review when you could just write a number?



This post has been edited by ZarroTsu: Oct 4 2012, 02:51 PM

[The Welsh Paddy]

I don't see why an 'Overall Rating' should matter too much, but... It would only take a few seconds to give one, so what's the big deal about not giving an overall rating?

Say you give the story a 8/10, graphics 5/10, sound 6/10 and gameplay a 3/10, then the overall rating would be a 5.5/10. It's easy to find out the average of all the ratings you've given per category.

If yer not sure how to figure out the average of a sum, then you need to add up each rating and then divide it between the amount of ratings... if you get what I mean. In the example I gave, it's 8 + 5 + 6 + 3 divided by 4, because there are four numbers.

This post has been edited by The Welsh Paddy: Oct 4 2012, 11:24 PM

[ZarroTsu]

Say you give the story a 8/10, graphics 5/10, sound 6/10 and gameplay a 3/10, then the overall rating would be a 5.5/10. It's easy to find out the average of all the ratings you've given per category.

If yer not sure how to figure out the average of a sum, then you need to add up each rating and then divide it between the amount of ratings... if you get what I mean. In the example I gave, it's 8 + 5 + 6 + 3 divided by 4, because there are four numbers.

To quote Yatzee's conclusive paragraph (I did link this article in the opening post),

You know, I have a long-standing grudge against the concept of awarding review scores to games, because I think it represents everything that's wrong about videogame reporting by treating every given game like some kind of kitchen appliance whose chopping blades have been slightly rearranged since the last generation and are now therefore precisely 1 point more efficient at dicing sweet potatoes. But if I did finally knuckle under to those bean counters at Metacritic, this is exactly how I'd give scores to games. Three separate marks out of ten for Context, Challenge and Gratification.

None of this buggering about with graphics or sound or anything else as consequential as the color of the wallpaper in an operating theatre.

Of course what I would definitely not do then is combine the three scores into some kind of "overall" value, because that's totally fucking meaningless. That'd be like having a meal where the main course was tasty but the dessert was disgusting, so you give it a final review of TASTGUSTING.