Scoring policy
So the whole game scores issue. I’m pro-game scores. I know that’s terribly uncool for an amateur follower of new games journalism like myself but I use them myself as a consumer when reading sites that use them. I understand that they’re just a shorthand for something more complex rather than any attempt at objectivity. I don’t think they detract from the main text in any serious way and so I’ll use them.
I’m sick to back teeth of people saying that reveiw scores don’t mean anything, this is quite clearly utter rubbish! Lets assume they’re meaningless, I do a magic trick! Pick any reviewer you like who has writen reviews with a number at the end and if you tell me the names of the game they reveiwed and the number at the end I’ll use my psychic powers to tell you roughly whether or not that reveiwer thinks that game is any good. That’s magic! How else could I know? We’ve agreed for the sake of arguement that the number is meaningless so the only information I was given were names of the games so I must know by magic! I could go on but I think that’s quite sufficient for a reductio ad absurdum of the position that the numbers don’t mean anything.
For the moment I’m going to try using the standard metacritic type score that everyone is used to, marks out of 10, roughly the same scale as Eurogamer (so just a little harsher than most).
I’ve got another idea for a scale that I’m tempted to use but I’m wondering if it would actually be useful. I’m considering stating how much I’d be willing to have paid for the game if I hadn’t already bought it. This will of course be highly subjective but that’s actually quite a good thing because it’s very obviously subjective so hopefully people will realise it’s subjective and not fall into the trap of thinking I’m trying to achieve objectivity just because I’m using numbers. On the other hand my buying habits are unusual and I’m worried the scale would bare no relation to anything other people could understand and it would basically wind up being a 0 to infinity scale. Perhaps I’ll give a recommended or not recommended and list the price it’s currently selling for. I’m not sure, I’ll have to think about this.
One of the main problems is that at the moment my scoring system can’t be radical because I can’t assume that if someone does find my site that they’ll do anything more than glance at the final score. Actually maybe I’ll just invent a deliberately obscure scoring system to catch peoples interest.
