Review Overhaul Community Contribution Thread (R.O.C.K. O.N.)

For the most part I'm quite fond of the new review system, differences of 0.3 and such always seemed a little arbitrary. Some of the icons used seem a little corny/childish/cartoony, that's merely personal opinion however and doesn't much matter. I get the impression it was an intentional decision to go that route in any case.

My only real complaint is the apparent removal of the learning curve/difficulty of games, perhaps listed under the 'Game Details' section.

Now that we have our first round of reviews out, I can only want to complain more. This is almost as bad as the redesign of '05. Seriously, what the hell is this crap? These reviews are crap and now every game is going to be appear pretty damn equal. The emblems added really do nothing but humor people. Honestly, this was said to have been in the works for awhile now, but what could you have been fooling around with this whole time?

Worst review system, ever.

Now that we have our first round of reviews out, I can only want to complain more. This is almost as bad as the redesign of '05. Seriously, what the hell is this crap? These reviews are crap and now every game is going to be appear pretty damn equal. The emblems added really do nothing but humor people. Honestly, this was said to have been in the works for awhile now, but what could you have been fooling around with this whole time?

Worst review system, ever.

LTomlinson21

The emblems seem to be more of an inside joke than helpful.

Now that we have our first round of reviews out, I can only want to complain more. This is almost as bad as the redesign of '05. Seriously, what the hell is this crap? These reviews are crap and now every game is going to be appear pretty damn equal. The emblems added really do nothing but humor people. Honestly, this was said to have been in the works for awhile now, but what could you have been fooling around with this whole time?

Worst review system, ever.

LTomlinson21

The full negatives of this system won't kick in until at least a month's worth of reviews, when the lack of viable scores becomes much more apparent. Time will only make the situation worse, not better.

The worst feature of this whole scenario though is the inability to rate games with the .1 increment, forcing members to comply with this new rating system.

[QUOTE="Zeke129"][QUOTE="Razma"]

And as for the fact that Gamespot didn't consult you, boo freaking hoo. Razma

When they do something like this without consulting PAYING subscribers, it most definitely IS boo-freaking-hoo. Actually, it's boo-freaking-chargeback.

EDIT: I've linked to this thread in my signature. I strongly urge the rest of you to do the same. Catchy phrases encouraged.

Then cancel your account and stop complaining, things not even out yet and everyone is acting like its the end of the world.

If you tell me how to get my money back then I'm with you on this on....otherwise STFU SMARTASS! What do we pay them for if they cant show us respect?

Well, they locked my thread. Go figure. I guess it's harder to see negative feedback when you only allow one thread at a time. I think they're TRYING to ignore us. I've been angry at some of the things Gamespot has done in the past, but this one takes the cake. Here's a direct paste from my (now locked) thread:

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I didn't find an official thread for this, so I'll make my own. First, I do actually have a few praises of the new system. I like the idea of eliminating the 5 categories and replacing them with (de)merits. However, that's about the only thing I like about it.

The 1/2 increments are, in my opinion, a half-baked idea and a vein attempt at being different, or "edgy", as you may want to call it. Before, we had 90 different numerical ratings that games could get. Now, we'll have 20. That means a game like Big Rigs will only be 19 ticks away from a game like Ocarina of Time. Uh-oh!

Nearly all other credible review sites are using scores in 1/10 increments. You claim the halves will "simply reviews", but I don't see dumbfounded people stumbling around numbers like "8.7" trying to figure out what that damn decimal is. I believe fractions are taught in grade 3 math - so this isn't going to simply anything.

In fact, it will literally destroy the credibility of Gamespot reviews, and therefore, the entire site.I can't help but think this site will become the laughing stock of the review industry with people using comments like "Oh those stupid Gamespotters.... can't even figure out a decimal point!"

And did anyone think of what will happen to the older games under the old review system? Will all the scores be rounded off, effectively changing the scores of thousands of games (something you promised never to do)? Or, will you leave two separate review systems on the site? You know, to simply things.

Don't take this as an insult, but I can't help but think this idea is the brainchild of a night of a tad too much drinking. Hell, I have a hard enough time dialing a phone when drunk. I've never even attempted to tackle a number with decimals in it.

In summary? Keep the emblems idea, lose the ".5's only" idea. It will simply confuse things - the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve. I don't know if this post will change anything, but if it does - kudos to you, Gamespot. I think the community is unanimous in this thought.

Zeke129

Wow Gamespot...You took the one thing that made your reviews better than every one elses, how intricate and specific they were, and dumbed it down to a system I would only expect from some 16 year olds freewebs site. This is horrible. Now I won't know how much better a 9.5 game is from another 9.5 game. That extra .2, or even .1 made a HUGE difference. Now if i want to know how good a games graphics were compared to another game, I'll have to read 7 paragraphs of text instead of looking at a simple, easy to understand interface that creates a well weighted average gamescore. Until the game reviews are fixed, I'm getting all my reviews off of IGN because, next to your old system, they were the most intricate and detailed.

I really dis-like the new rating system. The medals seem like a good idea, but the .5 increments, not having the different rating categories, no more learning curve/dificulty, pretty much everything in it is just... bad. We are not idiots gamespot! The rating system was not complex!

I know no matter many people reply here saying it sucks, you won't change your mind, but still. Change it, please.

To not get ratings in the different categories is a huge drawback for Gamespot,they also make it .5 increments to even further take away from what difference was betweenreviews for different games. I think this make a lot of the "feeling" that gamespot had before the change with such a varied review system is going to disappear. One of my favourite things to do was to go down and go under the highest rating maybe once a month and see what games took place under different categories and se the scaling down from 9.4-8.8 or something like that. What will happen now is that probably every game on the list will be on two different grades and what purpose will this list have now? It will just rank some high rated games not order them like earlier because they will have the same score.

I usually used to look at the scores to get a summary of the games and get to know these minor things about how the sound is or what value the game has before I read the review so I know what I can expect from the game. This scores and the intro text with good and bad things was what made me decide if I would actually read the review or not. I don't want to have to look through a 3 page review of a game I'm not that interested in just to know if the sound is underwhelming or not.

The medalsare good, so you can gladly keep them but change the review system back please. It is what made you at gamespot the best reviewing site, great reviews with one of the best scoring systems. Now you have great reviews with a bad scoring system and that will force me to look at other sites to know which games are worth reading the reviews for and maybe I won't even bother to come here to read them anymore.

My only real complaint is the apparent removal of the learning curve/difficulty of gamesRandPC

Same here. I hope a GS Staff member will check this thread out and at least add that into the new review system.

*Sigh*... The whole "Simplify/dumb down/5 star" thing again... Same discussion that happened at Gamespy in 2003, when they moved to 5 stars. I am pretty sure nobody will read my boring stuff, but, here is my take on this:

People often defend "simplifying" with the following argument: "since the reviewer ends up guessing that last digit anyway, remove it!". It always sounds to me like "since the last wagon of a train is the most prone to accidents, remove it!". I mean, the last digit is always sort of "guessed"; the thoughtful writer knows it, the intelligent reader knows it, we communicate. Remember basic Physics? Any measurement is made of digits of which you are sure, and a last digit that is just an estimate. So when I read "length of 6,54m", I know it is 6,5m, and some more 0,03-0,06m. That is the correct way to read it!

So of course the 6.6 games and the 6.7 games are very similar and, in a different day, maybe their order would be switched (though I agree with some people here that, if the reviews are done with strict coherence, it is actually possible to be that discriminating; I rate my games in a 0.0 to 10.0 scale and I can tell the difference between the 8.0 and the 8.1 games -- you might not AGREE with my ratings, it is subjective after all, but *I* can tell the difference according to *MY* opinion; of course, it is much harder to keep this strict coherence across different reviewers...).This was never a problem with the measurement SYSTEM, it isan unavoidable component of any MEASUREMENT!

Now, think the other way round:at least, I KNEW THAT, IF THE SCORES WERE 0.1 DIFFERENT, THAT DID NOT MATTER MUCH. Now, the 6.6 and 6.7 games might become 6.5 and 7.0 respectively. If you read it face value, two very very similar games in quality will go to "significantly different" categories.

But wait -- the intelligent reader will not read it face value -- having figured this out, this reader will actually know that 6.5 and 7.0 now COULD be pretty much the same, depending on the games, and that last digit is not that meaningful. All we have done is removing the last wagon; we are back to "the last digit is sort of arbitrary, really".

Another borderline example: I KNEW FOR SURE THAT A 6.6 GAME AND A 7.3 GAME WERE QUITE DIFFERENT; NOW, IN A GOOD DAY FOR THE FIRST AND A BAD DAY FOR THE SECOND, BOTH GET 7.0. So the sparse reviewing system is not uniformly bad, but will screw up occasionally with games that are "borderline" between categories.

Summary: humans are not precise in rating games (and movies, and students, whatever), nor they should be (specially when opinions are involved). Exactly because of this imprecision, we have to ALLOW fine scoring, so these "imprecisions" can be kept small! Sparse scoring FORCES INCREASES in imprecision and, as a consequence, invites raters to be lazier about the scores. (I am a teacher, and a defender of the 0.0-10.0 scale as opposite to A-E or something; unhappily, the PASS/FAIL line has to be drawn somewhere, and that alone leads to perceived "injustice", independently of the rating system)

I add that one of the reasons that I liked Gamespot more than Gamespy is that they gave scores from 1.0 to 10.0 and the scores seemed coherent with the text reviews, at least the PC scores that I read, anyway (note: PC Gamer also gives 0-100 scores, but they don't seem nearly as coherent, so I do not like it as much).

Just my 0.5 dollars... Or should it be 0? :P

i don't understand one thing - what is the point of having the little images/emblems near good/bad section if you can just write it?

i mean there are emblems like "great multiplayer" - well why not just write under good section - game has great mp

emblems are stupid and i want graphics,gameplay, sound SCORES BACK!!!!!!!

A score is meant to give the reader an idea of what the game is like. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be an exact value of what a game should be. Besides, if readers wanted scores to be in smaller increments, then why not .05?

I didn't like the idea either myself, but I think GameSpot is justified by using these increments. The fact is, .1 of a difference doesn't change my preference of what a game is. .5 will. Either a game is barely great (8.0: 7.8-8.2) or simply great (8.5: 8.3-8.7) or barely superb (9.0: 8.8-9.2) and so forth. If you want to measure a game to a precise level, then simply read the actual review, its good and bad points, then decide whether or not you should rent or buy the game. A .1 difference in scoring isn't going to make that much of a difference, trust me. All of the games that I play; had they been translated to the nearest .5 increment, it wouldn't have mattered much.

"It's not broke? Okay, let's fix it!"

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. I waited until the first few reviews to come out to decide whether or not I liked this new system, and now that they're out, I hate it. It's a slap in the face to the users here at gamespot -- apparently, we can't figure out the difference between 8.7 and 8.5, so let's just call them all 8.5! Or, is it designed solely to stop the "lol 9.1>9.0 FLOP FLOP" stuff in System Wars....? It just seems like a de-evolution. I would've thought that as time went on, reviews would get more and more specific, not more and more general.

Please, PLEASE let users keep the .1 increment review system for user reviews.

I didn't like the idea either myself, but I think GameSpot is justified by using these increments. The fact is, .1 of a difference doesn't change my preference of what a game is. .5 will.

Genetic_Code

I hear you. And that is exactly the reason why the increments should be kept at 0.1 -- the 0.1 increments are a buffer to avoid 0.5 imprecisions; if a rater gets it "wrong" (whatever that means) by 0.1, no biggie. If he gets it wrong by 0.5, that might change your preference -- and, in borderline cases, there will be a 0.5 point indecision, since there is no finer scale.

The point is that the finest scale of a rating should be the one you just stopped caring about. By making it 0.5 steps, the message I hear is that Gamespot does not really care about 0.5 pt incrementes anymore (see my post above).

[QUOTE="Genetic_Code"]

I didn't like the idea either myself, but I think GameSpot is justified by using these increments. The fact is, .1 of a difference doesn't change my preference of what a game is. .5 will.

Thexder0

I hear you. And that is exactly the reason why the increments should be kept at 0.1 -- the 0.1 increments are a buffer to avoid 0.5 imprecisions; if a rater gets it "wrong" (whatever that means) by 0.1, no biggie. If he gets it wrong by 0.5, that might change your preference -- and, in borderline cases, there will be a 0.5 point indecision, since there is no finer scale.

The point is that the finest scale of a rating should be the one you just stopped caring about. By making it 0.5 steps, the message I hear is that Gamespot does not really care about 0.5 pt incrementes anymore (see my post above).

Exactly. Now that it's .5 increments, we may as well just round it off to the nearest whole number as that last digit is just a guess. And after you do that, you might as well just pick between 1 and 10 for the game. That will turn into a "good/bad" review system, and then eventually, all the reviews will say "This game is a game".

Okay, that's overboard. But I really like your "buffer" theory.

Here's a suggestion for a compromise if GameSpot are interested in that? I don't want one, but I'm willing to discuss it - are you?

1) We get back to the .1 increments which seems to be the biggest problem most people have with the new system.

2) We get back the breakdown box for Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, learning curve etc.

3) You can lose the formula for generating the final score to save you having to fiddle the different apsects.

4) You keep the emblems, I'm not a fan, but can see how they might help some.

5) We keep the new gamespace and review style with bigger screenshots etc..

Basically we end up with something that looks like this but with emblems and no formula:

DiRT review

I could learn to live with that, what do others think and more importantly what does GameSpot think?

Some good ideas here, I like the new emblems and the new look of screens and other stuff. What I say for fixing scores and stuff though is do it like IGN, rate the individual catagories, then rate the overall thing seperately, don't average them thats all that really needed to be fixed, and remove tilt since that would eliminate the need for it, thats all that really need to be changed.Phantom5800

Indeed, although I would say that tilt is quite an important, perhaps the most important category. It allows the reviewer to show how much his personal preferences have influenced the review. If you know you trust and have similar opinions to that reviewer you can be sure that it is a score you will agree with. If you don't, and we all have different tastes so some won't. Then you can look a the tilt and adjust the final rating yourself accordingly.

I think tilt is a great feature, it's another example of something that set GameSpot apart from other sites that's now been lost. I don't think GameSpot realised just how much we appreciated these features.

Info and links on the games are harder to find on pages now, the grading system is weird, and even the slide rating bars look boring.r4v3gl0ry

There seems to be a sticky thread so I am locking this one.