On the scoring system

Before I get into the topic of this blog post, just a quick update. For the past several weeks I’ve been mostly focussing on reading through my first draft and writing a summary so that I get a better idea on how to approach the second draft. I am now at the end of reading and starting the process of organizing and rewriting most of the book with a darker tone. I will post updates about the progress, but keep in mind this might take several months to complete. I also reviewed a Windows PC / Xbox game, Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition and Black Panther (movie) and this is what prompted the current blog post.

Through the years I followed various critics, review sites and magazines that adopted their own scoring systems for games or movies. And here I want to address my biggest issues with some of them and how I decided on my rating scale.

So first off, let me start by saying that I really don’t like the 1 to 10 scale, or even worse, the 1 to 100. The main reason for that being is because the 10s or the 100s are often understood as perfection and many reviewers will never give a game, movie, or whatever else a “perfect score”. And for good reason too – if you think about it, what in the world is an absolute perfection? And even if a movie or a game would ever be perfect, then it could not ever be topped. At best, another game could be perfect, but not perfect-er and so it would break the scale. On top of that, and this is my experience from the university, grading materials from 1-10 doesn’t help a lot, because anything under a 6 is a fail. So essentially, the positive scores are from 6 to 10 and at that point, does it really matter if a grade is a 3 instead of a 4? It’s insufficient either way.

In the past I have tried using a 1 to 10 scale, but quite soon I realized that often it is just too fragmented even on the positive side. Something that I completely enjoy? Easy 10. But what about those movies or games that are excellent with some flaws? When are there enough flaws to warrant an 8 instead of a 9? With more reviews it became, at least for me, harder instead of easier. Especially because I tried to be consistent and then compared movies or games side to side and the 8s and 9s, as well as 6s and 7s blurred together and then I would perhaps divide the scale even further, starting with 8.5 and 6.5 and so on and so forth and at that point – where does it end?

Now having said that, there is perhaps some value in such a system where there are plenty of reviewers. A good example for movies is IMDB. Once again, a 10 is impossible to achieve. Currently the highest score on the site is 9.2. And even still, the end scoring needs to be interpreted further. Namely, essentially all of the movies having a score of 7.0 and above are absolutely worth watching if you like the genre. And more often than not, niche movies that you might absolutely adore, might receive a worse rating than some others that are considered generally loved.

So having said that, I prefer focussing on a shorter scale, from 1 to 5 only. That way, the 5s are not absolute perfect works of art, but they are masterpieces of the genre. And there might still be some occasions where I will use half of a point, like 4.5 or 3.5, but I will try to keep it to a minimum. Furthermore, you might be seeing a lot of 5s or 4s, and that’s because I simply don’t have the time to play through games I don’t like or I think are a waste of time, or watch movies and series that I know won’t appeal to me. Of course there might be things that I greatly anticipate that will be disappointing and things from the past which I might review one day that were not so great. Still, adding all kinds of different reviews, especially bad ones, will only change if I start getting some revenue from them (which I’m not counting on – I’m doing it for fun honestly).

As always, feedback appreciated and thanks for reading!