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The Games So Bad, Even IGN Gave Them Less Than A 6
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i like the four scale review. it can be used with numbers but it's up to each person
1 = no, OR definitely not worth your time
2 = you might find fun in it but it's not for everyone, OR maybe worth your time
3 = worth your time
4 = you have to try it, OR very much worth your time
then go into specifics like gameplay, graphics, plot, etc. and i say dont bother with decimals, fuck em
very simplistic with time and its worthiness, but the bottom line of looking at a review is if i'm going to enjoy the hours i put into it
a 5 from 1998 isnt the same as a 5 from 2022, but to me a 3 out of 4 from any year means it might not be perfect but you wont be bored with it, and a 2 out of 4 means that if you want avoid it but you might like it you never know at least it's not a 1 out of 4 which means stay away from it as far as possible
A correction, around 12:40 you say that 7 Days to Die on Steam is a 9/10 compared to the IGN Console review low score. Which aren't the same. Steam doesn't do score, at all. What they do is recommendation (like Rotten Tomatoes). 90% positive is not 9/10 score. In theory each of those Steam recommend reviews could score it at a 52/100, which is positive, which lead to 90% recommendation. Compared to another game that is 50% recommended on Steam, but half the reviews would give it a 1/10 and half a 10/10, i.e. an extremely divisive game.
Onto your next point, about how patches can improve a game: the videogame industry suffer heavily from low quality releases. If every packaged food or car or office chair or underwear was released the same way videogames are, there would be rioting in the streets. So having the release review almost always stand as is, is the most powerful pro-customers tool we have to force better business practices from publishers. It incentivize publishers to release less unfinished buggy products, and to have that state a few weeks early, and to give reviewers the best possible version with decent time to do the review. Which when you know how bad it can be for reviewers, with broken products, heavy review guidelines, and not enough time, it would be ten time worse without this incentive.
So actually as a customers, I'm all for this system, and against some kind of policy of updating. Yes we get less accurate reviews for some products if we buy very late, but we get less atrocious products overall. I never read IGN (or other big mainstream site) reviews for my purchase decisions, and in a way I still benefit from this system, like you, like every gamers out there. And it's not like Steam or GOG user reviews aren't a few clicks away, and can be browsed and sorted by recent reviews and such things. It's not that big of a loss. The only real issue with that, is publishers got it and now routinely wait for the review window to close to add in-game shop, macrotransactions and pay-to-win. I'll support a very short very fast update review just for that, sure.
Now there may be a presentation issue. Yes those reviews should clearly state, in an immediate and very legible way, what are they reviewing. Including the date, the state (release product or update or whatnot), the version, what has been reviewed or not (some do or don't review the multiplayer par of a game, kind of things), and if the reviewer went to the end credits of the game or not. It shouldn't be in the body, nor buried somewhere, that information has to be front and center.
As to the Myst review, I disagree. You may be too young to remember, but Myst was a problem. It was more interactive stills than game, was not liked by a LOT of gamers at the time who were experienced enough to know what games could do, and yet a minority narrative of "this is a great game" slowly crop up. And kept rising, to the point where you are calling it a great game of the past in a Youtube video. It had at the time a real "this is bad for the direction of the industry, form over substance products" narrative, which isn't undeserved. I disagree with some of what that review said, but I understand the "we have to stop letting it slide" mentality. In that times reviews were HEAVILY influenced by publishers. We have nowadays some scandals or allegations of collusion or bad "journalism", but compared to the 90s? This is a kid's joke. So yes, wanting to set the record straight is even a desirable quality, and the reviewer clearly wrote their state of mind, so you as a reader know where they are coming from, you know that if you loved the original Myst, you can disregard that review. That's actually good professional practice. I'm not saying it's a good review, and I wouldn't have handled it like this, but this feel more like you went to take down IGN reviews and were on the hunt for examples to support your article, instead of the opposite. I agree with the sentiment, IGN is not a good place or a good site in my opinion, but the methodology is… iffy.
From 25:47, I don't know if this is a math mistake, or the same issue as above. But if you score 1 to 10, 5 isn't average. The average is 6 (especially in a commercial endeavor, where you're going to round up not down). That's basic math. Meaning that 7 is the lowest possible score you can give for something that is overall positive or "good".
And yes that mean the actual interesting scores are crushed between 7 and 9, with the occasional very rare 10. Again, that's just basic math, plus limited budget: if you have the money to buy 2 videogames a year, why would you even care about bad, subpar, meh or average games? Why even bother reading those reviews? You're going to make your selection from the best around, unless you are highly motivated by personal circumstances, maybe all your friends play a specific game, or maybe you want to play the sequel to your favorite game however good or bad it was reviewed. But if you want to be able to give a 1/10 to a DVD game with bad shooting mechanic, for most "gamers" customers, yes 6 is a low score, maybe even 7 is a low score if you're not an ultra enthusiast gamer with a lot of disposable income. The outlet should do a better job of explaining all of this, clearly too many people missed it, but I don't see any reasonable alternative if you want to give a single line recommendation. And customers are asking for that short recommendation.
And that's without talking about selection bias, which you forgot. A site like this will tend to review games that have high production, high budget, or high notoriety. Much less shovelware (not zero, just less of it). So the average score given by an outlet doesn't mean anything.
completely agree with the notion that anyone can be/should be accepted as a game reviewer. By that I don't mean that each and ever peron on earth has the same level of skill or insight or diligence when it comes to research, so of course there are people better or less suited to analytically report on something… anything.
Because, let's be honest, while I do think that a good journalist honed their skills, it's not really a craft or trade that requires a highly specialized education. Sure, it helps to know more stuff…. most of the time… but anyone who's passionate about something, who enjoys researching and digging deep into a topic can be a journalist…. the rest is finding good sources and you're golden
Was nodding along with all the stuff on reviews and review scores. (Though to be fair that 7 Days to Die review of only the port does clearly say it's reviewing only the port, even on the very top line.)
Especially good point about professional journalists, especially since recently we've had those Ubisoft and Activision/Blizzard scandals that wouldn't have been broken without actual, real investigative journalism.
I think there's a liiiiiiittle bit of a slant towards "go to YouTube for detailed reviews" though. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this can name three gaming YouTubers off the top of their head who deliberately go for games they don't like in genres they don't like. I agree it's still a better option though (and tbh I do think that the opinion of even someone who is predisposed to dislike the game is worth reading, as long as they're being intellectually honest, which the IGN guy plainly isn't)
Never forget how they treated Godhand.
I like when IGN didn't like that Days Gone had too many white zombies.
This is why I've started avoiding the number scale as much as I can.
I don't think I agree with some of the points in the video. One of the bigger complaints seems to be that ign categorisation on their website is shit. But what does that have to do with their reviews really?
Also the criticism about reviewing games because it brings clicks and money… but aren't you doing the same with YouTube videos? I'd rather read a review about a niche game because a company wrote about it then no review about the game at all.
And then all the talk about how some fan/critics favourite games are rated so low. Aren't reviews always subjective? I really hated how difficult Alien Isolation was and I disliked a lot of its mechanics. Are reviews only valid if they fall into a general consensus of scores?
Reviews are a guideline and information and not some objective rating of a game that everyone then has to hate or love.
I think the people that share that "ign reviews are so crap" meme are themselves a bit cringe because they fall into the trap of just repeating what other people say.
Also it's not like ign is just one person or a review robot.
Hey great video M! I think there is a interesting conversation to be had about number scores in general for movies as well, not just games. Keep up the great work though, I actually made it to one of your video on time instead of watching it a year late.
I give this video a 11/10, it has the perfect amount of water
Really excellent video. I'm reminded of my frustration during the PS2 era. I was (and am) a big fan of Dynasty Warriors and its ilk, and I found myself profoundly disconnected with the perception of them at the time. Review outlets, even as they still might call them "good," also routinely panned them as repetitious button mashers that recycled too many assets, ideas, and saturated the market with too many releases. And while there was (and is) some truth to those thoughts, they routinely ignored the fact these games were immensely popular with the base that played them. If they acknowledged them at all, it was usually with at least a bit of scorn, casting them usually as mindless knuckle-draggers. The fact was they generally performed quite consistently and smoothly. They were satisfying and cathartic to play for people looking for a sort of spiritual successor to classic brawlers and beat em ups. They were also mechanically iterative in ways that anyone other than a seasoned player might not ever notice: Character movesets were tweaked, AI improved, that sort of thing. The changes brought with each new release were generally worth the time and money to take a look at. All that's to say, they didn't Get It™.
All the more galling that today reviewers like Musou now since they paint Zelda on top of it while ignoring (or blithely downplaying) the game running like absolute garbage. But I digress.
I'm literally shocked that Myst has such a low rating. We love Myst in Bulgaria. Back in the days, there was a gaming show on TV called "Mist" which started around 9 pm and went till 4 am. They had everything – video game discussions, consoles, mobile games, anime, movies even a DJ was playing sick house and techno beats in the background. And after midnight, the host started playing adventure puzzle games like Myst 4 or Siberia or Schizm etc, and you get to phone in and tell him what to do in game. It was absolutely legendary. Sadly, the host passed away a few years ago… RIP Roro.
Dude wth. It's 730am I have had insomnia for 5 hours and I just found my login to leave this comment. Your videos are some of the best production quality and excellently narrated videos out there. I am gobsmacked as to how you're not on 1M+. What the actual he'll.
Yeah, lets give Madden an 8 out of ten, when they never change the gameplay or anything every single year.
Got two seperate copies of Cooking Mama Cookstar…. Not sure why people say you cant buy it anymore….
I swear it used to be possible to sort by review scores. Having said that the issue that have with deciphering which platforms the reviews were for…. It used to be A LOT clearer. The old ign ui would have which platform you were viewing. Actually what was really cool is that for platform “portal” the UI would change to reflect how to video game console looked. So it was REALLY clear what platform you were viewing. Also I appreciate they had different people review the games on different platforms. Ign was a really good website that entertained me to no end. I loved looking up old reviews and videos and see all the old games I would see on store shelves as a little boy and what they thought of them.
Unfortunately IGN wanted to unify the entire platform, so legacy article ui was updated. It’s a shame because they erased the “score breakdown” that was at the end of every article.
One minor thing to note is that 0 doesn't even make sense to me on a typical theoretical review score. If IGN already says a 1 is for games that barely work or stop working partway through, then what is 0 for? To me, a 0 would have to not boot or crash every 5–10 minutes, and any fixes or patches wouldn't work. At that point, why give it a 0? Why even review it? What can you even review? A 16-sentence write-up describing how you can't get the game to work would be damning enough, I think at least. I doubt the 0 score is for clicks because people search for reviews by name, not by score. To me, a zero means there's nothing to review. Like the SimCity 2013 launch, where people couldn't play the game, it would make sense to give the game a 0, but reviewers played before release, so IGN gave the game a 7. So only in very rare circumstances is a 0 justified. But gamers won't go back and change their reviews, and neither will big outlets, so a 0 would be too harsh and damage relationships between publishers and outlets. For games that are basically the same, reviewers could just give it the same score as last year's and link to the old review in that snarky and pithy way they love to do. Everything else I could have said, you said or was written in the comments.
As much as their reviews suck, I’m still subscribed strictly or game news
One thing that I think needs to be said too is that time frame matters. Your thoughts on something will change over time, so ultimately, what you considered a great game right after finishing may eventually seem better or worse later down the road. I have many games that I absolutely loved, that now when I think about going back to them, I don't really have a desire to. Which only goes to show how meaningless that Metacritic rule about not allowing changes in score, since I imagine there are plenty of people who might change their opinion on say, Bioshock Infinite or some other heavily-lauded game now that the dust has cleared and people have had more time to consider their overall feelings on them.
Oh yes IGN, the website that got a joke that I have heard and that I never forget:
"You can't spell the words ignorant and insignificant without IGN".
Anyway, interesting video, I enjoyed watching it.
But yeah this obsession with the scores is quite annoy if you ask me, personally I lost interest in that decades ago, mostly it was by the review of God Hand (yes, yes, surprise, surprise, the infamous God Hand's 3 score review), I personally played that game and it wasn't that bad at all, it had flaws yes, but not that bad for a 3.
But even with that, I personally lost interest in general with reviews by these big companies after the controversy with the review of the indie game: Dead Cells, anyone remember that one?, you know the one in which an IGN's "professional reviewer" literally stole word by word a review of a small Youtube channel? (which was not very popular or knowed at that time), after that everytime I have doubts with the reviews by just one simple question:
Does that "professional reviewer" played the game?.
After that I personally read some random opinions and thoughts in forums when I need help to decide if buy or play any game that I'm interested, I'm more interested in hear the good and bad aspects, and also a recomended price (mostly if I find the game in a sale).
Outstanding video. Whenever I think of number review ratings, I always think back to two reviews by roger ebert, one is for death wish two that he calls stupid and fascist and lacking in any substance or craft. And the other is to a more favorable review for shoot em up in which he says that the movie is funny and that he met the director personally and liked the cut of his jib. I love both those movies, but he only proved his bias and ignorance with the substance of those reviews.
I knew it was Mauler when you said film critic.
Shenmue 3 wasn't made for the average person, it's not perfect for fans, even for hardcore fans like myself. But it's by no means terrible, and I'm happy to have it flaws and all.
23:38 What? No! What kind of thinking is that? If I buy a product I would expect it to work properly and well you don't give excuses for poor performance.
I don't think this video needed to be this long
My personal pet peeve IGN review is the 3/10 they gave God Hand.
never trust IGN for anything, avoid them at all costs.
I think a score system in theory is fine. The issue is that the numbers themselves have been rendered worthless. As you pointed out, anything below a 7 is generally viewed as trash, there's no room for nuance. A fun-but-janky game will often get the same score as a fundamentally broken game. This problem stems laziness, as well as the industry's reliance on Metacritic for some ungodly reason.
Also, the console ports of 7 Days to Die were completely busted, and they're only now getting around to fixing it (or so they say). As for the PC version, it's complete trash and has been for years. It's been in "early access" for TEN YEARS and it's worse now than it was a decade ago. The game was really fun for the first few years, but the devs are constantly altering core mechanics and making changes that absolutely nobody likes. The game is also bloated and horribly optimized. So in this one instance, IGN is right to leave that 4.9 score up.
Hey M
Really great video!
The problems you mention in regards to out of date reviews are certaintly annoying, especially in this age of early access, open betas and constant content rollout and updates. Steam’s “recent reviews” Can certainly help someone, but it’s without scores and the reviews Can be as useless as any IGN review.
I’m at the point of watching gameplay first, or singing some seadog tunes before buying any game.
Anyway, sorry for the phoneposting.
Cheers.
Superb video. The obsession with review scores drives me crazy. Scores remove all the context of a review, and I dread giving games I review a score, even if I love the game. Games and other media have objective qualities for sure, but how much those objective qualities can affect someone's experience with a piece of media can differ greatly. Unless you're strictly talking about a product's functionality and technical aspects as accurately as possible, almost every review will be subjective. Thinking that anyone can mathematically equate a score from an individual's opinion on a game is a ridiculous notion. IGN is one of the worst examples of this, as they give silly scores such as "5.9" to games. How do you calculate an individual's opinion to a decimal point?
Steam reviews have their own problems (such as basically encouraging "meme" reviews that contain little substance and rarely actually say anything about the game), but I think the "thumbs up/thumbs down" system is better for aggregating reviews, at least for a marketplace. Rotten Tomatoes sort of does this, but in a significantly worse way, as it relies on review scores that are above or below a 6/10. Steam requires people to own the game, meaning that people have to be interested in the title they're reviewing. This is why a game such as Sonic Frontiers can receive an overwhelmingly positive score on Steam. It may be confusing as to why it's rated that high to some, but if you're interested in Sonic games, you're very likely to enjoy Sonic Frontiers. The 95% score isn't to say that the game is actually a 9.5/10, but to say that 95 percent of users recommend the game.
While browsing games on Steam, I've often found myself scrolling down to the review section to find out why a game got the reception it did. It's a "score" system that makes me want to look for more context behind the reviews. That being said, when I do scroll down, there will be a number of reviews that will just be a joke and nothing more, but some of the more informative reviews are actually better "simple" reviews than the ones you see at IGN. I can often discover a lot about the functionality of a game in a short amount of time. If I'm interested in a game, but it has a "mixed" reception on Steam, that actually means something to me. I'll look into the review section and will come out with a list of bullet points of the most common postive/negative aspects of a game.
It's not a perfect system by any means, but I find it far more reliable for gauging whether or not I should purcahse a game than something like metacritic. For the analytical reviews you can find on YouTube (and the type of review I like to write the most), there probably just shouldn't be any kind of scoring system at all. It actually kind of peeves me a bit when YouTubers like SkillUp put things like "I recommend/I don't recommend" in their title because of the analytical nature of their reviews. It often leads to people taking their word as gospel without even considering how the YouTuber got to that conclusion and how their preferences might differ from others. I'm not entirely innocent when it comes to this, and it isn't completely the reviewers fault. The structure of the internet and making money off this sort of business encourages this kind of behavior.
Anyways, the only issue I have with this video is the point that YouTubers inherently make for better critics. YouTube game discourse has its own issues (one of which I talked about in the previous paragraph). It really depends on the individual writing, and not all websites are structured like IGN. There are plenty of lackluster game critics on YouTube. Maybe even more so than a website. The problem with writing for a website is that you have to accept that your work is going to be of a more inconsistent quality because you have to constantly be writing about things you may care less about. I think it's fair to say that YouTubers are more consistent in their quality thanks to the creative freedom and schedule they get, but it isn't as simple as YouTubers being better.
There's a lot to be said as well about reviews used essentialy as advertisement for new games
I don't know if this is still a thing, but back in the day there was the threat of the "blacklist", where certain reviewers or entire websites just wouldn't receive early review codes because they were negative towards some high-profile title (Jeff Gerstmann and Jim Sterling come to mind)
did they improve 7 days to dies graphics and add a bunch more to the game since i remember it looking worse than in the clip u showed? always wanted to play it but it was too clunky when i tried, defo might give it a shot now since it looks like the devs have improved it a lot
You could have paid one dev to scrape the data, and it would have been faster and cheaper.
I love that you're starting this conversation, although I do think the problems run much deeper than can be solved with revising the scores and content of these reviews.
I really think you're a bit too hasty in saying that YouTubers are essentially a solution to the problem. YouTubers present what I guess I'd call a cult of personality problem. People are so willing to just go along with any notion that is popular or at least justified in some way in video game discussions. So many people just parrot some other popular opinion, especially if it's one from some YouTuber, even if they don't necessarily agree with it. It's like they're scared of their own opinion being "wrong" or something, and because the YouTuber has some false sense of authority on the subject (despite the fact that you can't be a better "enjoyer" of something), they feel more comfortable just parroting whatever they said. Of course, the experiences of a video game and its value are a personal thing, and really what something means can only be decided by the one who experiences it.
The problem then is, within video game discussion, the question is never "what is the value of this video game?" It is "how good is this game?" and within that I think we find part of why video games are considered an immature hobby. I think there's a lot of artistic value in video games, but I would never call myself a "gamer" (there are also other philosophical reasons I wouldn't as well, but I definitely wouldn't call myself a gamer specifically). When discussion and journalism about games is mostly centered around those ideas, which fundamentally are just circlejerks about somebody's opinions, YouTubers don't help the issue really.
The only real reason this all exists is because of how video games are so expensive, at least triple A ones, and how people can get recommendations about what to buy and all. To fix that, and therefore reviews there needs to be an examination of the ethics of video game distribution. The answer there, at least I think, comes from the fact that video games are software, and the solution would have to come from the same place that open-source and fsf stuff are looking into.
Cheers.
the myst thing is why i tend to avoid jrpg reviewers that don't focus primary on them.
as if i do other wise it's clear the reviewer does not like them and has a bias so the review is worthless.
I had the demo for Real Steel
The juxtaposition of saying IGN's writers aren't qualified writers with saying Youtubers are superior critics when they have an even lower barrier of entry feels a little odd. Youtubers have also deliberately misrepresented games to strengthen their argument in both positive and negative directions since they lack any sort of accountability to hold them responsible for such practices.
This isn't a condemnation of Youtubers over written reviewers (I'm a writer myself, but I also watch 5 hour video essays on single games in my down time), I just find that it's not so clear cut as saying one is superior to the other. Generally I agreed with most points on IGN's flawed system here. If a score was more about grading how a game achieved what it set out to do in the same way schools grade work it could be effective, but our natural inclination to compare makes it hard for any number system to really work as intended.