this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Back in the old days of 8bit computing, I remember a few magazines used to explain their scoring system.
Most magazines reviewed a game out of ten. A score of five would be an average. The game is just ok. Not brilliant but not terrible either.
A great game would be an eight or nine. Very rarely would a game receive a ten as that indicates perfection.
In today's world, the way people talk, it feels like a game needs at least an 8 (or 80%) or it's not even worth touching.
Broadly, I agree with what you're saying. Totally just devil's advocate-ing and speculating to provoke thought, so feel free to ignore. I wonder if the enormous number of games available plays into this. I can almost always dig around and find at least one 10/10 game from the last couple of years that I haven't played which is already on sale for cheap. Comparing that to a 7/10 game that just came out at full price... I'd almost certainly enjoy the 7/10 game, but I'd spend less money and likely have more fun with the 10/10. The newness factor may not be enough to bump the 7/10 game to the top of the queue.
With so many great games available an 8/10 might actually feel like a logical minimum for a lot of people, which may influence the scale that reviewers use. If people tend to ignore games with 7- scores and a reviewer feels that a game is good enough that it deserves attention, they may be tempted to bump it up to 8/10 just to get it on radars.
Meanwhile, back in the day there wasn't such a glut of games to choose from. And with better QoL standards, common UX principles, code samples, and tools/engines, games may legitimately just be better on average than they used to be, making it fiddly to try to retrofit review scores onto the same bell curve as older games. To reverse it, I can see how an 8/10 game released in 1995 might be scored significantly worse by modern reviewers for lack of QoL/UX features, controls, presentation style, etc, or even just be scored lower because in modern times it would lack the novelty it had at the time it was released.
This ignores subjectivity. What is a 7/10 for most gamers could easily be a 10/10 for a specific type of gamer. Rather than focusing on review scores people should focus on the niche of games that they really enjoy.
And this is why I don't read opinions from general review/gaming sites. For example, I judged whether I'll play Starfield purely on overviews from YouTube creators who focus on Bethesda RPG-s (Camelworks, Fudgemuppet et al) and space exploration games (Obsidian Ant). The opinions of FPS folks, Fromsoft freaks and D&D diehards is irrelevant🙃
Or, as I've always said, if 2001: A Space Odyssey was made today, it would score 4/10 on IMDB and people would complain that it's a slow slogfest with no action and boring dialogue.
Not to mention the subjectivity of what "7" means. I've tallied enough judges ratings to know that some people treat 5 as average, some people treat 8 as OK, and some treat anything below 7 as failing.