Eurogamer drops review scores

Pretty brave. Most websites (hint hint) would rather take the easy route to get easy hits.

Starting today with our review of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, Eurogamer is making the biggest change we've ever made to the way we review games. From now on, we will no longer be scoring games out of ten.

In place of scores, we'll have one-line summaries for every review, and a new recommendation system whereby some, but not all games will be considered Recommended, Essential or Avoid. As a result of these changes, we will no longer be listed on the review-aggregation site Metacritic.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-10-eurogamer-has-dropped-review-scores

Also worth a note:

We are also changing (or firming up) other areas of our reviews policy, with the intention of ensuring that we always review the same experience that you get when you buy a game. This means that we will only review from final retail versions and online games will be reviewed after they've launched.

I think that's lame myself. Personally I like review scores and see no point in trying to do away with them especially in a way that excludes them from a place like metacritic. To me that just screams of egocentricity. "Hey everybody! Look at us! We're different! We're special!" I much prefer having a system where review scores can be easily aggregated for an overall picture instead of every different site being an "Island amongst themselves" type of mentality.

From a rating standpoint: a score can serve is a quick way (i.e. not reading) to get a general sense of games quality. Arguably: this still stands with a recommendation consensus that is less incrementally focused with digits.

While I can respect your opinion on that front, metacritic is a false perspective. An overall consensus based on specifically selected sites with various numbers of reviews, makes little to no logical sense; promoting a sheepish mentality for the consumer. I highly doubt it is anything as immature of a child screaming it's special: and more to do with serving it's user base.

In many regards: it's probably counterproductive to the sites popularity.

Good. Scores add absolutely nothing of value to reviews. All they do is cause arguments in the comments.

I'd argue they take away from it. As (IMO) most people will just wholly skip reading the content purely to focus on the rating.

Great move. I hope other sites, including this one, follow suit. I feel like scores have become a weapon of abuse for shady reviewers that are empowered by under the table deals from developers.

I disagree. I find that metacritic scores give me the best overall assessment of what the overall reviewing community thinks about any particular game. It may not be perfect but nothing is, I just feel that it's the best possible option there is for what it does. I'm not saying they're immature I'm saying that it's egocentric.

Actual analysis is always better than a numerical score.

Just read the dang words, they tell you a lot more.

How would this be any different though? If there are shady things going on for review scores currently then they would still go on so they get that 'Essential' recommendation too.

Not really. More focus would be given to the written text, and the reviewer would have to put greater emphasis behind his opinions that can't be scapegoated in to an enigmatic number. It would also take away the fears that some companies place on devs to achieve a certain and specific score to receive bonuses and such.

No scores eliminate the unreasonable demands and expectations of gamers who often solely use a fabricated and imaginary number over quality content of a legitimate assessment.

I don't see why the text of the review would be any different, they've always written how they felt about the game, the only difference now is that instead of a number they write down a word which best reflects that number ie. in place of a 9 to 10 they say 'Essential'. I'm sure publishers will find a way to continue demands on developers. Instead of ratings 90% or higher they get a certain number of 'Essential' reviews.

Never underestimate the ability of people to argue about anything especially on the internet.

"Game X only got a 'Recommended" rating, FLOP!" trolololol

But at least you have to read the review to know if they recommend it or not.

This will not stop petty debating. People will still find nitpicks in those new reviews and will bitch about them, while others defend them.

To be honest, I've never had an issue with review scores. I've just had issues with the actual readers.

No I don't think so. It's my understanding that they've simply replaced the number with either 'Essential', 'Recommended', and 'Avoid'. Instead of just glancing at what number a game got now you just glance and see what word a game got.

Fair point. I've always opposed scores or any form of rating (be it words or symbols), because it takes an incredible amount of effort to get people to actually discuss the features of the game and not the rating. I know it's naive of me to think that without ratings people would finally discuss the actual game, but I still think it would at least be easier to get to that point. Also, as opposed to your personal experience, I've never seen scores as useful in any meaningful way. I don't use metacritic. I simply read reviews and I feel I only need to read a few of them (and sometimes only one if I know the reviewer well enough) to determine if I'll like a game. And I've never made a bad purchase based on that method. But it would be selfish to demand all websites drop scores, because I've seen many people argue for them and frankly, they take nothing away from the review itself if all I'm interested in is reading it. It's just so tiring if you want to discuss the game and all people can talk about is how inaccurate the score was. ;-P It just something so many people can't seem to look past...

After all the result will be the same. People will skip the whole review, check the word (rating), and write their precipitated opinion about the game and the text.

They still have a score, though. It's just on a 3 point scale now.

Good move by Eurogamer and they are taking a giant leap forward.

Scores is just BS and add nothing to a review.

Good move - the rabid reactions to scores, often in disregard of/having not read the review text, is quite tiresome. Using the score as a summary statistic of the reviewer's impressions seems fine in theory but it doesn't seem to help the reviews in practice

But it will disrupt sites like metacritic if more sites abandon the numbers. That's a good thing.

Yeah I understand that sentiment. I mostly know what to expect from a game and if I'll want to get it well before the reviews hit. For seeing review scores is mostly just a curiousity thing because I like to see how reviewers felt about a game. I like scores because I find them to be a quick and easy way for me to quantify their opinion. I don't blame reviewers or scores for how some people reacto them. I just attribute it to, "That's why we can't have nice things" issue.

Good, I wish more sites would do the same.

I'm surprised a site has finally done it. Very smart and respectable move, if you ask me. Number ratings are bullshit. The only thing they're good for is being hyperbolic and selling games. Numbers make for good clickbait too. "Oh, that game got a 6?! I have to see why!".

I think the most obvious reason why this should be removed is that there's no universal score standard. One dude might take scores less seriously and give any thoroughly entertaining game a 9/10, while another person on the site is more critical and would give that game a lower score. Too often too you'll see someone take points off a game for a certain reason, and then forget to take off points when another game does the exact same thing.

When I decide if a game is worth buying or not, it's either a Yea or Nay and not some numerical score. Good choice by Eurogamer.

I strongly agree with this notion. Scores are practically meaningless since they cannot effectively justify the differences between scores. I read reviews that receive scores of 7 and the review reads as if the game is near perfect. Then you are left wondering how they came to that arbitrary final score.

i kind of like this, to some people a game is a 10, to others its an 8, but both scores are good and are worthy of a play.

some idiots out there don't buy anything less than a 9, but a 7 game can be more fun than a 9.

yup. In the end this is one of those moves that looks brave without really being brave. They're still feeding into the soundbyte/twitter culture by offering the canned summations. It's a move in the right direction, but it's still short of encouraging meaningful change.

Quite bold move, but I have to wonder whether other sites will take the same course.

scores are pretty dumb. i rather them just have a long list of positives and negatives listed about a game so that could help me choose. A score means very little and shouldn't be used anymore.

There's value in using a score for a review, but usually for an appliance. Most entertainment media is too subjective to be boiled down to a scoring system, and video games are no different. Eurogamer has balls for doing this, and I commend them on it.

They should have just kept the scores

Why?

The scores are easier to tell where on the spectrum they are, they could have just gone to 5 stars

Metacritic score and user scores are the best indicator of how good the games are. It's the same with movies, just go to imdb.com and check out the top 250 movies of all times, they are the best ever made based on the majority of people voting and chances are you will feel the same way thowards these movies unless you have a different kind of rare taste in movies.

When that been said, one single review score on a gaming site has very little to say and you should not judge your phurcase based on that single review alone. Some people are actually doing that and it's a shame because they miss out on alot of great games. I respect what Eurogamer is doing but it's not good for us consumers if all sites do the same thing because then we wont have a metacritic score anymore.

Honestly this is one of the bravest and smartest moves a gaming site can do, I really wish Gamespot would follow suit. No one reads reviews anymore, they just look at the number and automatically think a 7 or 8 is considered a flop (based on System Wars). Taking away the score review system would be beneficial for everyone and would help take away the ridiculous amount of hate it brings on these boards. Maybe then people would read the review instead of screaming "OMGz Itz got an 8, FLOP!".

@BattleSpectre: I disagree, from a consumer standpoint i believe only one it would really be benificial for are the developers and publishers because these scores really help to push the quality of the games forward, without these scores and metacritics developers might get lazy and that's no good for us gamers.

You know, that's a very good point, I didn't think of it that way before. The last thing we need right now are more lazy devs that push out half finished products.

Good. Scores add nothing of value.

@BattleSpectre: Yeah, it would probably get rid of alot of hating in the comment sections and that would be a positive thing but the downside if every gamingsite started using that ratingsystem Eurogamer gonna start using now could potentially lead to even more lazy developers and greedy publishers.

With a ratingsystem most sites has with the numbers 0-10 developers will strive for getting the number closest to 10. Without this rating system developers might settle with "recommended" and we will see less high quality games.

Bad decision. Eurogamer scores were the only scores that spoke the truth about most games.

Good.

And I say good because there isn't any standardization to the scoring system that sites, magazines and reviewers have agreed upon.

Not to mention the consumers who'll go haywire if a game gets an 8/10 because they think that is too low for a game they liked

Or that anything around 5-8/10 equals shit and a horrible game to be avoided at all cost.