Don't review games with a score--how about a price instead?

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fattypants

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I don't have the know-how or the motivation to do it myself, so I'm gonna just throw this out here in hopes that someone will.

I'd like to see a review site where instead of assigning a score to a game/film/music album, you assign a price to it.

So if you wanted to indicate that a game was awesome, you'd say "I'd pay up to $90 for this game, because I know I'd get at least that much money's worth from it. The mod tools they provided to extend its life and the fantastic production quality and length of the game itself make this game well worth this amount."

If a game was mediocre, you'd assign a value of, say, $25 to it, telling your readers "buy this game when it hits this price. You'll get your money's worth then, but at $60, don't even bother."

If a game was not even worth pirating, where you felt your time had been wasted, assign a score of $0 or lower, saying "This game isn't even worth your time. If someone were to pay you to play it, then it might be."

Then, at the front of the page of the review, you could have it adjust for inflation and currency exchange automatically.

If multiple websites started doing this, it would encourage developers and publishers to think about how people perceive the value of their games, so instead of trying to sue everyone who pirates it, they make a game that is worth the price they release it for.
 
CAG does something like this. They'll do a review and give it a rating (Outstanding, Very Good, Fair, Poor, Awful) as well as a recommended buy price.
 
Pac-Man said:
CAG does something like this. They'll do a review and give it a rating (Outstanding, Very Good, Fair, Poor, Awful) as well as a recommended buy price.
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Nice! I'm going to go to them for reviews more often.

I would love to see more sites doing that, too.
 
It's not a bad idea but I think there's probably too much collusion between the publishers and the reviewers for it to happen at most places.
 
Interesting concept. You place a price you would be willing to pay but doesn't that really end up with the same result? Both are numeric values and subject to personal opinion.

I've always felt that if you could get to know the reviewer better and see if your tastes are similar than that would be a better way to gauge a new release.
 
That's really far too subjective. Someone who doesn't have a clue and more money than sense like Beyonce might feel Rock Band and its full peripherial set is totally worth $1000.00 because that's how much it costs her band to rent their instruments when they do a performance on Jay Leno. Likewise, certain overly rich investment bankers might care less about $10,000.00 and feel that's what the game is worth to them.

The value of money is so subjective depending on your status, reasoning skills, wealth and income that a dollar value would tell you little without knowing the reviewer well.
 
Ya price is a big problem because it really varies per person, more than a numerical rating. I mean a person can do reasonably well in terms of trying to keep consistent ratings. So while it will reflect their opinion, it can be internally consistent. Money though, that is much harder. What is worth $50 to me may not be to you. Also what is worth $50 to me now could change as I make more or less money. Also people might have different limits. Maybe I say a game is worth $50, and that is my highest praise because I will never pay more than that, when someone else says it is worth $100 and that is just average for them because they'd pay far more than that.

There's no perfect system, but I only think this would make it more difficult.
 
I don't like any kind of rating system, but the reason sites use one is due to readers. Readers expect and demand scores so they have to be used. I've heard big professional members of the game press talk about not liking scores but being forced to use them due to readers and even due to the pressure of being on Metacritic to get more recognition.
 
I find reviews of games to be pointless, mostly anyways. There are games that got awful ratings everywhere and I really enjoyed them. Then there are games that got such amazing reviews that I bought em and was like wtf is this crap.

Now I inform myself through forums and playing the games at friends houses.

This idea doesn't sound too bad though, it would make me want to read reviews a bit more.
 
Do that, as well as fix the current rating systems. Average should be 5/10 not like 7-8/10 or whatever which is NOT BAD.

It should be very rare for a game to get 8, 9 and incredibly rare for a game to be 10.
 
Derangel said:
I don't like any kind of rating system, but the reason sites use one is due to readers. Readers expect and demand scores so they have to be used. I've heard big professional members of the game press talk about not liking scores but being forced to use them due to readers and even due to the pressure of being on Metacritic to get more recognition.
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Yeah, a rating system isn't great, but I dont even read the core of reviews anymore because people dont know how to review a game without spoiling it. I dont like going into games expecting to see X, Y and Z. Unless its a game that can't really be spoiled (DNF isn't really a game that can be spoiled for example, lol).

I think the only valuable part of the review is the paragraph at the end where they sum things up, its all I ever read these days.
 
WBurchnall said:
That's really far too subjective. Someone who doesn't have a clue and more money than sense like Beyonce might feel Rock Band and its full peripherial set is totally worth $1000.00 because that's how much it costs her band to rent their instruments when they do a performance on Jay Leno. Likewise, certain overly rich investment bankers might care less about $10,000.00 and feel that's what the game is worth to them.

The value of money is so subjective depending on your status, reasoning skills, wealth and income that a dollar value would tell you little without knowing the reviewer well.
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You could say the exact same thing about a traditional review, except with this way you can actually put a tangible concrete number instead of arbitrary 8/10. Also, most reviewers probably don't have a lot of money so they're likely to reflect the average income range.
 
Spillreview does this with their movie reviews. They put in into categories of whether or not a movie is worth paying full price ticket, rental only, etc.Silly, enjoyable reviews but its hard to take them seriously sometimes heh.

And unfortunately games/music/movies on release are always set at standard pricing. A review that tells you a game is only worth $20 instead of it's release retail $60 doesn't do much good because it couldn't possibly effect the price. And well... if you tell readers you should only pay $20 when they can't get it for $20 doesn't do much good.
 
Yeah, there is a few areas where reviews by price falls apart. One is location of the reviewer and the reader. I'm Australian, saying a game is worth £43.25 means sweet fuck all to me, you can adjust for currency exchange, but games aren't sold for the same price everywhere. Release prices in the US might be $50USD, but in Australia they're more like $100AUD, which is about $110US at current exchange rates. Then you have how much the reviewer values games vs price. Personally, these days I'm far more likely to buy a game for full price than I was 3 years ago because I have more money and less time these days. Then you add to that games that have subscription services, games which are multiplayer in nature and are more valuable at release than they are a year or two from release (saying a multiplayer game is worth $15 might be great, but by the time the game actually reaches $15 if no one is playing it anymore it might only be worth $5 :p).

The more I think about it, the more I'm happy with a 0-10 system. I'd just rather reviewers paid attention to the 0-10 system and had a decent spread throughout the range instead of like now where most games are 7-9 then randomly give games they didn't like <5 which may actually be just as good as a game that got 7/10 just one week earlier.
 
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Creative idea, and I like the spirit of that idea in a way. But there are a lot of games I wouldn't consider crap, but I just wouldn't care to spend a cent on either. Train simulators, certain sports games, ect... There's just some stuff that you might respect, but you know you just subjectively don't want for yourself.

I think of Metallica. Some of you think their music is the best, some of you have no care or interest in it and would rather not listen to it. But no matter what your music tastes are, I think almost anyone would agree that they deserve the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
 
Dollar value is always the metric I talk to our readers about when referencing game worthiness.
 
I really do not see how different people with different incomes causes a problem. Ya some people make millions in a year but do those people not goto the store and purchase the games at most for the same $60 the rest of us do? Games have mostly settled on not more than $60 for a game so you would say a great game with a meta score of 95 or so is worth $60. And things easily go down from there. Just because a person is super rich does not mean they are retarded and have no sense of value.

Also alot of reviews like so say things like pick it up on sale or wait till hit hits the bargain shelves. Everything can be placed in relation to other game prices and the starting MSRP for a game. And it will not matter how rich or out of touch you are that is the same for all of us.

I do think generally it s a good idea especially for single player games which most people view as more of a piece of temporary entertainment. Is this game worth $50 or will it simply be too short or crappy. But the thing is for alot of single player people it does not matter how bad a game is at some point the price will come down to where they say I want to try it, not really any different then waiting to rent a movie you know is bad and watching it anyway. Lots of people do that.
 
Portal 2 is a good game. But it is at most 6 hours long. Because it is so short I would not pay full retail for a 6 hour game, but I wouldn't mind spending $15 on it. Fallout new vegas was also a good game, and about 1 gazzilion hours long, so I don't mind spending full retail for that as much.
 
Tudz said:
Yeah, a rating system isn't great, but I dont even read the core of reviews anymore because people dont know how to review a game without spoiling it. I dont like going into games expecting to see X, Y and Z. Unless its a game that can't really be spoiled (DNF isn't really a game that can be spoiled for example, lol).

I think the only valuable part of the review is the paragraph at the end where they sum things up, its all I ever read these days.
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It is very hard to write a review and avoid some amount of spoilers. If one part of a game greatly affects your opinion one way or the other I view it as an obligation of the review to try to mention it in the least spoiler filled way possible. There are very few good writers left doing game reviews, but I rarely read them anymore. I might skim a review once in a great while to try and catch any mention of things that might bother me in a game, but for the most part I just ignore them all together.
 
Interesting idea, although using an open scale would be far too subjective (based on the given example of a game potentially being worth 90$ or more). I would never consider a game being worth more that it's full retail price. In that regard if such a system was used, I would prefer it to be based on a scale ranging from 'not worth purchasing' to 'worth full retail price' as a maximum.

On a side note, I believe people tend to focus far to much on the final metric -- in a good review the actual article is just as important as the final notation. And I do not like absence of notation either; I've been though quite a few reviews still not being sure if the author liked the game or not...
 
including a list price or recommend buy price is OK but there are TONS AND TONS of games out there that provide hours upon hours of gameplay and they are relatively cheap......steam sales ftw and arcade games ftw on 360/ps3 (although after the credit card phuck up on Sony's part lol)
 
DeathPrincess said:
Portal 2 is a good game. But it is at most 6 hours long. Because it is so short I would not pay full retail for a 6 hour game, but I wouldn't mind spending $15 on it. Fallout new vegas was also a good game, and about 1 gazzilion hours long, so I don't mind spending full retail for that as much.
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This is why it's always hard to do something like that.
How do you put a dollar value on the entertainment you get? For me, Portal 2 was well worth the $50... sure the single player was short and the co-op doesn't offer tremendous replay, but I don't feel cheated having bought it at full price.

The skip/rent/buy metric is a good way of cluing people into the replay or ongoing value a review sees in a game. (And had I wanted to play it on PS3, Portal probably would have been a rental). But is more based on just if you'll want to spend more than a week or two with the game.

I understand the logic of reviewing to a price, it's really hard to tell for many of the smaller indie / download only games if the reviewer is looking at it as a game, or as a $15 game. From dust is a perfect example right now, it's getting high marks, but about every review complains about the lack of sandbox modes and the somewhat repetitive mechanics. Would it still get the positive review scores if it was a $40 title with the same underlying problems?
 
The main reason I like seeing prices as opposed to point values is not so much for the consumers (while it's nice for them to have an idea what a game is worth).

If consumers always looked at games in terms of "Is this worth my money", it would make the developers andpublishers think really, really hard about making good games, because they'd know consumers would assign dollar values to their games right out of the gate instead of assuming $60 is always acceptable for every game.
 
I wonder if such a rating system would cause publishers to stop sending out pre-release review copies. In some ways I think it would bother the marketing department at a publisher more if a day before release consumers see 10 reviews all saying their $60 game is only worth $20 compared to 10 reviews saying their game is 5/10. I mean face it, there's fuck all games that are worth their release price when you look at them with a critical eye and this has been true for as long as I have been a gamer, especially since games drop in price relatively fast, its nothing new (though it does seem the price of games drops faster now than it used to "back in the day"). That doesn't mean for a particular individual a game isn't worth its full release price though.

I dunno, I still dont like a monetary rating system for games. I dont mind the buy/rent/ignore system, but an actual dollar figure just doesn't seem like it would be fair or representative in many cases.
 
How good a game is, is only a small factor in the price. Other factors, like length of the game, how saturated that game segment is, etc. affect price, or what people are willing to pay for something.

I'd pay $2 for Angry Birds and $20 for Duke Nukem Forever, but Angry Birds deserves a higher rating. How stupid is DNF when the outhouse in the western town (apparently made of paper) didn't even have a hole in the ground, under it. Where's the toilet humor? But, it provides half a day's entertainment. While Angry Birds provides just a few score of minutes.
 
The sad thing is that it still won't change what they let in their pockets. If it was done by price, the next Halo would be worth $300 according to damn near every reviewer that will be inevitably paid off to review the shitheap.
 
I feel like almost anything that should be rated, should be assigned a price users are willing to pay out (or, should be willing to pay out)
 
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