Wondering What You Think
I know that I run things a bit different than other sites and I am fine with that. I know I started off with saying that I’m also trusting in the readers to not be lazy-heads and just come to a site and look for the final score. I know some people/sites do both, but I feel that a site should be more about what the reviewer thought of the game. You know, in’s and out’s of what was cool or what they thought really sucked about a game. That’s what I look for when reading up on a game. What does 7/10 actually mean? What were those last 3/10 and do I give a care about that in the least?
So I’ll pose this to my readers: should I look into giving my game reviews some form of rating system? Should it be numerical-ish or a simple pass/fail system. Keep in mind that I am paying for all of my games myself. It’s fairly safe to assume that I wouldn’t buy a game that I think is going to be fail or that I would hate. If I’m gifted one I would try it, but that would probably be the only way that would happen. Should a rating system happen anyway?
Also, should I put up a list of games I’m working on and have you guys have a way of deciding what get’s written up about next? That’s not too crazy of an idea…
Let me know below in the comments with your thoughts and ideas.
Lol, I do know that one thing I could get better at is tagging my posts to make it easier for people to find stuff maybe… that’s probably asking for too much from me though.
The rating system works well enough cell phone and bagel toaster reviews. For this site, I think you should stick to talking about your personal likes and dislikes within each game. I’m sure you want to be at least a little objective in informing what the game has to offer, but I do value an honest opinion about all those elements once they’re described.
I think maybe Deadlight makes a good example. Great ratings from official reviewers, and then average joes begin to play it and now there’s an endless river of “boring” and “repetitive” comments. Everyone is willing to agree it’s visually stunning, but then once you get into it, it’s stunning how shallow the content is. That kind of information would have been nice to know before buying the game, and I’m sure a lot of people who bought it were very disappointed.
Rating scales and the like don’t give any particularly useful information, leave them out.
Yeah if you want to do a rating system, look at sites like ign.com. They do it very well, but sometimes a written word or a simple score is more satisfying. With a rating system you’d need to go into subscores for each category and then explain the reasoning for each of those. It’s a good template for a review, but not very human and will make all reviews have the same feel.