Angels And Devils Make The Best Game Scores?
May 14, 2007 8:51 PM | Simon Carless
Was turned on to James Wallis' COPE blog thanks to Jim Rossignol's most recent 'Blogged Out' column for Gamasutra, and there's a fascinating recent entry discussing an alternate scoring system for games.
Specifically: "Since the days of yore video-game magazines have given games a numerical rating. Often it’s out of ten or out of one hundred. Sometimes it has cute star-based systems and breaks things down by different categories. Whatever the system, they all suck..."
He continues: "Back when I was editing Crazynet we picked up a reviewing system from our French sibling Micro Dingo, which we twisted onto its back, made it cry, “Mon oncle!” and got Gabe from Penny Arcade to draw us some icons for it. Each item reviewed received 0-3 angels and 0-3 devils. Angels meant good points, devils meant bad points. So three angels and two devils meant “This is very good, but contains quite a lot that will make you throw things across the room. Worth checking out if you have a high tolerance.” A review that got no angels and no devils meant “This is completely unexceptional in every way.”
So what happened? "It transpired that nobody except me understood this system. But hey, icons by Gabe." This is actually a really interesting and valid idea. It's just borderline insane and unintuitive! Wallis then spirals off into further big thinking: "What video games need isn’t numeric ratings, or me trying to get cute. What they need are Michelin stars." Wait, I thought we established that game scores needed to be 7 or 8?
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3 Comments
Sounds like a very interesting system. There's definitely a difference between a game that has a lot of very good things... and a game that has the same, along with very bad points.
Of course, the first one might be given a 9/10 and the other one a 7/10 to compensate... but there's a lack of detail in that notation.
So... has the numerical notation definitely taken over?
monele | May 15, 2007 4:41 AM
I actually like that idea of this a lot. It's definitely a unique approach.
I still prefer the "binary" system coupled with a nice essay though.
packratshow | May 15, 2007 12:05 PM
Right now, I'm mostly partial to EGM's three-person review system, though that still follows the 1.0-10.0 scale. I like that "angel/devil" format, but it might be hard to discern, as relating to your final point, whether or not it's actually worth it to purchase the game.
An interesting idea I had for a review system would be for three reviewers to write out their reviews for a game, making sure to point out specific ups and downs, then dish out a rating similar to the "angel/devil" method. Then, have the users of the site give two ratings: a "buy" or "don't buy" rating and a 1-10 rating. The catch: they must rate the game in both ways for their rating to be accepted.
But now that I think about it further, it's still far from a great system...
Blah8 | June 2, 2007 2:50 PM