Game debates voting: numerical vs literal?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

1 hour ago, rdrunner said:

Worth noting is that we don't tend to waste our time voting on games that are actually bad.  It seems reasonable to me that we had scores of 5-10 for the games we have gone through.

If we had a bunch more Superman 64's, we could easily see some lower scores.  The question then is whether we care enough to do that?

There is probably someone that literally agonizes over rating a game a 3 or a 4.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

1 hour ago, rdrunner said:

Worth noting is that we don't tend to waste our time voting on games that are actually bad.  It seems reasonable to me that we had scores of 5-10 for the games we have gone through.

If we had a bunch more Superman 64's, we could easily see some lower scores.  The question then is whether we care enough to do that?

From an engagement standpoint, most people don't play historically average games so those threads wouldn't create much dialogue. Even above average games, or below, will yield better discussion which I think is the point of the threads at their core: Foster discussion about games we have all played or heard of. 

[twiztor | 851]

22 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

I’m just going by numbers though if it’s on the fence I’ll take some influence from the description.

same here. i think the literary description lines up pretty well with the numbers in general. i start with the numerical and adjust based on secription if need be. like @ZeldaFreaki also think in terms of .5s and it does help with the rounding.

[T-Pac | 7,560]

This is gonna sound blunt, but ...

... when a poll lays out specific ranking criteria and you vote without following it, you’ve just invalidated the results.

There’s nothing stopping you from using your own ranking system in a different context, though. Just not in the Game Debates.

[T-Pac]

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

19 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

This is gonna sound blunt, but ...

... when a poll lays out specific ranking criteria and you vote without following it, you’ve just invalidated the results.

There’s nothing stopping you from using your own ranking system in a different context, though. Just not in the Game Debates.

[T-Pac]

I hate to give @Reed Rothchildso much praise but the descriptions are almost perfect for the scale too.

[GPX | 1,370]

On 2/3/2024 at 2:00 AM, ZeldaFreak said:

I think it's also perfectly valid for someone to give a game a 5 (or less) just due to it not personally being their cup of tea, even if objectively it's a very good game.

I would say “yes and no” to this. Yes, of course we’d all want a variety of scores to cater for individual tastes. No, if it’s never a genre they’d play, then I’d question a bit more of the validity of their score.

I guess you can say there’s honest reviews which are helpful, and then there are unhelpful reviews, despite the honesty. 

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

1 hour ago, GPX said:

I would say “yes and no” to this. Yes, of course we’d all want a variety of scores to cater for individual tastes. No, if it’s never a genre they’d play, then I’d question a bit more of the validity of their score.

I guess you can say there’s honest reviews which are helpful, and then there are unhelpful reviews, despite the honesty. 

I mean, I disagree with that logic entirely, since that would mean if someone dislikes a game, they just shouldn't rank it at all which obviously isn't fair. I'm not talking about someone disliking an entire genre, I'm talking about if someone just personally dislikes a singular game for whatever reason, even if objectively it's a well-crated game. Opt disliking A Link to the Past is a perfect example of that.

But, even if we were talking about someone who dislikes an entire genre, again, you should still be able to rank a game even if it's in a genre you dislike. This is all just subjective personal opinion anyway, and the best kinds of discourse when it comes to stuff like that are when you have people with a wide variety of likes and dislikes discussing it. I wouldn't want only people who enjoy any given genre to be the ones talking about a game, I want to know what the people who dislike the genre think about it too, otherwise it's just an echo chamber. The only time I find that kind of thing irritating is when people treat their personal opinions as objective fact, since some people for whatever reason have an incredibly hard time separating the two.

[Hammerfestus | 3,858]

16 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

, I'm talking about if someone just personally dislikes a singular game for whatever reason, even if objectively it's a well-crated game. Opt disliking A Link to the Past is a perfect example of that.

 

You spelled monotonous wrong.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

6 minutes ago, Hammerfestus said:

You spelled monotonous wrong.

V Like I said V

On 2/2/2024 at 9:50 AM, ZeldaFreak said:

...Having said that, I've always disagreed with the notion of there being no such thing as a wrong opinion

[GPX | 1,370]

11 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

I mean, I disagree with that logic entirely, since that would mean if someone dislikes a game, they just shouldn't rank it at all which obviously isn't fair. I'm not talking about someone disliking an entire genre, I'm talking about if someone just personally dislikes a singular game for whatever reason, even if objectively it's a well-crated game. Opt disliking A Link to the Past is a perfect example of that.

But, even if we were talking about someone who dislikes an entire genre, again, you should still be able to rank a game even if it's in a genre you dislike. This is all just subjective personal opinion anyway, and the best kinds of discourse when it comes to stuff like that are when you have people with a wide variety of likes and dislikes discussing it. I wouldn't want only people who enjoy any given genre to be the ones talking about a game, I want to know what the people who dislike the genre think about it too, otherwise it's just an echo chamber. The only time I find that kind of thing irritating is when people treat their personal opinions as objective fact, since some people for whatever reason have an incredibly hard time separating the two.

I think there are 2 separate issues:

1. Does anyone have the right to vote on a gaming poll? I guess the answer is “yes”. 

2. Does a review of a 3/10 score with one or two words summary, and from someone who doesn’t seem to understand the genre…does that person have the same weight of influence as a reviewer who gives it a 3/10 who talks about the rationale behind his dislike and displays a passion for games and the genre in question?

Personally, I rate the rationale behind the score to be much more important than the score itself.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

7 hours ago, GPX said:

I think there are 2 separate issues:

1. Does anyone have the right to vote on a gaming poll? I guess the answer is “yes”. 

2. Does a review of a 3/10 score with one or two words summary, and from someone who doesn’t seem to understand the genre…does that person have the same weight of influence as a reviewer who gives it a 3/10 who talks about the rationale behind his dislike and displays a passion for games and the genre in question?

Personally, I rate the rationale behind the score to be much more important than the score itself.

OK well again, now you're talking about something completely different, a review with only one or two words. In my opinion, ANY review that's comprised of only a small handful of words, positive, negative or neutral, is almost completely worthless. I think a negative review comprised of one word is equally as worthless as a positive review comprised of one word.

I feel like you keep adding all these additional qualifications (Someone who hates an entire genre, someone who only gives a 1-2 word review) when my original point was that if someone doesn't like A game (singular,) it's perfectly valid for them to rate it lower because they PERSONALLY don't like it, even if OBJECTIVELY they can recognize the merits of the game, assuming they actually explain their reasoning, as any good review should. That's it. The stuff you're talking about is a different point of discussion entirely; people who dislike an entire genre or who give an extremely brief review. And like I said, in my opinion people who dislike the genre any given game or movie is in should still be allowed to rate it, and their opinion on it is still absolutely valid, and a brief review on something doesn't have to be negative to be pretty useless, unless we're talking about something like, I dunno, Star Wars or whatever where everything good that can be said about it has already been said (or, in the case of something really irredeemably awful, everything bad that can be said about it has already been said.)

[GPX | 1,370]

2 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

OK well again, now you're talking about something completely different, a review with only one or two words. In my opinion, ANY review that's comprised of only a small handful of words, positive, negative or neutral, is almost completely worthless. I think a negative review comprised of one word is equally as worthless as a positive review comprised of one word.

I feel like you keep adding all these additional qualifications (Someone who hates an entire genre, someone who only gives a 1-2 word review) when my original point was that if someone doesn't like A game (singular,) it's perfectly valid for them to rate it lower because they PERSONALLY don't like it, even if OBJECTIVELY they can recognize the merits of the game, assuming they actually explain their reasoning, as any good review should. That's it. The stuff you're talking about is a different point of discussion entirely; people who dislike an entire genre or who give an extremely brief review. And like I said, in my opinion people who dislike the genre any given game or movie is in should still be allowed to rate it, and their opinion on it is still absolutely valid, and a brief review on something doesn't have to be negative to be pretty useless, unless we're talking about something like, I dunno, Star Wars or whatever where everything good that can be said about it has already been said (or, in the case of something really irredeemably awful, everything bad that can be said about it has already been said.)

I don’t know if you realize, I’m actually not arguing with your points of:

- everyone is allowed to vote

- a person who dislikes a game can give it whatever score. (I don’t have any issue with differing tastes)

My point is about the validity of the score in some, and that there are examples where you can and should question their review/score (talking about a very small minority). My point in the previous responses is to do with people who don’t really ever play the genre and by extension, will likely give it very low scores. I’ll give a couple of examples:

- (reviewing a bullet-hell-shooter) “Too hard. Games should be more relaxing”.

- (reviewing an RPG) “Too boring. I quit after playing 5 minutes”.

I can speak for myself that I’m not an RPG fan as a gamer, and have only completed Wind Waker and have only attempted minutes to hours of other RPGs. I don’t bother to give score reviews to RPG games on VGS, knowing that I don’t have the time nor patience to give it a proper review the game needs investment in.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

6 minutes ago, GPX said:

1: I don’t know if you realize, I’m actually not arguing with your points of:

- everyone is allowed to vote

- a person who dislikes a game can give it whatever score. (I don’t have any issue with differing tastes)

2: My point is about the validity of the score in some, and that there are examples where you can and should question their review/score (talking about a very small minority). My point in the previous responses is to do with people who don’t really ever play the genre and by extension, will likely give it very low scores. I’ll give a couple of examples:

- (reviewing a bullet-hell-shooter) “Too hard. Games should be more relaxing”.

- (reviewing an RPG) “Too boring. I quit after playing 5 minutes”.

I can speak for myself that I’m not an RPG fan as a gamer, and have only completed Wind Waker and have only attempted minutes to hours of other RPGs. I don’t bother to give score reviews to RPG games on VGS, knowing that I don’t have the time nor patience to give it a proper review the game needs investment in.

1: Oh yeah, I know, I just think what you're bringing up is a totally separate topic of discussion than what my original point was, which is what you responded to. I was talking about someone personally disliking a single game, whereas you're talking about someone who dislikes an entire genre, so is predisposed to not liking any games within that genre, and couldn't be bothered to properly lay out why they dislike the game. That's just a very big leap to make from what I was originally talking about.

2: Oh yeah, I'm not saying you should never question the validity of someone's review, I just think someone disliking a particular genre doesn't, itself, completely invalidate their review or opinion on the game (again, so long as they actually lay out their reasoning.) It just means you have to take what they're saying with a grain of salt since they dislike the genre as a whole. But, I think the same goes for someone who loves a genre and gives a glowing review for a game within that genre. For instance, if I gave a review of a Zelda game. Of course it's going to be positive, because I love the franchise and there isn't a single entry in the mainline series I dislike, so same as with an overly negative review, me giving a glowing, positive review of a Zelda game should also be taken with a grain of salt, since I'm predisposed to liking entries in that series, same as you being predisposed to not liking RPG games.

Plus we're talking about reviews here, for me personally with the game/movie debate polls, a lot of the time I'll just vote in the poll, or vote and give a quick one or two sentence rundown of my thoughts, since I don't really see it as a space for making actual, proper reviews of something, more so just a space to casually discuss it with others. In situations like that, I honestly don't have much of a problem with the examples you gave, since it's more so just a discussion space for something than a place for actual reviews of that thing (again, at least the way I personally see it.)

To be clear, I didn't think you were arguing with me and I wasn't trying to argue with you, I just think you made a big jump from "Someone disliking one game" to "Someone who hates a whole genre and is too lazy to lay out their reasoning as to why they hate a game within that genre," haha. And it confused me a bit at first since you responded to me as if those are the same thing, when like I said I think those are two entirely different situations.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

If we're going to discuss the games debate polls, then I'll air my grievance here:

@Reed Rothchild Is it possible to make the secondary "next game" poll optional, for those of us who don't know or care what the games are?  If not, can you add an "I don't care" or "surprise me!" option?  More often than not I find myself randomly selecting between two+ games I've never played - or sometimes even heard of, and so I'm forced to throw down a vote entirely at random in order for my actual vote in that week's poll to count.  If I've gotta keep making random selections in the next game polls I will, but I figured I would throw this out there...

[Reed Rothchild | 9,547]

I'll see what I can do.

[GPX | 1,370]

On 2/5/2024 at 8:30 AM, ZeldaFreak said:

1: Oh yeah, I know, I just think what you're bringing up is a totally separate topic of discussion than what my original point was, which is what you responded to. I was talking about someone personally disliking a single game, whereas you're talking about someone who dislikes an entire genre, so is predisposed to not liking any games within that genre, and couldn't be bothered to properly lay out why they dislike the game. That's just a very big leap to make from what I was originally talking about.

2: Oh yeah, I'm not saying you should never question the validity of someone's review, I just think someone disliking a particular genre doesn't, itself, completely invalidate their review or opinion on the game (again, so long as they actually lay out their reasoning.) It just means you have to take what they're saying with a grain of salt since they dislike the genre as a whole. But, I think the same goes for someone who loves a genre and gives a glowing review for a game within that genre. For instance, if I gave a review of a Zelda game. Of course it's going to be positive, because I love the franchise and there isn't a single entry in the mainline series I dislike, so same as with an overly negative review, me giving a glowing, positive review of a Zelda game should also be taken with a grain of salt, since I'm predisposed to liking entries in that series, same as you being predisposed to not liking RPG games.

Plus we're talking about reviews here, for me personally with the game/movie debate polls, a lot of the time I'll just vote in the poll, or vote and give a quick one or two sentence rundown of my thoughts, since I don't really see it as a space for making actual, proper reviews of something, more so just a space to casually discuss it with others. In situations like that, I honestly don't have much of a problem with the examples you gave, since it's more so just a discussion space for something than a place for actual reviews of that thing (again, at least the way I personally see it.)

To be clear, I didn't think you were arguing with me and I wasn't trying to argue with you, I just think you made a big jump from "Someone disliking one game" to "Someone who hates a whole genre and is too lazy to lay out their reasoning as to why they hate a game within that genre," haha. And it confused me a bit at first since you responded to me as if those are the same thing, when like I said I think those are two entirely different situations.

I think our misunderstanding came about from this quote “I think it's also perfectly valid for someone to give a game a 5 (or less) just due to it not personally being their cup of tea, even if objectively it's a very good game.”

”Not personally their cup of tea”, could mean a partial dislike for that particular genre (which is what I agreed with the “yes”); or it could mean a full dislike and avoidance of properly playing all future games of that genre (which is what I added with the “no”). I should have emphasised that the “no” is a very small percentage. 

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

36 minutes ago, GPX said:

I think our misunderstanding came about from this quote “I think it's also perfectly valid for someone to give a game a 5 (or less) just due to it not personally being their cup of tea, even if objectively it's a very good game.”

”Not personally their cup of tea”, could mean a partial dislike for that particular genre (which is what I agreed with the “yes”); or it could mean a full dislike and avoidance of properly playing all future games of that genre (which is what I added with the “no”). I should have emphasised that the “no” is a very small percentage. 

I think the misunderstanding really is that you're still stuck on this hypothetical person disliking a whole genre, when, again, I was talking about them not liking one particular game, even if it's in a genre they otherwise like, which happens all the time. That's what I meant, I think the confusion was you took what I said to mean that I was talking about someone who disliked a whole genre, which is not what I was originally talking about. Like I've said that's a different discussion than someone just not liking one game.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

On 2/5/2024 at 12:41 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

I'll see what I can do.

You could always just make that a separate poll from the actual debate poll, pretty sure you can do multiple polls in one post.

[wongojack | 217]

I think of the text next to the numbers as an attempt to frame the context of the number, but not the entire description.  So, I generally give my own score out of 10 and just check the text as a general guide.

 

I really like Reid's polls and wouldn't change anything.  A change would sorta mess up the history and make future comparisons harder.  However, I personally trend more to a 5-point scale.  Professionally, I've had to review and rate performance for years, and I got convinced years ago that:

1. over time, most people will score various items about the same except for a select few favorites (or dislikes)
2. we really don't need more than 5 points for differentiation, our brains aren't really built for it.

#1 means that you will basically just trend toward the middle of the scale for everything.  Because you don't want to be mean, and it is hard to differentiate.  This phenomenon is what makes video game polls trend toward a 7 or 8.  High enough to be "nice" but not the top (unless you love it).

#2 I just believe that our brains work in 3s.  We know what we like, we know what we don't like and then there's everything else that must be in the middle.  For me, I generally put things on a 3-point scale and then let myself push things up or down occasionally if I really like (or dislike) something.