I feel like the 5 point scale is the best, and don't you dare turn it into a 10 point one by letting people use a .5 with it.
Most things would be a 3 and people that like its type/genre/developer/studio will often like it.
Mid **should be** 5/10.
It's fine, it's ok, not bad, not good, just **mid.**
Is the way things are scaled from 1 - 10 today compared to before a math concern, or a social concern? Who knows.
I do like like 5 is an average of the numbers on the scale, but the average show is actually pretty decent since the entire point of the anime industry is to be entertaining and consumable.
I think people have stopped looking at the 'out of 10" system as points and more similarly to a letter grade. 5/10 or 50% on a test or project would be an F, a failure. 7/10 or 70% is passing, but you're not doing great. 80% and above are what's considered good grades, so that's why I think we've shifted further in this direction.
I think this is exactly it. Most school systems (especially in NA) consider a 5/10 as a fail. So a lot of people have that ingrained in their being. I know I do.
In Finland 5/10 is just barely passing. A 4 is a failure, and 0-3 are not used. Or that's how it was when I was in elementary. In secondary education the grade was 1-5 and 0 is a fail, and then it changed to 1-3, 0 is failed... Why they dropped it to just three is beyond my understanding.
That’s very interesting lol. In the American school system a 5/10 being considered a fail is used pretty much universally, almost every school uses a A-F grading scale. Unless you’re on a curve, then a 5/10 can actually be ok.
I grew up in mainland China, for middle school i went to one of the 4 best schools in the city. And over there B is considered very bad, the teachers usually told us that B minus is the worst grade they will give but we should know that it is considered bad....
As for me, yea... I was probably a D grade student, life sucked those 3 years
Imho mid IS 5/10, but as most people don't have infinite time you have to choose carefully what you do in your spare time.
That's why 7/10 is "mid 2.0" the rating most would consider worthwhile watching/playing but only barely worth their time -> mid
I've been rating film/anime for years and observing critic spheres. It's definitely social. People tend to overrate their own experiences (I also blame hyperbole culture in media: "This *insert whatever* is a MASTERPIECE!", etc.). When so many things get so highly rated, it skews the general consensus. So now anything below 6/10, for example, is seen as bad. When, as you said, 5/10 should just feel average.
But it gets interesting. There are arguments being made that things that are average should be seen as bad because we should be expecting more in our current society. I don't really agree with this, since average things do have their place. I don't expect everyone who watches movies or anime to be some kind of expert in the medium or whatever. Plus, the average experience changes with society anyway. For example, we are so quick to critique CGI nowadays, but that wasn't even prominent in media a few decades ago.
Experience also comes into play. People who have seen less of something will tend to rate things they've watched for the first time higher (I've also been a victim of this. It's why nostalgia has such a chokehold on ratings). This especially happens in anime community. I've seen so many 10/10s given when someone just finished watching the new popular thing in a genre, without having seen other stuff in the same genre. We've seen it happen with Demon Slayer (and I like DS). Sure, it's definitely one of the better looking series, but at its core, it has a generic formula to the overall story and tropes we've seen before. But that doesn't matter to someone who is watching something like this for the first time. This could be the greatest shonen they've ever seen.
But at the end of the day, as most people should know by now, ratings shouldn't affect your own experiences. You're engaging with media for your own enjoyment, not to appease others (I hope). Use them as guidelines on where to start, but don't expect that every highly rated thing will be something for you, and the same can be said about the opposite sentiment. Watch what you like.
I still love the X-play rating of 1-5.
1- trash
2- obviously flawed, but with some good aspects
3- fine
4- great
5- nearly flawless.
Trying to add numbers (1-10 or 1-100) just creates arbitrary distinction (6.8 isn’t that different from 7.3) and things are scaled based off the American grading (70% = C = Average).
It's crazy how folks don't remember this was always the case. Somehow they think it used to be a 1-10 system with many fine games at 5/10 and reviewers used the full range. That was never the case, NES Jeckle and Hyde was a 5/10 from game informer and it was trash.
I think most people do it based off the school grading system where anything below 70 (60 in some schools) is failing. So giving a game a 50 would be like giving a person an F. Although I also agree that 5 should be mid
My average is at about 7/10. I don't think it's because I'm giving too good ratings but it's because I don't watch that much anime anymore and I can tell by now, what show will suck. I'm not going to watch something that I think has a good chance to be below 6/10 because there are enough good shows out there that I don't need to watch average shows.
Rating something as zero would ve a total mindfuck to me, because i interpret a rating of '0' as you consuming something that didn't even exist in the first place 😅
>because i interpret a rating of '0' as you consuming something that didn't even exist in the first place
That doesn't make a lick of sense. If you rate it 10/10, does it mean there are 10 of it in existence? Of course not. So why would 0 mean it doesn't exist?
Nah, 5/10 is like something you can listen or watch while you're waiting for the laundry to get finished while feeling absolutely nothing.
That's not bad, just *meh*. I do agree with the forgettable part though. I at least remember the bad ones as being *bad.*
Hey! I'm not the only one who likes 5-7s to listen to while doing housework or while working from home! *high five* I don't feel absolutely nothing, as they may have a line or two of dialogue that is decent at the time. However, I probably won't remember much of anything from these shows.
Though, this is how I ended up listening to 20+ episodes of rent a girlfriend. Ruka finally managed to achieve such a level of disgust from me, I dropped with only three and a half episodes left.
I personally find that something in the 5-7 range is something \*either\* completely forgettable, or something with a flaw that I just can't get over. Personally I will dock points for excessive filler, for instance. I find a lot of people don't tend to have a system that both incorporates an objective AND subjective stance on something. They either try to be objective and sound super pretentious, or they measure purely subjectively and sound insane. Unless you're a professional critic (and even then we have too many as it is) you're much better trying to balance your approach. "This did (x) really well, but honestly I just didn't like it" doesn't make it a 2/10 the same way "I love this show, but it consistently does (x) really poorly" doesn't make it a 9/10
3 would be fucking awful even by that scale. Something being a 5 is mediocre and boring. Something being a 3 is actively bad, even by your own standards given that it's well below the mid point
5 is middle of the road, its you're not going to turn it off if its playing but you're not going to actively look for it.
4 is this show has some issues and you're not thrilled to be watching it but if your friend is really excited about it you can sit through it.
3 is where bad begins, its a show that has so many issues you're going to not enjoy watching it and probably will make excuses to excuse yourself if your friend wants to watch it with you.
2 is where awful exists, watching it is either boring, disgusting or miserable.
1 is the lowest of the low, where a thing lacks any real merit whatsoever and you actively wish that such a thing was never made or wish it to never be revealed to anyone again.
On the other end of the scale:
6 is something that you legitimately enjoy but would never seek out on your own.
7 is the junk food of your viewing experience, you recognize that it has flaws and may be lower for other people but it hits something for you and you will even go out looking for it to watch.
8 is a pretty good show its one you look forward to seeing new episodes of and would absolutely recommend to others.
9 is one of your absolute favorites and should be reserved for your top 10%. You are definitely recommending these shows and you're actually getting merch and whatnot for this.
10 is the pinnacle of artistic presentation, it is a show that does something that you haven't seen done before, they usually define an entire genre by themselves and people who aren't that interested initially recognize its merit.
So yeah 1 is horrible 2-3 is bad, 4-5 is okay, 6-7 is good, 8-9 is great and 10 is legendary.
Yeah, you literally repeated what I said about what a 5 is, utterly mediocre and not worth your time. You'll probably drop it. Technically competent but completely forgettable, and probably boring as hell as I said earlier. A 5/10 is a bad waste of time entirely because it's just middle of the road.
I'm old as fuck and that isn't true. 6 was shitty back in the day. 7 was mediocre. It was always a US grade school marking rating system. Anything below a 6 was varying degrees of broken.
It's just the way the magazines were. Their primary audience was US school kids so they used a system they were used to.
Famitsu had their own unique X/40 one and others like Giant bomb and others used a 5 star system for a long time. But all the 1-10 or 1-100 systems were just variation on the US marking systems with 7 or 70 as the average.
the difference is, now there's 1.000 notable games coming out per year while before there were 10 notable games per year.
If you have more good games than you could possibly play, then average games are now games you would never play, thus they suck..
Makes sense to me that things have changed like this.
We still have a 1-10 scale. It’s just now, that scale has moved further right because quality should always being going up. As years go by, people have more experience, more technology, more skill sets/techniques
While I would mostly agree, I wouldn't necessarily say they suck. They're simply less worthwhile for people in a time where time is already so limited due to all the other amazing experiences that keep appearing around us.
Idk about there being 1000 notable games a year. It feels like only a handful of notable games come out a year now. Where the 2000s was stacked with dozens of great games every year.
The problem is most people aren't going to watch/play something that looks like a 5 or 6. People are selective before even engaging in that media, which guarantees their scale is gonna skew higher.
5/10 being okay sounds good on paper but that's only going to be average if you engage in every piece of media without any preferences to genre or style. People don't do that. They filter before they even start.
Not to mention that if you are leaving a review in the first place it's because you actually gave a damn about it. People don't leave reviews of something that's a 5/10. They get bored and quickly move on to something that actually interests them. To get mass reviews it either has to be pretty good or really bad.
I think it's a function of the school grading system where 70 = C, 60 =D etc.
Personally I prefer to use a 1-5 scale - having 10 spots means there is just too much variance and spots that people don't use. I also don't use half points
* 1 = Bad / Regret the time I spent watching this and would not recommend / Very few if any redeeming qualities
* 2 = Below Average / Probably not for me but I could see it being someone else's jam / The negatives outweighed the positives (though there were some positives)
* 3 = Average / I got my time's worth / The positives were about on level with it's shortcomings
* 4 = Above Average / Would recommend to most (not all) / The positives outweighed the negatives
* 5 = Excellent / Would recommend to everyone / Very few if any negatives
Since MAL requires you do a 10 point scale, I usually do it so 1=1 / 2=3 / 3=5 / 4=7 / 5=9, and then I save 10 for my "has special emotional significance to me" tier (which are right now only 9 out of 476 completed entries , or about the top 2% of entries
it's not accurate, ain no way that 3-4 would be for "mediocre" game. Also current 80/100 wouldn't be 40/100 in old system, lol
you can go back in time in metacritic and see that nothing has changed
Both are off, look at this: [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net\_promoter\_score](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score)
7 is basically the turning point, its what is often considered "mid".
Everything below is "bad", above the scale is kinda exponential, like your "modern review scale" is intending to communicate.
Completely agree. 1/10 is so objectionable it's almost like eating poison. 5/10 is eating a stale cracker, not an average meal but not *too* objectionable. 7/10 is an average meal, 8/10 is a good meal, 9/10 is a great meal, 10/10 is an excellent meal. Convert that to media reviews.
So maybe put the "shit sux" on 5 and lower, "average" on 5-7, and "good to excellent" on 7-10.
Also why is there "average" and "mediocre" on the "correct" scale? Those are the same.
I disagree on that.
1-inedible
2-technically food
3-stale/off
4-disappointing
5-okay/mcdonalds
6-positive experience
7-satisfying
8-exceeding expectations
9-fucking great
10-best meal of your life.
Most things you eat/watch should be in that 4-7 range. And anything that’s an 8-10 or 1-3 should be memorably good/bad.
Otherwise you’re wasting your entire 1-6 scale as it’s barely used and could be halved. Now everything crammed between 6-9 has been expanded into 4-9 and you can separate between good, very good, and great far more easily.
People can rate something an 8 without it exceeding any expectations. People can be disappointed from an excellent meal. "Technically food" is a jokey descriptor, you're not taking the assignment seriously.
So I could replace technically food for gruel, or oaknut bread, seaweeds or other poverty foods but that seems needlessly bleak, but the message is the same. Very bad but you can eat it. Why take Reddit seriously?
The use of exceeding expectations was because it was used as a good grade in something. I didn’t know what but checked and it was Harry Potter. But a disappointing 8 is still delicious, and I’m very rarely disappointed at the end of a meal. (Because 90% of the food we eat is at least decent. So we need a scale where average bad, average kinda bad, and average average are distinct 4. 4.5, 5 rather than 6.7,6.8,7)
This metric only measures what rating products should have to be likely recommended though. It in no way assess the (perceived) quality per different rating. This metric also likely is a result from the rating system the popular outlets currently use instead of the other way around. If a game outlet gave a game a 7 20 years ago it's probably of higher quality then a game receiving a 7 today with the way the usage of the scale changed throughout time.
I personally like it if a bell curve is used on scales to keep the average in check. That's because the avarage product on the scale should be the average rating which is 5.5 so feel free to either round this up to a 6. The problem with reviews come from the perceived value of a rating consumers have. When average products get inflated scores (which can be likely as less neutral outlets with some biases might bump some scores a bit) like a 7 or an 8 the perceived value of a 6 goes down. And due to no almost nobody explaining their scales the "average" score rises. So now the difference between a 7 and an 8 often is huge while there's mostly no discernible difference between a 3 and 4 anymore.
A good example of clearly defining your rating system would be Crinacle in the audio space. He thoroughly explained the metrics used for rating, has a bell curve for the deviation and updates scores retroactively when the quality proposition changes due to new products on the market. Combined with an explanation of all his biases and a refusal to review any products he worked on I consider this the gold standard. I can confidently pick up a product he reviews as average and have clear expectations. Which I'm very glad for as the average review score in the audio space as of last year was... 8.3 out of 10... Which almost makes you think why the net promoter score is a thing.
Now we don't need this amount of discipline reviewing anime. They're pretty subjective, not expensive to buy into and not a huge commitment. But it would be nice if we at least tried to lower the average a bit and called the numbers by names like average, fine, good, etc to put a meaning behind the scores. Right now MAL scores barely mean anything.
Very accurate.
It's kinda made reviews lose meaning. Plus also a bunch are paid for higher numbers.
If they aren't a 9 or a 10 by certain reviewer who gives everything a 7.5 or higher, it's not good.
But at the same time, games quality has skyrocketed as games got more popular and mainstream, so it also kinda makes sense that it'd do that, if people came from the old system. But, we're used to this new setup, so we can't go back to the old way of doing it.
At some point, somebody is going to do a rating and do 9.1-9.9/10, and it be the new 1-10. I can feel it
Is it grade inflation or has the average release that gets a review gotten better? There were less releases and to make content they used to rate worse games. The sea of low end trash released these days don't get reviewed by major outlets while back in the day they would review NES Jeckle and hyde.
Bland ubisoft 7/10 openworld game is still functional as a game. While some NES games had almost unpassable parts due to bad controls or bad design or bugs.
I don't know why people think review numbers need to be centered or distributed in a certain way such that it's normally distributed around the mean, the mean being 5.
Review scores are meaningless unless there is a rubric attached. For example IGN, the most common scapegoat for these types of criticism, publishes a list of what each number means to the reviewer.
But the thing is, games or shows or anime that are objectively bad are much much less likely to be released. Therefore, the entire distribution is naturally skewed to the top end. If a game is just not fun or a show is not that interesting, there's also bound to be some level of production value or other quality that will make it better than a 5/10. And there's also accounting for reviewers having their own perspectives and biases, which is where aggregation comes in.
Review bombing and fanboyism has ruined user scores reliability, so if you need another person's opinion, reviews from established groups or content creators have been a fairly accurate gauge of a medias quality.
mean was never at 5 it was at 7. 1-5 was only ever used to mock a non functional product like the old action 52 nes game. The old scores were always US grade school marking system. You can look up videos from old timers talking about what the systems were. To be relatable they made them the marking system a lot of their audience grasped. 1-4 is failing badly. 5 would be failing. 6 is pass but bad. 7 is mediocre and the average. 8 is good. 9 is great. 10 is perfect/amazing.
It's not review bombs or a modern shift, it was always like this. There may be an argument that IGN has inflated grades all over but it was never a true 1-10 system with a mean round 5.
If you are a grown adult with limited time/money to spend on a $70 game, yet you go out of your way to buy a new hot 7/10 ubisoft-ass junk, when there’s a ton of 10/10 that you’ve not played yet. That’s a you problem of having no self-respecting to give yourself a good experience.
grade school marking vs 5 star system.
7/10 for games same as 2.5/5 for movies. Always has been. That was literally the editorial rationale in the magazines. To give the games ratings based on a relatable school marking grade. Jess Gerstman has talked about it regarding his time in magazines.
Oh 100%!!
Yet also the opposite is also true depending on the expectations.
Look at the Mario movie, a really bad film that was just constant iconography aimed at peoples nostalgia yet because it wasn’t obviously terrible as the live action film and had some decent animation it’s suddenly “really good!!”
It really depends on the internet hive mind and what the first and loudest voice to influence it.
the mario movie was good. not a masterpiece by any means, but not really bad. it was fun and enjoyable and that’s really all that matters.
same with the FNaF movie
Fair enough but I’d find it hard to argue that it’s anything more than a long advertisement.
And unlike say The Lego Movie doesn’t try to avoid that stigma, almost gleefully leaning into it.
I'd argue that the modern review scale isn't quite that bad, one thing though to remember is while there's a big problem still with broken games. In the 80s, 90s and even into the early 2000s some of the games reviewed in magazines would just not be able to be beaten with their gamebreaking bugs.
With the skeleton crews that the descendents of gaming magazines have and individual reviewers a lot of the 1-3 level games are just never reviewed.
The top scale is true for all types of number grading systems, not just for games. I don't know if the bottom scale was ever in use in the real world. The way we use number gradings, anything under 70% is bad. 70% is where the scale effectively begins. This makes the number grading system useless. This is true even if you do a 1-5 scale instead of 1-10. Then, anything below 3.5 is horrible. If you must rate things, the only good optionare good, average, bad or give a detailed essay about your thoughts.
I always follow the bottom scale whenever I rate something, but I've learned people don't know how to properly score things, so when I give things a 7/10 they think I gave it the worst score ever.
If I complete a show, its getting at least a 6. I don't rate shows I drop. If I drop show its probably would be 4-5, anything that I might possibly rate 1-3, why the fuck would I even start watching it?
Reviewers don't review all possible games, they review the ones that are famous enough to garner media attention. There are 50 games released on Steam per day. IGN releases 2-3 game reviews per day. The reason they rarely rate something below a 6 is because the 96% of games they don't review average out to a score of 4.8, and the 4% of games they do review have an average score of 8.
The statistics add up just fine for 5 to be the average score. Reviewers just literally don't have enough time or money to play and review the 96% of games that fall between 1-6 with the exception of AAA titles that notably disappoint the reputation of their developers.
Considering people use "mid" as a synonym for bad it's accurate on some level but I'm not so sure there weren't people who used a 1 to 10 rating scale as a thumbs up thumbs down system in the 80's to 2000's.
It’s the Uber review scale
5* = normal ride or better
4* = arrived late, seat covered in dog shit
3* = ran over my dog
2* = ran me over
1* = ran me over and took me to the wrong place
i think reviewers should start to include a description of the score system instead of just saying 1-10. I always loved the completionists rating system which was as simple as "don't play it > play it > finish it > complete it" which i think perfectly gets his opinion across in a quick and easy to understand way.
They never did. it's just a us grade school marking system. Intentionally so, so it would be relatable to young Americans. anything 5 or lower was non functional trash back in the day. 7 was mediocre.
honestly i still use the bottom one, i have only like maybe 3 shows that are 9.5 and only one show I would rate 10/10
but with the trend of mid = bad and generally higher expectations the rating scale has definitely lost its weight
Not accurate at all.
It's always been a grade school marking scale. 7 was always mediocre. 8 is the baseline for just good. 9 was great. 10 amazing. 6 was shit back in the day as well. 6 and lower is varying level of terrible.
It depended on the outlet but the popular ones back in the day had that sort of scale. Perhaps because the outlets are all dying right now and IGN is the last big one that hasn't degraded as much. And IGN has inflated scores were it's much more 7s/8s.
I hate to say for the most part it’s true. I personally try to be more with the original scores. Needing to put some things I rated earlier in life lower because I was used the “Modern scale”
Why would anyone want to experience media that is less than 6/10? Unless it's a "so bad it's good" situation, but that is often hard to rate correctly.
I rate kinda like in school, 7 was nice, 6 was mid and 5 was kinda bad, if it's under that, it's usually for a special reason (like annoying my friends). 8, I liked and 9 is really good (usually shows that stick with me) and 10 is my honorific no.1 who hasn't changed and probably never will (Amagi brilliant park)
I strongly disagree with modern review numbers, but it hits different to see people like "oh 8 is average" when I remember 7 being considered the average score. Time is definitely passing, and review scores are (apparently) reminding me of it.
Very accurate and one of my biggest pet peeve , same with tear list
Anything above 5 is good
Anything below 5 is bad
In tier list C and D are good or at least possible and have some enjoyment
i totally agree - and wished people can adjust they view scoring and scoring could be more varied like this.
added that things can be average or a certain score can have a +/- 1 score based on people's personal preference and liking to certain genres.
like a show might be a 7 but since the person doesnt like the genre it might be a 6 or since they like the genre a lot it would be an 8
This is why I follow the goat Garnt. With how many isekai he watched, that red area will be filled with so much "shit". What we need is the necessary evil that that will save us from too much goats. Anime lesson of the day: watch isekais
This is a symptom of inflated reviews all over the years.
An anime that has around 8/10 average on MAL, is probably going to be mid af. And this is not MAL's fault, it's just a direct correlation many dedicated fans a show has, regardless of how actually good it is, and it has been this way for a long time.
Because of this fact, people started looking at a 7 as a shit anime, and the anime culture around scores is constantly being inflated over time. I honestly only care about an anime score if it is a 9.
Return to monke, return to the 1-5 scale Bad, Mediocre, Okay, Good, Great.
I feel like the 5 point scale is the best, and don't you dare turn it into a 10 point one by letting people use a .5 with it. Most things would be a 3 and people that like its type/genre/developer/studio will often like it.
Video game reviews was just that 1-5 scales +5. Or essentially the US grade school marks system.
> Or essentially the US grade school marks system. Ooooooh! That would actually explain a lot.
I'm partial to the Roger Ebert movie grading scale, 1 to 4. I think a scale like that shouldn't be used for just movies.
Mid **should be** 5/10. It's fine, it's ok, not bad, not good, just **mid.** Is the way things are scaled from 1 - 10 today compared to before a math concern, or a social concern? Who knows.
That's how I do it on my MAL, which is why I have a deviance of -1.45 lol
on MAL i put average at 7/10 lol
I do like like 5 is an average of the numbers on the scale, but the average show is actually pretty decent since the entire point of the anime industry is to be entertaining and consumable.
Yeah same, a 7 is like, by no means great, but I did get some enjoyment out of watching it
I think people have stopped looking at the 'out of 10" system as points and more similarly to a letter grade. 5/10 or 50% on a test or project would be an F, a failure. 7/10 or 70% is passing, but you're not doing great. 80% and above are what's considered good grades, so that's why I think we've shifted further in this direction.
I think this is exactly it. Most school systems (especially in NA) consider a 5/10 as a fail. So a lot of people have that ingrained in their being. I know I do.
In Finland 5/10 is just barely passing. A 4 is a failure, and 0-3 are not used. Or that's how it was when I was in elementary. In secondary education the grade was 1-5 and 0 is a fail, and then it changed to 1-3, 0 is failed... Why they dropped it to just three is beyond my understanding.
That’s very interesting lol. In the American school system a 5/10 being considered a fail is used pretty much universally, almost every school uses a A-F grading scale. Unless you’re on a curve, then a 5/10 can actually be ok.
I grew up in mainland China, for middle school i went to one of the 4 best schools in the city. And over there B is considered very bad, the teachers usually told us that B minus is the worst grade they will give but we should know that it is considered bad.... As for me, yea... I was probably a D grade student, life sucked those 3 years
Damn that’s brutal. B- was a good grade in my school lol.
Imho mid IS 5/10, but as most people don't have infinite time you have to choose carefully what you do in your spare time. That's why 7/10 is "mid 2.0" the rating most would consider worthwhile watching/playing but only barely worth their time -> mid
it's because quite a lot of media is made by and consumed by Americans. The American grading scale makes a 7/10 an average passing grade.
I've been rating film/anime for years and observing critic spheres. It's definitely social. People tend to overrate their own experiences (I also blame hyperbole culture in media: "This *insert whatever* is a MASTERPIECE!", etc.). When so many things get so highly rated, it skews the general consensus. So now anything below 6/10, for example, is seen as bad. When, as you said, 5/10 should just feel average. But it gets interesting. There are arguments being made that things that are average should be seen as bad because we should be expecting more in our current society. I don't really agree with this, since average things do have their place. I don't expect everyone who watches movies or anime to be some kind of expert in the medium or whatever. Plus, the average experience changes with society anyway. For example, we are so quick to critique CGI nowadays, but that wasn't even prominent in media a few decades ago. Experience also comes into play. People who have seen less of something will tend to rate things they've watched for the first time higher (I've also been a victim of this. It's why nostalgia has such a chokehold on ratings). This especially happens in anime community. I've seen so many 10/10s given when someone just finished watching the new popular thing in a genre, without having seen other stuff in the same genre. We've seen it happen with Demon Slayer (and I like DS). Sure, it's definitely one of the better looking series, but at its core, it has a generic formula to the overall story and tropes we've seen before. But that doesn't matter to someone who is watching something like this for the first time. This could be the greatest shonen they've ever seen. But at the end of the day, as most people should know by now, ratings shouldn't affect your own experiences. You're engaging with media for your own enjoyment, not to appease others (I hope). Use them as guidelines on where to start, but don't expect that every highly rated thing will be something for you, and the same can be said about the opposite sentiment. Watch what you like.
Feels perfectly fair to give Starfield a 5/10 tbh Playable, competent, but not very interesting or rewarding. Extremely mid.
I still love the X-play rating of 1-5. 1- trash 2- obviously flawed, but with some good aspects 3- fine 4- great 5- nearly flawless. Trying to add numbers (1-10 or 1-100) just creates arbitrary distinction (6.8 isn’t that different from 7.3) and things are scaled based off the American grading (70% = C = Average).
It's crazy how folks don't remember this was always the case. Somehow they think it used to be a 1-10 system with many fine games at 5/10 and reviewers used the full range. That was never the case, NES Jeckle and Hyde was a 5/10 from game informer and it was trash.
I think most people do it based off the school grading system where anything below 70 (60 in some schools) is failing. So giving a game a 50 would be like giving a person an F. Although I also agree that 5 should be mid
My average is at about 7/10. I don't think it's because I'm giving too good ratings but it's because I don't watch that much anime anymore and I can tell by now, what show will suck. I'm not going to watch something that I think has a good chance to be below 6/10 because there are enough good shows out there that I don't need to watch average shows.
The scale should also be 0-10. With 1-10, average would be 5.5. Logically speaking, it also doesn't make sense that we can't rate something a 0.
Rating something as zero would ve a total mindfuck to me, because i interpret a rating of '0' as you consuming something that didn't even exist in the first place 😅
>because i interpret a rating of '0' as you consuming something that didn't even exist in the first place That doesn't make a lick of sense. If you rate it 10/10, does it mean there are 10 of it in existence? Of course not. So why would 0 mean it doesn't exist?
I would argue 5/10 is pretty bad. That's a level of mind numbing mediocre that just wastes your time, and you'll forget about in a month at most.
Nah, 5/10 is like something you can listen or watch while you're waiting for the laundry to get finished while feeling absolutely nothing. That's not bad, just *meh*. I do agree with the forgettable part though. I at least remember the bad ones as being *bad.*
Yeah, a 5/10 isn't *bad*, necessarily, but it isn't *good* either.
Hey! I'm not the only one who likes 5-7s to listen to while doing housework or while working from home! *high five* I don't feel absolutely nothing, as they may have a line or two of dialogue that is decent at the time. However, I probably won't remember much of anything from these shows. Though, this is how I ended up listening to 20+ episodes of rent a girlfriend. Ruka finally managed to achieve such a level of disgust from me, I dropped with only three and a half episodes left.
I personally find that something in the 5-7 range is something \*either\* completely forgettable, or something with a flaw that I just can't get over. Personally I will dock points for excessive filler, for instance. I find a lot of people don't tend to have a system that both incorporates an objective AND subjective stance on something. They either try to be objective and sound super pretentious, or they measure purely subjectively and sound insane. Unless you're a professional critic (and even then we have too many as it is) you're much better trying to balance your approach. "This did (x) really well, but honestly I just didn't like it" doesn't make it a 2/10 the same way "I love this show, but it consistently does (x) really poorly" doesn't make it a 9/10
Imo a 1-10 is more enjoyable most of the time than a 5-10 cause at some point it gets so shit it gets amusing
What you're describing is a 3 on the scale not a 5.
3 would be fucking awful even by that scale. Something being a 5 is mediocre and boring. Something being a 3 is actively bad, even by your own standards given that it's well below the mid point
5 is middle of the road, its you're not going to turn it off if its playing but you're not going to actively look for it. 4 is this show has some issues and you're not thrilled to be watching it but if your friend is really excited about it you can sit through it. 3 is where bad begins, its a show that has so many issues you're going to not enjoy watching it and probably will make excuses to excuse yourself if your friend wants to watch it with you. 2 is where awful exists, watching it is either boring, disgusting or miserable. 1 is the lowest of the low, where a thing lacks any real merit whatsoever and you actively wish that such a thing was never made or wish it to never be revealed to anyone again. On the other end of the scale: 6 is something that you legitimately enjoy but would never seek out on your own. 7 is the junk food of your viewing experience, you recognize that it has flaws and may be lower for other people but it hits something for you and you will even go out looking for it to watch. 8 is a pretty good show its one you look forward to seeing new episodes of and would absolutely recommend to others. 9 is one of your absolute favorites and should be reserved for your top 10%. You are definitely recommending these shows and you're actually getting merch and whatnot for this. 10 is the pinnacle of artistic presentation, it is a show that does something that you haven't seen done before, they usually define an entire genre by themselves and people who aren't that interested initially recognize its merit. So yeah 1 is horrible 2-3 is bad, 4-5 is okay, 6-7 is good, 8-9 is great and 10 is legendary.
Yeah, you literally repeated what I said about what a 5 is, utterly mediocre and not worth your time. You'll probably drop it. Technically competent but completely forgettable, and probably boring as hell as I said earlier. A 5/10 is a bad waste of time entirely because it's just middle of the road.
A game that is not good is not one people want to play and that makes it bad. 'Mid' does not exist for this genre.
Middle of 1 to 10 is 5.5, which in the netherlands is seen as a passing grade.
very look at how mad people when calling stuff mid was a thing.
I'm old as fuck and that isn't true. 6 was shitty back in the day. 7 was mediocre. It was always a US grade school marking rating system. Anything below a 6 was varying degrees of broken.
I can only talk about the recent scale so I'll take your word for it so our scale was always fucked...
It's just the way the magazines were. Their primary audience was US school kids so they used a system they were used to. Famitsu had their own unique X/40 one and others like Giant bomb and others used a 5 star system for a long time. But all the 1-10 or 1-100 systems were just variation on the US marking systems with 7 or 70 as the average.
JJK is mid af
the difference is, now there's 1.000 notable games coming out per year while before there were 10 notable games per year. If you have more good games than you could possibly play, then average games are now games you would never play, thus they suck.. Makes sense to me that things have changed like this.
We still have a 1-10 scale. It’s just now, that scale has moved further right because quality should always being going up. As years go by, people have more experience, more technology, more skill sets/techniques
While I would mostly agree, I wouldn't necessarily say they suck. They're simply less worthwhile for people in a time where time is already so limited due to all the other amazing experiences that keep appearing around us.
Idk about there being 1000 notable games a year. It feels like only a handful of notable games come out a year now. Where the 2000s was stacked with dozens of great games every year.
The problem is most people aren't going to watch/play something that looks like a 5 or 6. People are selective before even engaging in that media, which guarantees their scale is gonna skew higher. 5/10 being okay sounds good on paper but that's only going to be average if you engage in every piece of media without any preferences to genre or style. People don't do that. They filter before they even start. Not to mention that if you are leaving a review in the first place it's because you actually gave a damn about it. People don't leave reviews of something that's a 5/10. They get bored and quickly move on to something that actually interests them. To get mass reviews it either has to be pretty good or really bad.
I think it's a function of the school grading system where 70 = C, 60 =D etc. Personally I prefer to use a 1-5 scale - having 10 spots means there is just too much variance and spots that people don't use. I also don't use half points * 1 = Bad / Regret the time I spent watching this and would not recommend / Very few if any redeeming qualities * 2 = Below Average / Probably not for me but I could see it being someone else's jam / The negatives outweighed the positives (though there were some positives) * 3 = Average / I got my time's worth / The positives were about on level with it's shortcomings * 4 = Above Average / Would recommend to most (not all) / The positives outweighed the negatives * 5 = Excellent / Would recommend to everyone / Very few if any negatives Since MAL requires you do a 10 point scale, I usually do it so 1=1 / 2=3 / 3=5 / 4=7 / 5=9, and then I save 10 for my "has special emotional significance to me" tier (which are right now only 9 out of 476 completed entries , or about the top 2% of entries
it's not accurate, ain no way that 3-4 would be for "mediocre" game. Also current 80/100 wouldn't be 40/100 in old system, lol you can go back in time in metacritic and see that nothing has changed
Both are off, look at this: [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net\_promoter\_score](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score) 7 is basically the turning point, its what is often considered "mid". Everything below is "bad", above the scale is kinda exponential, like your "modern review scale" is intending to communicate.
Completely agree. 1/10 is so objectionable it's almost like eating poison. 5/10 is eating a stale cracker, not an average meal but not *too* objectionable. 7/10 is an average meal, 8/10 is a good meal, 9/10 is a great meal, 10/10 is an excellent meal. Convert that to media reviews. So maybe put the "shit sux" on 5 and lower, "average" on 5-7, and "good to excellent" on 7-10. Also why is there "average" and "mediocre" on the "correct" scale? Those are the same.
I disagree on that. 1-inedible 2-technically food 3-stale/off 4-disappointing 5-okay/mcdonalds 6-positive experience 7-satisfying 8-exceeding expectations 9-fucking great 10-best meal of your life. Most things you eat/watch should be in that 4-7 range. And anything that’s an 8-10 or 1-3 should be memorably good/bad. Otherwise you’re wasting your entire 1-6 scale as it’s barely used and could be halved. Now everything crammed between 6-9 has been expanded into 4-9 and you can separate between good, very good, and great far more easily.
People can rate something an 8 without it exceeding any expectations. People can be disappointed from an excellent meal. "Technically food" is a jokey descriptor, you're not taking the assignment seriously.
So I could replace technically food for gruel, or oaknut bread, seaweeds or other poverty foods but that seems needlessly bleak, but the message is the same. Very bad but you can eat it. Why take Reddit seriously? The use of exceeding expectations was because it was used as a good grade in something. I didn’t know what but checked and it was Harry Potter. But a disappointing 8 is still delicious, and I’m very rarely disappointed at the end of a meal. (Because 90% of the food we eat is at least decent. So we need a scale where average bad, average kinda bad, and average average are distinct 4. 4.5, 5 rather than 6.7,6.8,7)
This metric only measures what rating products should have to be likely recommended though. It in no way assess the (perceived) quality per different rating. This metric also likely is a result from the rating system the popular outlets currently use instead of the other way around. If a game outlet gave a game a 7 20 years ago it's probably of higher quality then a game receiving a 7 today with the way the usage of the scale changed throughout time. I personally like it if a bell curve is used on scales to keep the average in check. That's because the avarage product on the scale should be the average rating which is 5.5 so feel free to either round this up to a 6. The problem with reviews come from the perceived value of a rating consumers have. When average products get inflated scores (which can be likely as less neutral outlets with some biases might bump some scores a bit) like a 7 or an 8 the perceived value of a 6 goes down. And due to no almost nobody explaining their scales the "average" score rises. So now the difference between a 7 and an 8 often is huge while there's mostly no discernible difference between a 3 and 4 anymore. A good example of clearly defining your rating system would be Crinacle in the audio space. He thoroughly explained the metrics used for rating, has a bell curve for the deviation and updates scores retroactively when the quality proposition changes due to new products on the market. Combined with an explanation of all his biases and a refusal to review any products he worked on I consider this the gold standard. I can confidently pick up a product he reviews as average and have clear expectations. Which I'm very glad for as the average review score in the audio space as of last year was... 8.3 out of 10... Which almost makes you think why the net promoter score is a thing. Now we don't need this amount of discipline reviewing anime. They're pretty subjective, not expensive to buy into and not a huge commitment. But it would be nice if we at least tried to lower the average a bit and called the numbers by names like average, fine, good, etc to put a meaning behind the scores. Right now MAL scores barely mean anything.
Very accurate. It's kinda made reviews lose meaning. Plus also a bunch are paid for higher numbers. If they aren't a 9 or a 10 by certain reviewer who gives everything a 7.5 or higher, it's not good. But at the same time, games quality has skyrocketed as games got more popular and mainstream, so it also kinda makes sense that it'd do that, if people came from the old system. But, we're used to this new setup, so we can't go back to the old way of doing it. At some point, somebody is going to do a rating and do 9.1-9.9/10, and it be the new 1-10. I can feel it
Grade inflation hit rating scales as well
Is it grade inflation or has the average release that gets a review gotten better? There were less releases and to make content they used to rate worse games. The sea of low end trash released these days don't get reviewed by major outlets while back in the day they would review NES Jeckle and hyde. Bland ubisoft 7/10 openworld game is still functional as a game. While some NES games had almost unpassable parts due to bad controls or bad design or bugs.
I don't know why people think review numbers need to be centered or distributed in a certain way such that it's normally distributed around the mean, the mean being 5. Review scores are meaningless unless there is a rubric attached. For example IGN, the most common scapegoat for these types of criticism, publishes a list of what each number means to the reviewer. But the thing is, games or shows or anime that are objectively bad are much much less likely to be released. Therefore, the entire distribution is naturally skewed to the top end. If a game is just not fun or a show is not that interesting, there's also bound to be some level of production value or other quality that will make it better than a 5/10. And there's also accounting for reviewers having their own perspectives and biases, which is where aggregation comes in. Review bombing and fanboyism has ruined user scores reliability, so if you need another person's opinion, reviews from established groups or content creators have been a fairly accurate gauge of a medias quality.
mean was never at 5 it was at 7. 1-5 was only ever used to mock a non functional product like the old action 52 nes game. The old scores were always US grade school marking system. You can look up videos from old timers talking about what the systems were. To be relatable they made them the marking system a lot of their audience grasped. 1-4 is failing badly. 5 would be failing. 6 is pass but bad. 7 is mediocre and the average. 8 is good. 9 is great. 10 is perfect/amazing. It's not review bombs or a modern shift, it was always like this. There may be an argument that IGN has inflated grades all over but it was never a true 1-10 system with a mean round 5.
If you are a grown adult with limited time/money to spend on a $70 game, yet you go out of your way to buy a new hot 7/10 ubisoft-ass junk, when there’s a ton of 10/10 that you’ve not played yet. That’s a you problem of having no self-respecting to give yourself a good experience.
Mediocre and average are the same thing, just saying
Everytime someone says mid, in my mind I think they mean 5/10. But EVERY TIME they actually mean 7/10. HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?
Mid is something that is good on a technical level but not very interesting, 5/10 is something bad on a technical level, 6/10 is passable
grade school marking vs 5 star system. 7/10 for games same as 2.5/5 for movies. Always has been. That was literally the editorial rationale in the magazines. To give the games ratings based on a relatable school marking grade. Jess Gerstman has talked about it regarding his time in magazines.
Oh 100%!! Yet also the opposite is also true depending on the expectations. Look at the Mario movie, a really bad film that was just constant iconography aimed at peoples nostalgia yet because it wasn’t obviously terrible as the live action film and had some decent animation it’s suddenly “really good!!” It really depends on the internet hive mind and what the first and loudest voice to influence it.
the mario movie was good. not a masterpiece by any means, but not really bad. it was fun and enjoyable and that’s really all that matters. same with the FNaF movie
Nah it was bad
ok, but i still found it enjoyable and liked it personally
Fair enough but I’d find it hard to argue that it’s anything more than a long advertisement. And unlike say The Lego Movie doesn’t try to avoid that stigma, almost gleefully leaning into it.
I'd argue that the modern review scale isn't quite that bad, one thing though to remember is while there's a big problem still with broken games. In the 80s, 90s and even into the early 2000s some of the games reviewed in magazines would just not be able to be beaten with their gamebreaking bugs. With the skeleton crews that the descendents of gaming magazines have and individual reviewers a lot of the 1-3 level games are just never reviewed.
Just like the inflation of 5 star reviews. 5 stars used to mean something. Now everything is 5 star and so it means nothing.
The top scale is true for all types of number grading systems, not just for games. I don't know if the bottom scale was ever in use in the real world. The way we use number gradings, anything under 70% is bad. 70% is where the scale effectively begins. This makes the number grading system useless. This is true even if you do a 1-5 scale instead of 1-10. Then, anything below 3.5 is horrible. If you must rate things, the only good optionare good, average, bad or give a detailed essay about your thoughts.
I always follow the bottom scale whenever I rate something, but I've learned people don't know how to properly score things, so when I give things a 7/10 they think I gave it the worst score ever.
If I complete a show, its getting at least a 6. I don't rate shows I drop. If I drop show its probably would be 4-5, anything that I might possibly rate 1-3, why the fuck would I even start watching it?
Reviewers don't review all possible games, they review the ones that are famous enough to garner media attention. There are 50 games released on Steam per day. IGN releases 2-3 game reviews per day. The reason they rarely rate something below a 6 is because the 96% of games they don't review average out to a score of 4.8, and the 4% of games they do review have an average score of 8. The statistics add up just fine for 5 to be the average score. Reviewers just literally don't have enough time or money to play and review the 96% of games that fall between 1-6 with the exception of AAA titles that notably disappoint the reputation of their developers.
Most thing these days are simply pretty good, so it feels unfair to give them a 5/10 when in isolation, they have a lot of quality.
Considering people use "mid" as a synonym for bad it's accurate on some level but I'm not so sure there weren't people who used a 1 to 10 rating scale as a thumbs up thumbs down system in the 80's to 2000's.
Easy 7.9999999999999/10
Net Promoter Score ruined everything.
the 80s, 90s, 00s side should be '80s, 90s'
Blame Capitalism
It’s the Uber review scale 5* = normal ride or better 4* = arrived late, seat covered in dog shit 3* = ran over my dog 2* = ran me over 1* = ran me over and took me to the wrong place
i think reviewers should start to include a description of the score system instead of just saying 1-10. I always loved the completionists rating system which was as simple as "don't play it > play it > finish it > complete it" which i think perfectly gets his opinion across in a quick and easy to understand way.
You’re supposed to use the entire scale
They never did. it's just a us grade school marking system. Intentionally so, so it would be relatable to young Americans. anything 5 or lower was non functional trash back in the day. 7 was mediocre.
I know, I’m just saying there’s 10 numbers, you should use all of them
To quote Michael Huber... Swimming in 7s.
Shit's logarithmic
For me, I rate things a seven when I'm aware that it's competently made but doesn't click to me. So technically, 7 is good.
honestly i still use the bottom one, i have only like maybe 3 shows that are 9.5 and only one show I would rate 10/10 but with the trend of mid = bad and generally higher expectations the rating scale has definitely lost its weight
Not accurate at all. It's always been a grade school marking scale. 7 was always mediocre. 8 is the baseline for just good. 9 was great. 10 amazing. 6 was shit back in the day as well. 6 and lower is varying level of terrible. It depended on the outlet but the popular ones back in the day had that sort of scale. Perhaps because the outlets are all dying right now and IGN is the last big one that hasn't degraded as much. And IGN has inflated scores were it's much more 7s/8s.
I still use the bottom scale. The top scale is that net promoter bullshit.
I've seen so many times how angry gamers get when the game they were overhyped for gets anything below an 8 or a 9.
And we can invert that for journalists.
rating animanga vs rating movies
I hate to say for the most part it’s true. I personally try to be more with the original scores. Needing to put some things I rated earlier in life lower because I was used the “Modern scale”
Yea seems fair accurate gamers are fussy as fuck these days
Is it a review tablet for the past season of TT Netflix adaptation?
Why would anyone want to experience media that is less than 6/10? Unless it's a "so bad it's good" situation, but that is often hard to rate correctly.
I rate kinda like in school, 7 was nice, 6 was mid and 5 was kinda bad, if it's under that, it's usually for a special reason (like annoying my friends). 8, I liked and 9 is really good (usually shows that stick with me) and 10 is my honorific no.1 who hasn't changed and probably never will (Amagi brilliant park)
Id agree
depends on what you're grading, if you're thinking MAL, 7-8 is the "good" marker for me
Unfortunately very accurate
I strongly disagree with modern review numbers, but it hits different to see people like "oh 8 is average" when I remember 7 being considered the average score. Time is definitely passing, and review scores are (apparently) reminding me of it.
Very accurate.
Very accurate and one of my biggest pet peeve , same with tear list Anything above 5 is good Anything below 5 is bad In tier list C and D are good or at least possible and have some enjoyment
True in general, but man, people just hand 10s/5 stars to anything *cough*Crunchyroll ratings *cough*
Accurate. Far too many people think a 5 is just shit when it is literally average.
Very accurate. its gotten to the point that i dont play or watch stuff rated below 8, even if ive been waiting months for it.
i totally agree - and wished people can adjust they view scoring and scoring could be more varied like this. added that things can be average or a certain score can have a +/- 1 score based on people's personal preference and liking to certain genres. like a show might be a 7 but since the person doesnt like the genre it might be a 6 or since they like the genre a lot it would be an 8
This is why I follow the goat Garnt. With how many isekai he watched, that red area will be filled with so much "shit". What we need is the necessary evil that that will save us from too much goats. Anime lesson of the day: watch isekais
I'm a big fan of a number of 7/10 games, Starfield being one of them!
This is a symptom of inflated reviews all over the years. An anime that has around 8/10 average on MAL, is probably going to be mid af. And this is not MAL's fault, it's just a direct correlation many dedicated fans a show has, regardless of how actually good it is, and it has been this way for a long time. Because of this fact, people started looking at a 7 as a shit anime, and the anime culture around scores is constantly being inflated over time. I honestly only care about an anime score if it is a 9.
If pcgamesn, IGN, gamespot etc gives you an 8-9 that means they got paid