Angry Robot

It's All About the Numbers

Great editorial over at Gamasutra on the topic of the Jeff Gerstmann firing and the supremacy of numerical scores:

But many outlets have failed to stir up any reader interest in the text behind the review, or the overall atmosphere of the mag or website they’re exploring — instead, readers increasingly care exclusively about the score, so they can praise and/or whine about it online. Entire game-media outlets have been, and are defined by, the numerals they publish…instead of, you know, how fun they are to read.

One comment on "It's All About the Numbers"

  1. Nadine says:

    I think that if I’m a less than literate young person who goes to these sites to comment I’m not going to spend 5-10 minutes reading a thoughtful article when I can simply look at the 1-10 score and feel a surge of pride or anger and reflect that with a simple:

    “This game is teh shit!”

    “This game is awesome, it’s way better than a 6 it’s a 9!”

    Such a relative concept as the liking of a certain game is boiled down to such a powerful icon: Numbers (sometimes with decimals!) And then to have those icons absorb all the attention instead of the game…it’s a bit odd. This collective we have going, this “oh this guy gives it an 8 so I’ll play it but I won’t play below 6” is almost scary. Individual thought and feeling is stripped away by the worship of a numerical concept.

    Weird.

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