SteamReviews are often boiled down to a number score, an X/10, N/five stars, “5/7.” While useful in skimming aggregated reviews, it often overlooks important nuances with a review—simply because most content, or all experiences, are highly subjective.
Significance in academia, industry
Measuring the human psyche, distilling it down to digits, is a problem we’ve had for over a century. I mean, it’s its own science: psychometrics. I’d love to dig deeper on that subject later on, but I don’t want friends to think I have this deep-seated hatred for -style measurements.
Rating scales (e.g. a Likert scale, pictured above) have provided us a ton of knowledge and understanding throughout the years and has helped us by being the giant whose shoulders we stand on.
Why I don’t use ‘em
Yeah, clearly they’re not great, not terrible. Reasons why I, myself, don’t use them include the following:
- If you want aggregated reviews, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. You’re here because you want to hear me out, and I’m here because I’d want to be verbose in being heard. You’re reading all of this because you want to know how and why I think. A 3/5 stars won’t even scratch the surface of my train of thought.
- People tend to rank things. If I say has a rating of 3.4, and has a rating of 4.2, people would think that is just better in all regards. “No, that’s not what I think,” you say, and that’s why you’re here. The devil’s in the details, the nuances are everywhere, and you know it. It’s probably the same why I don’t like tier lists (unless based on fact, e.g. OP items in games). While I do believe that there are certain s and s where the is just “better” in every regard, numerical ratings just tend to blanket all of that, when things tend to be situated in a bell-curve.
- What system should I use? Should I be linear? Where a is twice better than a ? Or a bell-curve based system where most reviews would lie on a range? Or should I make my own system and make everyone do a pre-read so they could completely digest it? Yeah, no.
- Personal choice. It’s my site, after all! You do you, as they say.
However, I’ll do my best to say if I recommend something, particularly to a certain subset of people. I can’t recommend anything to everyone!
What about rubrics or criteria?
It’s just another layer of abstraction. My argument above would be the same, as if you’re traversing down a tree. So what if a game has an 8/10 in the Graphics category, what does that mean?
Please just give us a number!
See the Why I don’t use ‘em section. Particularly items number 1, 2, 3, and 4.