People love the quick glance, hot take reviews.

Rather than reading or watching a video explaining the merits of a game, movie, or book, you can just see the number of stars it’s given and leave it at that. This is actually helpful for things like products, although at this point, most of those are probably AI. However, it can still be a helpful indicator.

For art, though? It doesn’t make much sense to me. I could talk about the highly subjective nature of giving something a number or star rating (I once had a HEATED conversation about whether or not giving a movie a 2.5/5 means it’s an average, or fine movie. Nothing wrong, but nothing particularly amazing. He thought 2.5 stars was less than half because of how it looked.) No matter what people claim, it’s mostly vibe-based.

And one of those pervasive vibes that most people agree with is that 7/10 is the last number before things start to go bad. Or the first number before things start to get good. It’s the great separator.

The 7/10 game is a gem. They’re not masterpieces; some people dismiss them, others seek them out. They exist in this space where they could be someone’s favorite game of the year, but they’re not making any publication’s list.

I think part of the 7/10 hidden gem thing is because there’s a level of cool. For example, Ribbit King is one of my favorite games, and that makes me feel cool. Cause I know there’s only like 12 people in the world talking about that game.

A lot of people say 7/10s are awesome, but 6/10s?… no one talks about 6/10s. 6/10, according to the internet, is basically trash.

So my question is this. If we’re grading on a scale of 1-10, why is 7 where things get good?

I noticed this when going through my Backloggd-rated games. It’s heavily rated towards the upper end of the scale. Could be because I have impeccable taste in video games, but I think it’s because the scale is broken.

Even if 5/10 or 2.5/5 is literally halfway to being a masterpiece, most would consider that rating too bad to even consider playing. When a hotly anticipated game comes out, fans require a rating of 9 or 10. Anything less than that is a personal offense.

Crimson Dessert is a good example of this. A hugely anticipated game that is slated to change the landscape of gaming forever. Gamers were eagerly waiting for it, eating up as much information as they could, so when the reviews placed the game as a 7/10, gamers were irate.

There’s a ton that could be said about this moment, but consider the following: 7/10 isn’t a bad score, and also gamers should care less about what someone says about a game they’re excited for.

There’s no nuance to number ratings. Everything becomes a comparison— I can’t give Control an 8/10 because I gave Bowsers Fury an 8/10, and I didn’t like Control as much as Bowsers Fury…

It’s just a glorified tier list at that point.

And this is something online gamers do all the time.

They look at the number rating of an IGN review for a game they like, written by a guy named Joe, then compare it to a review written by Carl for a game they don’t like, and then complain that the game they like more doesn’t have a higher score.

As if IGN has some massive tier list where every time they review a game, they objectively place it in one of the tiers so balance can be brought to the universe.

Even the idea that a number rating can be objective is crazy.

The other way numbered scaling is broken is the fact that 1-6 essentially means bad. That means there are 6 numbers that don’t matter to most people. All they care about are the 8-10s. There’s no nuance.

Imagine a world where you pick up a 4/10 and you enjoy it. Might not seem possible, but if people changed their perception so the 7/10 changes to a 5/10, we could live in a utopia.

But that will never happen ever. So, let’s be real.

In my opinion, numbered reviews should be personal. Meaning, there’s no universal canon for what 5/10 means. To someone, 5/10 could mean trash; to another, 5/10 means baseline entertaining.

Even places like IGN have a canon for what each number means, but there’s no criteria beyond that. It’s still incredibly subjective, but even their score defines a 5 as Mediocre.

We should all recognize that numbers, for a review, are completely vibes-based. There is no way for them not to be.

We can’t fix the scale.

This is completely broken from the first place because there’s no way to objectively rate a work of art.

Throw out the whole thing.

Rate a movie on Letterboxd? yeah! It’s fun to see what friends think about a movie in a quick-hit way. But write a 2,400-word review of a 100-hour game only for people to scroll to the bottom? no.

stop.

get some help.