finding value in imperfect things

February 22, 2023 8:20 AM

In praise of the 7/10 [Eurogamer] “I like bad games. They can often be more interesting than the current standard of highly polished, triple-A titles that adorn our PlayStation's and Xbox's hard drives. This is partially because more often than not their supposed "badness" isn't because they are badly designed, but because they didn't come together in the way they perhaps deserved to. You can call me contrarian if you want, but that's not what I'm trying to be. It's more that I want to allow more time for games to breathe than I think they're sometimes afforded. [...] Games are still desperate to be recognised by the other arts, particularly film, evidenced by The Game Awards constantly having film actors present the awards to assign some supposed lack of legitimacy (you did your best though, Al). I think that's part of why games have to be masterpieces, constantly one-upping the previous "best game ever made," something that you do not find in any other medium. In turn, I think this leads to a general issue when it comes to continuing the discussion of games in a thoughtful way.”
posted by Fizz (27 comments total)

Two quotes come to mind reading this:

"Swimming in 7s" -- the concept of enjoying 7s for what they are. A celebration of that overloaded center of the reviewing bell curve.

"All the best games are 6/10s" -- an idea I thought for sure I picked up in the editor's intro to this iconic pathologic article, though I couldn't find that sentiment in so many words looking through it all now (including archive pulls of the now-broken links). But it's perhaps there between the lines, or maybe I heard it phrased like that somewhere else.

Aha, perhaps I misread this line in one of the linked reviews: "But it's probably the most interesting and brilliant 6 out of 10 game you'll find."

And read it more like: "But it's probably because all the most interesting and brilliant games are 6 out of 10." And just internalized that (misread) idea ever since (haha!).

The phrasing might be a little hyperbolic, but something about the idea resonates with me, even now.
posted by Flaffigan at 9:34 AM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yahtzee had a video essay on the same topic where he made the same point - interesting failures are better for the industry than soulless technical mastery. (This is why he added the Blandest category to his annual best/worst runup.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:50 AM on February 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

That said, we need to distinguish between games that fail to execute on an interesting premise, and ones that fail to execute period. Big Rigs: Over The Top Racing may have given us hilarious memes, but it is a nonfunctional pile of code that should never been shipped.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:54 AM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ah, another follower of Zero Punctuation. I like Yahtzee because he's an old time-constrained gamer who seems to value novelty a lot more than others, instead of praising the flawless execution and breadth of yet another AAA sequel/remake. It's true that you might not like the same games he does, but at least you tried something different.

I have a younger coworker who often excitedly asks me if I'm looking forward to latest AAA game in established franchise coming out soon, and I try not to dampen their enthusiasm by saying that I played a game in that series twenty years ago and I don't see any reason to play it again.
posted by meowzilla at 10:06 AM on February 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

The 6's & 7's are about my style - because I am just "not good enough" to typically handle the top-tier "AAA" games - they mostly end-up being too difficult for me, even on "easy" mode...
posted by rozcakj at 10:10 AM on February 22, 2023

7/10 is a great spot in ratings for movies.

That's what you get when you take the average of a lot of people who watched it assigning it a 10 because they felt it was a work that took a bunch of big chances and made them work, along with a bunch of people rating it a 1 because those big chances *didn't* work for them, or because they are not sufficiently jaded with simpler, more direct examples of the medium to be interested in complex, oblique work.

It's also where you get stuff that's mostly just, well, okay. Nobody fucked up their job but nobody excelled at it either. Or maybe a few people fucked up and a few people excelled, and it's worth skipping the bad parts for the good ones.

I do find it interesting that all the 7/10 games cited in this article are huge, much-hyped works from major corporations. I felt like I had something more to say about that but then there was a link at the bottom to a review of Jeff Minter's new game, and, well, there's a lifelong 7/10 creator if there ever was one - his games are *fucking crack* if you like games that stick a lightning rod in your overdeveloped visual cortex and make goofy, happy noises while doing so, and incomprehensible old-school arcade twaddle if you don't.
posted by egypturnash at 10:28 AM on February 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

Note this article is mostly talking about innovative games that fail to meet their goal. Nier: Automata is absolutely breathtaking in its structural audacity, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Forspoken swung very hard for the fences. Demon's Souls turns out to be the first of a whole genre. These are all games with a 9/10 for creativity and then a 5/10 for execution. A 7 on average.

There's a whole other set of 7/10 games that are just fine, entertaining, but not remarkable. I'm enjoying working through Days Gone, for instance (as are a lot of people; it recently became cheaper / free and a lot of people are like "wait, this is good actually".) I love the Far Cry formula, even the last two mediocre games. Just Cause 4 entertained me too. All comfortable, fun, just not great. These too are 7/10 games.
posted by Nelson at 10:48 AM on February 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I came for a bowling discussion. I'll see myself out now.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:54 AM on February 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

And read it more like: "But it's probably because all the most interesting and brilliant games are 6 out of 10." And just internalized that (misread) idea ever since (haha!).

The UK mag EDGE once published a review of the DS port of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer with the opening, "Ignore the score." They gave it a 6 out of 10 while acknowledging that the game was groundbreaking at the time and remains important in the history of Japanese-style roguelikes.

I later played it and absolutely loved it. I also increased my doubt about the whole review score thing. Most of the sites I rely on for game reviews these days don't use scores at all, just a "recommend/don't recommend" type of system.

Nier: Automata is absolutely breathtaking in its structural audacity, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

When the article mentions NieR, it is the janky but wonderful NieR: RepliCant/NieR: Gestalt, not Automata, that is being referred to.
posted by May Kasahara at 10:58 AM on February 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just think we should do away with scoring games. Games are like movies, or books - they speak to some people more than others. For instance, I *love* Season: A Letter to the Future, a game that has fared only relatively well critically. For me, that game is a 10, for others perhaps less inclined to spend a lot of time exploring and absorbing the vibe of games (which is my favourite thing to do, I used to play GTA V online just to go exploring) it's maybe lacking a little in the "things to do" department.

I don't know, I just think games criticism as it stands today kind of lacks subtlety, and people take it way too seriously also. Play a game before you decide it sucks, you know.
posted by signsofrain at 12:01 PM on February 22, 2023

I came for a bowling discussion. I'll see myself out now.

Yeah, you better split.
posted by staggernation at 12:20 PM on February 22, 2023 [16 favorites]

Every few years someone reinvents or rediscovers Kieron Gillen's New Games Journalism manifesto.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 1:36 PM on February 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I just heard somewhere that if you're trying to find a good ethnic cuisine restaurant blind, you should always go for ones that have a three to three point five star rating on google, because a 4 star rating means that everything is pretty good, but a three star rating means everything but the food is awful, but the food is incredible. Similar principle.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 1:50 PM on February 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

How is a 7 bad? That's so close to 10! A 4 would be bad. Right? Question mark?
posted by pelvicsorcery at 2:15 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ah well, see, a 5 means literally unplayable and a 10 means it's the finest gaming experience known to man. Values lower than a 5 are merely theoretical.
posted by Kyol at 2:19 PM on February 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

Much in the same way as a 3-star Uber/Lyft driver is only 2 stars away from 5 (so close!), or an 8/10 on a "How did this employee do?" survey.

In practice, there's "The people who worked on this should continue to work in this industry", and there's "everything else".
posted by CrystalDave at 2:23 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

My take on this is that the truly terrible games (1-4) and the bad games (5-6) mostly get ignored by mainstream reviewers for good reason. You don't expect to see a direct-to-video Steven Seagall movie from 2022 reviewed in the NYT. Why bother tearing apart games that are just bad or cheaply made garbage?

If it's a game I'm interested in, I try to avoid long reviews. But if I see it's getting a bunch of 9s and 10s, I'll probably buy it soon. If it's getting lots of 7s and 8s, I'll dip into a couple of trusted reviewer's takes (I like ACG and SkillUp) to see what's up.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:37 PM on February 22, 2023

7/10 is a great spot in ratings for movies.

The canonical perfect movie rating is 5/7.
posted by solotoro at 2:38 PM on February 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Another point: I'm more willing to try a 7/10 movie or even lower. Because a movie is around 2-hours long and costs less than $20 to see—and often far less than $20 if it's streaming on a service I have. Plus, I seldom have much love at all for Oscar-bait type stuff. So 4 out of 4 stars is very often not meaningful to me in regard to films.

Games can cost up to $70 and are often really long (often way too long, IMO) and are more of a commitment.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:49 PM on February 22, 2023

The 6's & 7's are about my style

"Although I'm dressed up to the nines, at 6s and 7s with you." -Eva Peron, Evita
posted by hippybear at 2:59 PM on February 22, 2023

I've always appreciated One Life Left's approach to game criticism--where literally every title is rated 7/10.
posted by Hot Like Your 12V Wire at 4:05 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Related mostly by the 7/10 figure: I have a heuristic with writers/sources of ideas that I’ve been calling “the 70% club”. People I agree with less than half the time aren’t worth the effort. People I agree with 100% of the time have nothing to teach me. People who I think are 30% full of crap are a sweet spot for interesting ideas.
posted by rickw at 5:09 PM on February 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

AAA games have been largely uninteresting to me for most of my adult life, with maybe some small exceptions for Zelda and Metroid in the GameCube era.

But one thing that I figured out then that is sort of inline with this sentiment is that if I'm pretty interested in a game, I find the 5-7/10 reviews the most informative. Because I know I might like it, and a 9/10 review isn't going to assure me. What's going to assure me is someone who describes some big problems to them. If I agree with those problems, I'll skip. But some of my favorite games of all time are ones that have fairly compelling criticisms in their mildly positive reviews, and the problems are so well articulated that I know they won't be problems (and might be attractive!) to me

TLDR: even decent gushing reviews are as useless as lambasting ones, because the are ultimately less informative than a 7/10 written with comparable skill and knowledge.

I feel like this applies more broadly than gaming too.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:53 PM on February 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Currently playing Rain World, which is definitely a 7/10 for some mechanics and signposting decisions that can be extremely frustrating and unfair, but goddamn if that isn’t part of what makes it so compelling. They aimed to make the player feel like a rat in Manhattan subways and by god did they do it, which necessarily includes a number of experiences that at times make for incredibly unfun gameplay.

Yet everyday I wake desperate to yet again be a little slugcat with nothing against the cruel world but a stick (which I am constantly accidentally throwing into walls where it will stay there for 3-5 day cycles at minimum).
posted by brook horse at 8:16 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

It feels like over the past 10 years the whole game review industry has sort of died.

My gut feeling is that publishers are chasing "engagement" metrics rather than review scores, which means gaming the Twitch viewer numbers by running drops promotions, directly paying streamers to stream their games, etc.

If you can get your game to trend in the top 5 on Twitch for at week you will drive a LOT of sales, a lot more than having some writers claim your game is an 8/10. Who cares if your game is objectively a piece of crap if plenty of people enjoy playing it?

I suppose it would be something like a few of the Twilight movies - poor critic scores, but did well at the box office anyway.

In fact, I feel like games have the most personality when the're at their most janky and raw and unpolished. "Fixing" these issues often means benchmarking against best standards or industry benchmarks which makes everything just feel generic.
posted by xdvesper at 9:03 PM on February 22, 2023

Ah well, see, a 5 means literally unplayable and a 10 means it's the finest gaming experience known to man. Values lower than a 5 are merely theoretical.

I think 4 and lower typically means "too broken to review." John Walker (founder of Rock Paper Shotgun and currently doing the Lord's work at Buried Treasure unearthing indie gems) used to say that reviewers see plenty of 2/10 or 3/10 games that aren't worth writing about.
posted by straight at 10:41 PM on February 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

@Nelson

Days Gone is far more than a 7/10. It had issues on release and for some reason the build-up failed to excite people - I think they thought there would be far more about motorcycles than there actually is. It does take a while to get up to speed and is probably overly difficult and miserly with resources at the start, or at least seems that way on a first playthrough.

It's very polished, very well acted, at least as good as a couple of the Far Cry games. The hordes are unique and absolutely terrifying, especially the bigger ones. If anyone has it free with PS Plus and hasn't played it, they should.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:58 AM on February 23, 2023