Gamespot gave Grand Theft Auto V a fine score of 9.0/10. It’s a fantastic score to what looks to be a fantastic game. Apparently that score isn’t good enough and some folks out there couldn’t bear the fact that their score wasn’t a 10.
So the craziest of the crazy folks on the internet went out of their way to start a petition to fire the Gamespot editor behind the review. I didn’t read the review but I doubt anything the reviewer could have written would warrant losing their job over.
Review scores are not the problem. The problem is that some people put too much weight on them. We’ve been trained from a very early age to take scores seriously so it’s not surprising why people do so.
However math tests and games are different — 2 x 2 will always equal 4 and beauty (or fun) is the in the eye of the beholder. A 10/10 on a test will always mean perfection; you made no mistakes. 10/10 in a game review never means that; it means that the game is held to the highest regard for that specific reviewer. Game reviews like movie or music reviews are subjective pieces.
And until the masses can discern between the objective and subjective, numbers should be sidelined in favor of a stars system like GiantBomb. It’s a silly distinction but you know what? It works. Or everyone should just adopt my system.
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