All 10/10s are equal, but some are more equal than others
It’s not about the players, it’s about the game
Luke Plunkett recently posted the following Tweet and caused a minor ruckus:
As with everything published online — and especially, anything tweeted — Luke’s post was pretty soon misinterpreted. A few responders, particularly those with a connection to the smaller sites in question, took issue.
Nuance is very difficult to achieve in few words, so it’s worth considering the point, or points, Luke may have been trying to make.
Games marketing centered around review scores is shallow and disingenuous
Absolutely. 💯%. I don’t think many people would disagree with this statement, outside of marketing circles maybe, and even then, probably not.
Reducing a game (or book, movie, culinary experience, etc.) to a score out of 10 (or 5, or… 4?!) will self-evidently remove all insight, detail, and qualification contained in the remaining 99.99% of the review.
But, hey, try to stop humans rating things on a numerical scale.
Picking and choosing review scores for marketing is scummy behaviour
Well, “scummy” may be going a bit too far, but most people recognise the tactic for what it is. The obvious issue is that, from a huge pile of reviews, even the most mediocre games are likely to attract some at-least decent scores.
In these circumstances, it’s easy to pick-and-choose favourable scores for your marketing. If marketing only featured ‘prominent’ reviewers, it might be more honest. But marketing is inherently dishonest, to various degrees, that’s kinda the whole point. Identifying it is good, trying to change it is a whole other challenge.
Marketing review scores creates an unwanted feedback loop
Accusations of reviewers being biased have existed since time immemorial, and will always continue to. Bias is inherent in human nature, as my history teacher taught me when I was 11.
The job of a reader is to recognise that bias and judge each review accordingly; hence the fact that review aggregators like Metacritic do a lot of disservice.
But reviewers have a duty too. We must accept unconscious bias, and there is none so great as the bias that spawns from the wonderful feeling of recognition bestowed by popular or respected authority figures.
I’ve experienced this very situation myself, as a reviewer at a smaller publication. When Nintendo, Square Enix, or—let’s face it—even a small indie publisher highlights your work, it’s extremely satisfying.
This is the key point in Luke’s post, for me. He’s not suggesting that anyone actively tweaks there scores to court recognition. Of course not. But subconsciously doing so? Yeah, that’s going to happen, and—alongside somewhat unscrupulous marketing—it needs to be held up.
Luke’s post was patronising and snobby, looking down on smaller outlets
Luke’s own site, Aftermath, is at the smaller end of the scale. Worker-owned, ad-free, with a small staff of excellent writers, it’s exactly the kind of publication we need to rescue us from SEO-slavery and clickbait-ery.
Luke had a long, successful career at Kotaku, one of the biggest names in gaming media. He’s paid his dues and, at least as much as anyone else, has a right to pontificate on the industry. With that comes a responsibility: to respect the smaller fish, to lift up those trying their best to do good.
In conclusion, I don’t think there was anything wrong with Luke’s actual point, at all. He clearly could have phrased it with a bit more sensitivity, but that’s an enormously difficult thing to do on Twitter.
Review scores are problematic. Games marketing is problematic. The whole damn industry is, in many different ways. We need to recognise this, and deal with it appropriately, rather than fighting amongst ourselves.
