Review scores special: it’s Tom’s Friday links

Every Friday we put together a list of links with good writing, useful tips and interesting ideas related to writing, journalism and online marketing. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments or contact us with your ideas.

This week is dominated by review scores. It’s a perennial issue – and (for our younger games journalists out there) pre-dates the internet.

We’ve been arguing about review scores with the people that make, sell and play games for longer than we care to remember. And it isn’t going to go away. Ever. But it’s still worth discussing because it’s all anyone wants to know about a review: what’s the score?

It’s also timely because this week the venerable Edge Magazine gave Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword a rare 10/10 (although not *that* rare for Nintendo games. We’re just saying…).

Anyway PSExtreme have waded in with their take on what it means to give a perfect score. It’s a short read with some great comments.

Also debating scores is Dennis Scimeca on Joystick Division. Dennis wants gamers to stop bitching about most games getting scores of between 7/10 and 9/10. (“Either you are in favor of numerical score systems, in which case it might be time to quit bitching about 7 to 9 review scores for the reasons suggested, OR you are in favor of ditching review scores and traditional assessments altogether because you realize they’re ineffective in establishing a wide variety of scores. Developers are simply too good at making video games nowadays.”)

Carl B on iNintendo, on the other hand, is having a right old moan, mainly about taking a flaming on N4G for giving Rage 55%. Carl argues that any score over 50% means the game is better than average.

Part of the problem is that people sometimes smell something rotten when a game they don’t like so much is given a big score. In our experience blatant score manipulation has been all but eradicated. And where it does happen it’s so poorly executed as to be found out very quickly. Gameranx and Gamedynamo both highlight a particularly ham-fisted attempt in Norway.

Away from review score there were a couple of other things that caught the eye this week.

Firstly, PushStartSelect taking apart Yahoo’s lazy and ill thought-through attempts to consign consoles to the dustbin of history (rendered pointless by iPads apparently).

Finally, we enjoyed Joel Peterson’s ode to keeping games journalism simple over at Original Gamer. (“[W]hen I sit down and read an article that starts and ends as a personal anecdote about childhood abuse while only briefly mirroring the tale with the mere mention of a game that reflects this, I usually sit back in my seat, kick my monitor over, yell at my cat, and wish, oh god, that it could all be so much simpler.”)

What’s your take on review scores? How do you approach them? Let us know about this or any other games journalism related links you come across in the comments.