When did 8/10 become a bad score?

Just Getting Better?

Perhaps games are just getting better? It’s a generally accepted maxim that the longer a console’s life span, the better its games become. In 2010 and 2011, developers had mastered the hardware and could begin to focus more on development and graphical excellence.

It’s a neat argument, before you take a closer look at those Metacritic figures. The PlayStation 2 was released in 2000 and the Xbox in 2001. 2001, though, is actually the highest scoring year months before 2008, even though it featured the first run of PS2 releases and the initial two months of Xbox titles.

These Metacritic numbers also take into account PC games, which don’t suffer from the radical jumps in technology that affect their console brethren. Dedicated PC development may not be at its peak, but there’s no reason to suggest such a massive increase in scores has been matched by a sudden improvement in game quality.

Newshound Pat Garratt believes that Metacritic itself is partially to blame for inflated review scores. He argues that a “need for very high Metacritic marks has led to a culture where games that carry sub-9 scores are no longer seen as true hits.' It’s a badly kept secret that big development studios reward their staff with bonuses for high ratings on Metacritic. This ethos filters down to PR representatives, who increase the pressure on reviewers to overstate their scores.

I’m inclined to agree with Pat. Most gaming outlets operate in a symbiotic relationship with publishers. Journalists rely on them for access to preview content and review discs, while publishers depend on the reliable marketing push a positive review will garner. This back-and-forth has lead to a culture in which it is considered de rigueur to award good games a nine or ten.


Journalists have not lost their consistency, but the paradigm shift in what review scores mean has devalued the scale. Pitching your figures upwards is workable when your ceiling is very high, but reviewers now have no room to manoeuvre.

There’s no easy way out of this situation. Critics will have to loosen their ties with publishers. To strive to provide only coverage which truly interests their readership. Brave reviewers perhaps need to abandon numbers altogether, forcing readers to engage with the nuance of a written review.

Some, like Sterling, believe that you need to change too. "Reviews are an emotional crutch for people who clearly have no idea how to operate in the real world," he says. But his error is to imagine that the belligerent minority are more than just that. Take a longer look at Simon Parkin’s Uncharted 3 review and you’ll spot as many people rushing to the defence of intelligent criticism as there are lining up to attack him.

It’s, ultimately, readers like your good selves that can make a difference. Most writers struggle to resist reading the comments on their article or taking them (at least a little bit) to heart. But if people genuinely want a change, it will happen, and it’s constructive comments that help in making that happen. As, perhaps, will a lesser all-round reliance on review scores.

The irony of that may be that, if the number at the end of an article holds less interest, we may yet return to an era where 8/10 signifies near greatness, not near failure.