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Jim Felli - On Ratings

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25 Jul 2018 23:50 #278400 by xthexlo

What does rating games really mean?

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26 Jul 2018 07:21 #278401 by Whoshim
Replied by Whoshim on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
This article is a solid 4. ;)

I generally glance at the rating number when looking at anything online. If it is extremely low, I pass over it without digging in. If it is extremely high, I generally read the few negative reviews (but not too many of the positive ones). If it is mixed, I like to read a selection of reviews, but still mostly the negative ones. I find that negative reviews often offer a more direct look at what I am interested in learning about the product. They generally are shorter and get directly to their point. Many times, the negatives for the reviewer are actually positives for me.

As an English teacher, I have to create rubrics for class, and the goal is to make them objective, so that anyone using the rubric and looking at the essay will arrive at the same score. This is not easy, but it is a good exercise for thinking clearly about the essential parts of what you want to evaluate. I like to design games, and writing rubrics has helped me with writing rulebooks.
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26 Jul 2018 08:53 - 26 Jul 2018 09:04 #278408 by Sagrilarus
Replied by Sagrilarus on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
I like this article. It's really juicy, not an ounce of formality, good for everyday reading. Bittersweet components, cherries and plums, a touch of tobacco, touch of chocolate, but all very juicy and mild tannins. Hints of lemon peel and green apple, and a sweet and sour streak going through it. Lavender notes to the nose. A lot more complexity than I was expecting.

On occasion, a written review isn't worth very much.

The biggest issue I have with any game review is that I have significant doubts regarding whether the reviewer has actually played the game. I'm not a big components guy, and as often as not a reviewer's primary observation is how it looks on the table. The minute I see this the shields go up, and the writer has to work hard to convince me they know what they're talking about. I can review a game's components without actually having a copy. So can everyone else, so it's more or less worthless content.

The long form reviews here on ThereWillBe.Games are getting the job done. There's enough content regarding the inner workings, the interesting conflictions and the shortcomings, to keep me invested. But that's not something you'll find on other sites where anyone can punch out a review in half an hour and typically do, because quantity is more valuable than quality.

S.
Last edit: 26 Jul 2018 09:04 by Sagrilarus.
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26 Jul 2018 09:06 - 26 Jul 2018 10:11 #278410 by Legomancer
Replied by Legomancer on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings

Regardless of our desire for objectivity


Who's "our"? You got a mouse in your pocket, Jim?

This recent shrieking about the need for objectivity in reviews is ridiculous. Reviews are not objective. They cannot be objective. They should not be objective.

I don't want a dry scientific analysis of a game. I can read rules and look at photos myself. I want to know if it's fun to play. Is that subjective? Hell yeah it is. So the reviewer's job is to get that across.

And that's hard. It's hard to adequately describe the feeling of playing a game, of encountering, through play, what works, what doesn't, what should but doesn't, and -- most fun -- what shouldn't but does. Not a lot of people can do that -- I certainly can't -- but because of the current age, everyone is free to give it a whack. And instead of saying, "yeah, most people aren't good at that and we should really sift through and find those that are" we have instead embraced this dumb idea that the problem is that reviews aren't "objective" enough, that the actual review potion should be a dispassionate evaluation of measurable and differentiable(?) categories.

The punchline to this is that it doesn't matter, because not only are we reviewing absolutely unnecessary nonsense, we're doing it for an audience who, 99 times out of 100, simply wants a "review" to justify a decision they've already made. "I want to buy this game because it's pretty. Oh, BoardGameHobo said it's good! That settles it, in the basket it goes!" Or "I want to buy this game because it's pretty. Oh, BoardGameHobo said it's bad! Well, he doesn't know what I like, so in the basket it goes!"

A single review almost always has little value on its own. You'll need either more reviews from that person so you can establish how your tastes line up with theirs or you'll need an aggregate of reviews on the item to compare across the board.

As always, my personal view on the issue is that fewer people need to be writing "reviews" in the first place. Don't add to the noise by throwing your fifteen paragraphs of rules with "I liked it and it's worth of space on your shelf" summary at the bottom in to muddy up the waters. Nobody cares. Just give it your strong 7 and be done with it. Leave the talk to people who know what they're doing.
Last edit: 26 Jul 2018 10:11 by Legomancer.
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26 Jul 2018 09:07 #278411 by xthexlo
Replied by xthexlo on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings

Sagrilarus wrote: The long form reviews here on ThereWillBe.Games are getting the job done. There's enough content regarding the inner workings, the interesting conflictions and the shortcomings, to keep me invested. But that's not something you'll find on other sites where anyone can punch out a review in half an hour and typically do, because quantity is more valuable than quality.

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

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26 Jul 2018 09:23 #278414 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
For all practical purposes, we are talking about BGG here. Nobody else has a comparable database of reviews and ratings of games. I don't care about their overall ratings or rankings anymore, because of the past extreme bias in favor of euros that continues to corrupt newcomers. However, I do look at individual reviews and ratings that have comments, because those can provide useful insight. I usually ignore ratings of 10, even though I have given out some 10s, because those comments will probably be enthusiastic ravings instead of useful descriptions. Instead, I like to at ratings in the 5 to 8 range, where they will likely acknowledge both good and bad points of the game. As Whoshim mentioned above, the negatives for another player might be positives for me. Sometimes I will read the comment threads for the reviews, in case the reviewer got an important rule wrong in a way that undermines the review. Another lingering bias at BGG is the hostility towards negative reviews, so I try to factor that in when I am reading the more neutral reviews. A neutral review might contain some useful criticism of the game, though muted to avoid offending BGGers.

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26 Jul 2018 09:47 - 26 Jul 2018 11:42 #278416 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
A lot of these issues can be handled with statistical models of expert and crowd rating run on large datasets, fwiw.

Overall, though, I agree with Legomancer on a philosophical level. Concern with a non-existent "objectivity" is often a Gamergate thing.
Last edit: 26 Jul 2018 11:42 by Gary Sax.
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26 Jul 2018 10:31 #278419 by ubarose
Replied by ubarose on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
The need to rate everything is driven by internet and search engine technology. The big online retailers (i.e. Amazon) and review sites use star ratings therefore Google distinguishes between a review of something and a product listing/blog/article/news item by whether or not the item being indexed has rating data on it or not. If you don't include scale metadata, Google assumes a 5 star scale. Therefore most of the blogging and CMS include 5 star rating tools.

It's now ubiquitous and inescapable. If you have reviews and want them indexed correctly by Google, you have to include a rating. If you don't want to custom code scale metadata, you use a 5 star rating.
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26 Jul 2018 11:26 #278422 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
BGG has so many users now that individual quirks in rating methods should be smoothed out by the sheer volume of ratings. And they do have a useful metric for selecting a rating, based on willingness to play a given game again. But the site was gripped by euro bias around the time this hobby picked up momentum. Ratings, reviews, and regulars in the forums all conspired to instruct newcomers in the superiority of euros. There are some other distorting effects, like kickstarters getting 10s a year before they are finished, or people punishing Games Workshop games with 1s, just because GW aggressively cracks down on fan content that potentially infringes on their intellectual properties.

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26 Jul 2018 11:41 #278424 by fightcitymayor
I just need to add: Those GamePro ratings faces were straight fire back in the day.
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26 Jul 2018 11:52 #278425 by Cranberries
Replied by Cranberries on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
If a game gets good ratings from a wide swathe of my Geekbuddies, then it's usually a safe pick, assuming I have a group to play it (which I never, ever do).
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26 Jul 2018 13:02 #278428 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
Well, some people rate things they’ve never played, or rate things based on funky criteria.

I’ve got a guy rating STF as a 2 because he doesn’t like dexterity games, and he uses his ratings as a reminder to himself.

Until you can get everyone in the world on the same page (read: never) all of this is interesting banter, but banter nonetheless

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26 Jul 2018 13:04 #278429 by SuperflyPete

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26 Jul 2018 13:14 - 26 Jul 2018 20:05 #278432 by Frohike
Replied by Frohike on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
My process: I sift through conversations on BGG or here and find/stumble across people who are well spoken, independent thinkers. Then I browse their profile and check their ratings and comments on BGG. If they compose informative and frank comments with their ratings, they get a Geekbuddy add. Comments are gold for me because most users feel like they have an audience there but don't need to put up with the 90% bullshit groupthink responses that "reviews" on BGG often elicit (especially if the review takes a darling game down a few pegs into the pretty-good-to-mediocre range). I like the candor of these comments, at least those composed by the people I follow. They're uncut by deference or some pretense of objectivity or even a systematic approach to evaluating a game.

From there, most games are a "geekbuddy analysis" away from my own evaluation of whether I'm really interested in playing or not.

It's essentially the same as aggregating your favorite reviewers but it also distills the written material down to what's immediately important or relevant to the reviewer.

As for aggregate ratings... those provide nearly zero information for me.
Last edit: 26 Jul 2018 20:05 by Frohike. Reason: Changed TOS to BGG because who the fuck are we kidding
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26 Jul 2018 13:21 #278433 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Jim Felli - On Ratings
100% the main honest portion of BGG is comments. Good point. Not getting trolled endlessly with "prove this!" from fan like a review means those comments are genuine.
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