Rating systems are cooked
Tags: software
Rating systems are cooked.
But I still use them.
Comparing pieces of art based on a numbered rating system is inherently irrational because obviously not every work in a medium can be directly and objectively compared in quality.
For example, the aim of an MMO like World Of Warcraft is going to be a lot different to a visual novel like Ace Attorney, which is going to be a lot different from an experimental indie game like Yume Nikki. Judging both on the same rating system and saying one is better than the other is comparing apples and oranges. Different target audiences, different goals, different amounts of time that need to be committed.
Now that hasn't stopped me using sites like Goodreads, Letterboxd and Backloggd to log the media I enjoy because it's still genuinely fun to rate things so you can track what you like and then catalogue that data for easy access.
Score aggregation
On these review aggregation sites like Goodreads, Letterboxd and Metacritic everyone is bound to have their own system for how they rate media. Given how arbitrary the system is already the only real guarantee is that higher is good and lower is bad.
My reviews on backloggd are centered around 4/5
When put under these circumstances, I've noticed people tend to rate everything with a positive skew. I mean it makes sense. Why would you watch something if you aren't going to enjoy it? If you look at any rotten tomatoes, almost every film has a much higher audience score than critic score.
This is the first movies on the rotten tomatoes home page at time of writing. Every film has a higher audience score.
As it turns out people reading critic reviews also tend to hope that said critic likes what they like. That's why it is also interesting when people attack reviewers for giving something a "low score". 7/10 might mean middling to you, but to the critic that could be a high score on their own scale.
This is why I think that for someone to make a rating, there should be some form of criteria that the platform abides by in order to determine what each level of praise really equates to. It would help level out the distribution of ratings whilst also hopeful making ratings more unanimous among the population if everyone plays by the same rules.
I also feel that more major platforms should omit numerical scores from their reviews, letting the nuance of their writing speak for itself. That won't land them on Metacritic though I suppose.
The urge to have the correct opinion
I don't know if this is an urge that only I have, but often I find myself looking at rating sites almost religiously, whenever I plan on watching anything at all. I mean how do I know if it's worth my time? It's such an irrational urge, but I find myself coming back to it all of the time. It almost saps the fun out of everything when I've read 5 reviews of something before even sitting down to start. This is also tied to an inclination to avoid trying new things. It's much more comfortable sitting back and reading reviews rather than going through all of the effort to commit to something new.
Also, when I watch something and am not entirely affected by it, despite a high public rating, I often find myself working to discover what made it good to everyone else. Sometimes this deepens my appreciation, like with Outer Wilds, and sometimes it makes me realise just how arbitrary these ratings really are. Like with Mario Galaxy. (I do not like Mario Galaxy. Yes. I am talking about the game)
Then again it's not all bad. I've found heaps of my favourite music through sites like rateyourmusic and I've enjoyed plenty of movies that I found through Letterboxd. Maybe I'm just concerned that I am not striking a balance. Without seeing something bad is it possible to appreciate quality and effort? My answer, at least for games is by making my own. Once you know how games are made, all of work put into making what I play is able to shine through clearer. For films though? How do I know if one is special, when I force everything to be special.
Ditch the aggregator
If I were to become a wise old man, I would ditch the public review aggregator entirely, go on my private notes and write down reviews for every single piece of media I experience. Unaffected by the masses, the aggregated, indistinguished average opinion. Well I'm going to try that out now.
There was recently a change of community guidelines on backloggd that I didn't like the sound of. Essentially they gave more free reign for moderators to abuse their power and eliminate any review on the platform that doesn't stay precisely on topic. I don't really care too much about this, but I was interested in leaving anyways to achieve my very important ambition of becoming a wise old man.
I downloaded, processed and exported all of my game logs into individual markdown files alongside their cover images. I then created an Obsidian vault dedicated entirely to tracking any media I am playing/reading/watching, with queries and tags to categorise them into past, present and future. From the compressed images sourced through Backloggd, the images for 237 games totals up to 5mb of disk space, which is pretty modest for how much it adds to visualising the data in a grid.
This is a visualisation of my game notes, using obsidian bases. Each file is an individual note.
This is the note for one game.
I might merge this system into my primary vault. Soon I will also remove backloggd links from this website. Maybe a recommendations page will be nice, to show a bunch of game recommendations alongside some briefer reviews of games I played in the past. Who know? I might try reviewing some other mediums, although I'm hardly qualified in judging much outside of games.
Bonus for reading until the end: Rating site ratings
Rotten tomatoes: Rotten. I don't like it. Never feels accurate to anything.
Metacritic: Pretty good. That is until slop live reports on how Game of Thrones fans are review bombing Breaking Bad. Rating drama cannot be this deep. Partially responsible for pushing reviewers to take on a numerical rating system so they can appear on their page.
Rate Your Music: Good, if you ignore certain individuals. I like this site for finding super niche music recommendations. They also catalogue complete artist discographies, including bootlegs so you can find some super obscure stuff.
Backloggd: Alright for finding games. Guidelines are worrying, a little pretentious. As if I can't pretend I don't come across a little prentious in a lot of my blogs lol.
Letterboxd: You either find the most pretentious "cinephiles" ever, or normies. No inbetween.
Goodreads: Laggy to the point of being almost unusable. How do you mess up this badly? I don't like reading book reviews much either.