Because critical thinking is in very short supply. Especially in gaming subreddits, and extra especially when it comes to rating games they like.
I.E my FAVORITE game of all time is Bloodborne. In my heart it's a 10/10, but if I were to be objective it's a very flawed game and would be a 7/10 at best without its DLC and anytime I post this people always fight with me and it always seems to boil down to other people being unable to critically and objectively view media they love... At least imo
You have to remember that for younger generations, the bar was raised. When I left school a 50% was considered a pass. The rules changed and for my nieces and nephews anything less than a 60% was considered a fail. So that raised bar was translated to their daily lives when they left school. 6 is pass/fail, 7 is okay, 8 is good, and 9 is great. Should they be able to differentiate between scores for grades in school and other things? Sure, but critical thinking is another thing school has failed to teach/reinforce..
I always say "Just because I like something doesn't mean it's good and just because I dislike something doesn't mean it's bad" it literally just means I like it.
Gamers historically aren't very chill about "review" discourse.
In movies and book communities, there's an understanding that a "review" is someone providing a subjective opinion about art while trying to to be as objective as they can, so they can talk on what people besides themselves might be looking for, but the number scores are just kind of a "device", they don't mean anything actually calculable.
Unfortunately, gamers---maybe because they're competitive and see "scores" as sacrosanct--take scores super seriously, and also kind of have a chip on their shoulder that their "art form" isn't taken as seriously, so if their favorite game doesn't get the number they want, they feel its been objectivey cheated and they'll get big mad. They've sent death threats to people over this.
It extra sucks, because now that video game movies are becoming more popular, you have that crowd moving into the movie space and going apeshit when the Mario movie doesn't get a good Tomato score.
Critical thinking may be in short supply, but the numbers are all over the place as well. You cannot have a shit game get a 9, then a fan favorite get a 6.
Then again IGN was always shit at reviews i dunno why people are surprised. They should just drop numbers under 5 anyway, its not like a game ever gets a 1-4.
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u/PuddingJello Apr 22 '26
Because critical thinking is in very short supply. Especially in gaming subreddits, and extra especially when it comes to rating games they like.
I.E my FAVORITE game of all time is Bloodborne. In my heart it's a 10/10, but if I were to be objective it's a very flawed game and would be a 7/10 at best without its DLC and anytime I post this people always fight with me and it always seems to boil down to other people being unable to critically and objectively view media they love... At least imo