PSA: 7/10s are Good Video Games

The tension in the air is palpable in the moments before a big video game is about to have its review embargo lifted. The review scores that drop will have giant implications for how a game is discussed for years to come. The general scale gamers seem to have when looking at reviews is as follows.

10/10: PEAK!

9/10: A great video game

8/10: Pretty good

7/10: TRASH

And the thing is… that isn’t how anyone who writes video games thinks about them. While not all reviewers use the exact same scale, they almost all say that 7/10s are enjoyable video games. When IGN gives a game a 7, it literally says “good” right next to the score. If we start taking these sites at their word and recognize that 7/10s are good video games, we might be able to start enjoying more games and participating in less whiny discourse.

Yeah, I’m not hopeful for either of those things either, but screw it. Let’s talk about it anyway.

Why Gamers Freak Out About 7/10s

I think gamers view 7/10s as a reviewer trashing a game for a few reasons. The biggest one is that we relate every scoring system to how we are schooled. The review scale I posted at the start of the article is obviously a joke, but it is kind of how we view our school grades. My parents were very happy when I got an “A”, mostly satisfied when I got a “B”, and pretty disappointed if I got a “C”.

After reading a dozen different review criteria pages from sites like IGN, Gamespot, Destructoid, and more, I can assure you that no game reviewer rates video games in that way.

If we truly rated 7/10s as mediocre video games, then the whole review scale essentially becomes pointless. We would have three numbers that mean something, with 10s, 9s, and 8s, and then 1-7 that all essentially mean the same thing. That would be silly, and that is why reviewers use 7/10 to indicate that they like a video game, but it has some flaws.

And look, I get it. While a 7/10 may be a good video game, it can be tough to be excited about a game getting a score in that zone. Even if it’s good, there are already almost too many 8/10 video games out there, too. So I understand why seeing a 7 might make people consider a game to be not worth playing, but we don’t all play and enjoy video games the same way.

A 7/10 for You is a 5/10 or a 9/10 For Someone Else

We all have different tolerances for different flaws when it comes to video games. There are certain gameplay loops that hit harder for some than for others. I’m sure we have all had at least one game that a friend loved, and then we picked up and just didn’t like. I can often recognize games that clearly have big flaws and still enjoy them as well. I played through Cyberpunk 2077 on the Xbox One and absolutely loved it despite dealing with some of the worst bugs and performance I had ever seen in a video game. I also had a lot of fun with Dead Island 2 last year, despite how one-note and slightly repetitive it can be overall.

We understand inherently that gamers can have different tastes, but we don’t seem to have that same tolerance for a game reviewer. I am not above critiquing when I think the flaws that a game reviewer points out aren’t as bad as they say, as I did with Rise of the Ronin, but overall, these are all just human beings doing a job to the best of their abilities. And as human beings and gamers, they will sometimes have different experiences than you do, and that is OK!

Reviews Are Just a Tool

In the end, you know who you are better than anyone else (uh, hopefully). If you have been gaming for a long time like myself, you should have a general understanding of what you like and do not like in video games. I can usually tell based on gameplay clips and the general concept if I’m going to like a game.

Reviews are a useful tool to figure out if I’m going to like a game as well, but rarely because of what it is scored. The actual text of the review can talk more about the features of the game that aren’t revealed through gameplay clips and help me decide if a game is for me. For example, reviewers gave Dragon’s Dogma 2 extremely strong scores. But the more of those reviews I read, the more I realized that the amount of backtracking, the lack of save slots, and the limited fast travel were going to irk me. I still plan on playing the game, but I’ll buy it when it’s on sale instead.

Perhaps I’m biased as a blog writer myself, but I’m desperate for more people to actually read these reviews instead of just looking at a score and calling it a day. The text of the review is overwhelmingly more valuable than an arbitrary score plopped at the end.

So, in the end, if we recognize that reviewers like games that they rate a 7/10, we play those games more often if they interest us, and we stop crying every time reviewers don’t like a game as much as we do, I think gaming discourse would be in a much better spot. That seems easy enough! You are welcome.

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Stay tuned for Friday’s blog post, where I rank my favorite games with Opencritic scores in the 70s!