“IGN Syndrome” to blame for skewing game review rating

An opinion piece by Eddie Inzauto at GameWad tackled how the game review is way too “skewed” from the natural way how games should be rated in reviews. It’s hard not to agree with his point of view, because games nowadays are leaning heavily on the higher side of the game rating scale than what should have been the normal side: the natural score.

The constant leaning on the higher scores has been termed as “IGN Syndrome” since, as he said, every other reviewer refers to one major game review publisher for a “reference” of scores. And because IGN often scores on the higher bracket of the 10 point rating, other game reviewers follow suit; hence, the problem of skewed reviews spawn from the IGN Syndrome.

Normal distribution is a statistical method that should bring about a graph like the one below, where the phenomenon of central tendency would illustrate a bell shaped trend. According to Inzauto, this trend mimics normalcy, which in turn should also be able to guide the reviewer viewing the score on what the real “average” gameplay should be scored.

He is suggesting that game reviewers adopt a similar system to the one he drafted in order to re-introduce this normalcy. But because the rating systems on the Internet are way beyond universal at the moment, there’s no telling how far his message would go. Feel free to discuss, but keep it clean.

An opinion piece by Eddie Inzauto at GameWad tackled how the game review is way too “skewed” from the natural way how games should be rated in reviews. It’s hard not to agree with his point of view, because games nowadays are leaning heavily on the higher side of the game rating scale than what should have been the normal side: the natural score.

The constant leaning on the higher scores has been termed as “IGN Syndrome” since, as he said, every other reviewer refers to one major game review publisher for a “reference” of scores. And because IGN often scores on the higher bracket of the 10 point rating, other game reviewers follow suit; hence, the problem of skewed reviews spawn from the IGN Syndrome.

Normal distribution is a statistical method that should bring about a graph like the one below, where the phenomenon of central tendency would illustrate a bell shaped trend. According to Inzauto, this trend mimics normalcy, which in turn should also be able to guide the reviewer viewing the score on what the real “average” gameplay should be scored.

He is suggesting that game reviewers adopt a similar system to the one he drafted in order to re-introduce this normalcy. But because the rating systems on the Internet are way beyond universal at the moment, there’s no telling how far his message would go. Feel free to discuss, but keep it clean.