By Pentadact

And start marking games out of nineteen. Nineteen.

The scale still goes up to 10.0, the stupidest number in the world, but no game is permitted to score less than 1.0. Reviewers can still score to one decimal point, but only if they want to give it .5. And if they do, it can’t be a 0.5.

One of the many, many things I love about this announcement is editor Jeff’s thinly veiled astonishment and disgust at the surreal new system. “While I’ll personally miss the ability to give games a 6.8, I look forward to eliminating quibbles about the quality differences between games that are only a tenth of a point apart.”

I agree. I don’t know how we ever worked out which was better out of 7.9 and 8.0. It was baffling. And they were out of ten? What is this ‘ten’?

“You’re busy. You don’t have time to stare at one game that got a 5.2 and another that got a 5.3 and puzzle out what the big difference is.”

It was the ULTIMATE MYSTERY. There was no way of knowing. Nothing short of looking at the score could get you that information.

“We’ve been working on this update for quite some time now…” Here, this is your first tip-off that your planned scoring system is insane. If a way of rating something takes “some time” to work on, that is because it is not in fact mathematics but rather some sort of beat poetry with numbers.

In case I haven’t made this clear yet, I loathe everyone’s scoring system except ours and those identical to ours. This is because I am numerate.

7.5/10 is a decimal atop a fraction and never made a lick of sense, but this is a country mile further from Sanesville Tennessee. If Gamespot give something 7.5 now, that’s not 7.5 out of 10. It doesn’t translate to 75%. This, honest-to-god, is the equation you now have to put Gamespot scores through: (G - 1) * 10 / 9 = S, where G is the Gamespot score and S is any kind of rational system.

I once came across a website that marked out of twenty, but allowed quarter-points. They come close - close - to being as dumb as this, but it’s that fatal 1.0 minimum that just can’t be beat. This is, officially, the stupidest scoring system on the internet. And I say that as a man who gave a film “Bat out of bat.”

Oh wait, it’s cool. Now they’ve got a medal for “Xtreme Baditude.”

I leave you with a Daily Show-style moment of zen that is at once beyond, beneath and beside parody.

“With fewer scores to choose from, our review team will be able to speak more definitively about games. By eliminating scores like 7.9, we’re no longer able to say “this game is almost great, but not quite. Now our choices will be to say “yes, this is a great game” and give it an 8.0, or say “this game is good, but not great” and go with a 7.5.”

Score: (1.0 - 1) * 10 / 9