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The strangest thing about writing reviews and putting them where the anonymous public can supply its reactions is easily the confusion over how the overall scores work. I read RPGamer for years before I started working here and never found the scoring system confusing. It is identical to the Computer Gaming World system I was accustomed to when I first found the site. I am referring to the definition of "average," not the odd expectation that all video game review scores should use a skewed scale because IGN and Gamespot do it.
I enjoy RPGs. They are about all I play, especially if Western simulations and strategy games are included in the genre as Japanese ones are. For me, the average RPG is fun and worthy of spending my money on. After all, if I only enjoyed playing great RPGs, I wouldn't really be a fan of the genre, would I? Yet readers get riled up when "Average" is written in large text under the score of a game they enjoyed, as though somehow the adjective implies that a game is, I don't know, below average or something. RPGamer's terminology for review scores does complicate things slightly; the next step above "average" is "good," so it is fair to conclude that an average game is not a good game, and although this can easily be sorted out by reading the scoring definitions, it would seem the extra click this takes is too difficult for many people to figure out.
Read critical reviews of movies, restaurants, or books — anything but video games, really — and the average is the mean, just like we were all taught back in grade school. Calling something average is purely objective. It is the middle. It alone does not imply quality nor does it mean that something is good or bad; it is simply the center of a distribution, and when this confuses a faceless forum whiner, I can only conclude that he has yet to complete grade school due to his flagrant lack of such basic knowledge.
Looking back at my review history now, I can say that I enjoyed every game I gave a 3/5. This wouldn't be the case for action games or shooters, which are genres where I only find the best games worth playing. Once it is understood that the average RPG, for me, is good, one can extrapolate that evaluation out to the other scores. A 3.5/5 is very good, and a game I would immediately recommend to anyone who enjoys that type of RPG. A 4/5 would be an excellent game. A 4.5/5 is one of the top few games on the system. A 5/5 — a score I never expected to use — would be one of the best video games I have ever played. These are still founded on my subjective opinions on games, but remember that goodness starts at "average" for me, as it should for anyone fanatical enough to write RPG reviews for free in their spare time. It is never meant as an insult.
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