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- A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal".
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In short, we do our best to give a score that represents a sound recommendation, one way or the other. Note that a review score doesn't start at 0 or 10 and add or subtract points until the...
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- We're adopting a simplified new scale for a new decade of games, movies, TV, and comics reviews.
- IGN Games Review Scale
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By Dan Stapleton
Updated: Jan 26, 2020 6:53 am
Posted: Jan 2, 2020 8:00 pm
In the spirit of a new decade of games, movies, TV shows, and comics, we at IGN have a special announcement: we’re making a change to our scoring system and dropping the decimal from our traditional 100-point scale. That means there’ll be no more 7.1s or 8.9s – not even 6.5s. Just nice round numbers from 1 to 10 that clearly and decisively convey what we’re trying to say. After literally years of internal debate, we’ve come to a strong consensus that this system will improve the quality of our reviews and allow us to communicate with you better. It’s a big change, so let’s walk through some of the reasoning behind it.
Please read the full IGN game review scale description here, but here's the short version:
So, why the change? In the experience of the current IGN reviews team over the past several years, the reality is that these direct comparisons between extremely diverse reviews often end up inadvertently miscommunicating our intent in practice. That’s especially true in the context of a large outlet like IGN, where many different critics with diff...
Art criticism, whether you’re talking about games or movies or TV shows or comic books, isn’t a science. To use games as an example, while you can count the pixels on screen, the number of frames per second displayed, or even the number of hours of content available, none of these things mean a game is good; even if it’s technically bulletproof and runs at 4K and 144Hz it could still be terribly boring. Conversely, a game can run in 900p at 30 frames per second (with occasional dips into the 20s) and still be worthy of our highest rating: Masterpiece.
Art criticism, whether you’re talking about games or movies or TV shows or comic books, isn’t a science.
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The fact is, while many have tried, you cannot objectively measure how good or fun a game or movie or TV show or comic book is in the same way you can quantify things like temperature or mass or speed. All of these mediums are art forms, and the goal of art is to inspire an emotional reaction in its audience. Therefore, what we’re doing in reviews is talking about how a given work affects us emotionally when we watch or read or play it – and the review is the inherently subjective perspective of an individual critic. When we then summarize that review into a score, we’re not doing any kind of calculation; there’s no “default” score that’s added to or subtracted from to arrive at the final number, and no qualities or features (or lack thereof) are worth a prescribed number of points. That’s because scores aren’t math – they’re code, with each number corresponding to a description on our scale. But especially because that description only exists on IGN.com and our scores are frequently shared around the internet without that context, the 100-point scale can sometimes give people the wrong idea about what we’re doing.
Additionally, we’ve found that those double-digit numbers aren’t all that meaningful. We’ve always had an answer to the question of the meaning of the number after the decimal: it’s a 10-point scale within a 10-point scale that allows a reviewer to indicate whether something is on the high or low end of a score category, loosely translating into informal categories such as “almost great” or “just barely okay.” However, when we’re asked to explain the meaning of the difference between a 6.5 and a 6.6, things get a lot fuzzier. Obviously a 6.6 is a better score, but what does incremental differentiation actually mean when comparing one game to another? The answer is... not much. And if a difference isn’t meaningful, it doesn’t serve a purpose.
On the 10-point scale, by contrast, each possible score says something very different and concrete. Rather than creating unnecessary debate and argument over the distinction between small increments and prompting readers to attempt to reverse-engineer the meaning of a single point difference, the round-number scores relate to a firm statement that’s clearly defined. While some games, movies, shows, and comics could certainly end up with an identical score even though an author might consider one marginally better than the other, that distinction between them is always made clear in the text rather than the number.
This doesn’t mean that going forward we’ll “round up” to the nearest whole number if we’re internally debating whether something is closer to a “Good” or a “Great.” If something would’ve gotten a 6.9 or 6.8 on the old scale, that meant we were calling it “Okay,” but short of “Good.” Rounding those scores would mean changing the author’s intent from “Okay” to “Good,” which is another illustration of why scores should not be treated as math.
“10/10 - IGN” is iconic and instantly recognizable part of our brand for millions of people.
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As for why we settled on the 10-point scale as opposed to the multitude of other options, it has a lot to do with combining our current review philosophies with our long tradition and audience expectations. Our decades-long history means that scores like “10/10 - IGN” have become an iconic and instantly recognizable part of our brand for millions of people around the world. Plus, pretty much everybody understands the 10-point system intuitively, so there’s no issue with the clarity of what we’re trying to communicate. So even though you can argue logically that when you boil it down the bottom half of the 10-point scale is just different ways of calling something not worth your time, if we were to drop to a five-point scale we’d lose something important in the process.
The sense of IGN’s identity and our readers’ familiarity is also one of the main reasons why, in our internal debates, we’ve always opted to continue using a scoring system at all instead of dropping it entirely. While we know and accept that the concept of scoring art on a scale isn’t perfect, it’s something our community has vocally enjoyed and rallied around for decades. And just as many of you value our stamp of approval, we’re incredibly grateful to have that enthusiasm and support, and prefer to respect it in kind.
As for our enormous back-catalog of thousands of reviews, nothing will change. Reviews are snapshots in time, and it wouldn’t make sense to alter the authors’ original intent by retroactively changing their scores.
All that said, there is no perfect review score system. Every possible scale, including no scale at all, has its advantages and disadvantages. Everybody has a system they prefer over the rest for perfectly valid reasons. Like reviews themselves, they’re mostly subjective. It’s also not the first time we’ve changed our review scale in IGN’s 23-year existence. Notably, we went from 100 points down to 20 in 2010 and then reverted back to 100 in 2012. It’s likely that at some point we’ll want to revisit the topic in the future. But right now, for our staff, this change feels right.
Dan Stapleton is IGN's Executive Editor of Game Reviews. You can follow him on Twitter to hear gaming rants and lots of random Simpsons references.
A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal".
May 11, 2023 · The number IGN assigns to its game reviews is perhaps the rating system's most controversial and misconstrued aspect. IGN scores games on a scale of 1 to 10. Games with a 1 rating are defined as “ Unbearable .”. Games with a 10 rating, on the other hand, are defined as a “ Masterpiece ,” and an example given by IGN in this case is Grand ...
Jan 3, 2020 · In the spirit of a new decade of games, movies, TV shows, and comics, we at IGN have a special announcement: we’re making a change to our scoring system and dropping the decimal from our...
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Mar 13, 2024 · The NR system assigns a numerical score to a game, typically ranging from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible score. In IGN, the NR system is used in conjunction with written reviews to provide a comprehensive assessment of a game’s strengths and weaknesses.
Jan 11, 2008 · While IGN was born on September 29, 1996, on Jan. 12, 2008 IGN.com celebrates its 10-year anniversary as games site. What began as a collection of three console-specific Imagine Games Network ...
