Soviet's Totally Exclusive Patented (maybe) Better-Than-Other-Ranking-Systems Ranking System
Because I have various issues and problems with the more commonly used scoring and ranking systems used to review media, I decided to make my own. Because if you're unsatisfied with what's available, why not make it yourself?
My over-engineered solution: A 21-point scale
Yeah you read that correctly. A 21 point scale. Created way back in like 2013 when I used to watch the revival of Toonami and wanted to score some of the shows I watched over there with some people on Skype (I'm still mad about the utter bungling of Skype post-MSN shutdown. "Oh we're going to migrate all of the features you loved about MSN/WLM over to Skype" and they never did all the way up until Skype died. RIP In Piss.)
It was only semi-recently that I started using it for other things, like games.
Is it overkill? Almost certainly. But it has a few benefits (at least in my opinion)
It's granular, yet fairly straightforward
No more ambiguous readings. Negative number? It's more bad than good. Positive number? It's more good than bad. Higher positive number? It has more good aspects. Lower negative number? It has more bad aspects. If something gets a -3, you know it's rather eh. If it gets a +8 you know its a solid game you need to play. If it gets a +1? It's very slightly above average but it's probably a game you won't remember 6 months after playing. Lay the whole thing out on a number line and it's very easy to tell how good or bad something is. Smack dab in the middle? It's dead average, bland, not a real standout, incredibly forgettable.
It can be simplified if needed
Too complex? Another way to visualize it is like this: Break the whole thing into chunks. Anything that's -10 to -7 is awful. -6 to -3 is bad. Anything +3 to +6 is good. Anything +7 to +10 is great. Anything that's from -2 to +2 is average. If it's 0, it's dead average: Nothing that particularly stands out about it. Like playing one of those slide puzzles in a video game. If you have a general idea of where something will end up, you know what chunk it'll go and the only thing you have to think about is where exactly will it fit in that chunk.
The neat part? This can be simplified _even further_. Lookie here, we already have 5 chunks...just like an "Out of 5" scale. You have a bunch of games but don't want to look like you're crafting a Pepe Silvia chart of review scores? Just convert to out of 5. Anything in Awful is 1, Bad is 2, Average is 3, Good is 4, Great is 5. It's not as granular, but it works if you just want a quick, simple, flat number and don't really care about granularity.
What exactly is wrong with existing scoring scales? Why go through making your own?
I've listed the most common ones below.
Honestly? This one if any is the one I'd use. But I personally feel it isn't granular enough: There's certainly a bunch of games or shows that would fall as a 3 out of 5, but I'd prefer some over others. It's decent enough however if you want a quick and dirty "Is this good? Is this bad?" system though.
Unfortunately this one has been ruined and I place the blame on this one with the US school grading system. anything less than a 7/10 is bad. 7 is average, 8 is good, 9 is great and 10 is excellent. Over the past few years its been ruined even more: slowly things have migrated to where anything less than _8_ is bad. What's the point of having the rest of the numbers then?
- The "Out of 100"/"8.8" System
Now we've gotten _way_ too granular. Can anyone tell me the difference between a 9.2 and a 9.3? Or a 76 and a 77? Of course not. And it still falls victim to the "8 is good, 7 is average, everything below is trash" trope the "Out of 10" system suffers from. The amount of times I've seen people freakout over a Metacritic score being one or two points lower than they thought it would be isn't terribly high but high enough that I'm impressed it happens at all. It's basically an "Out of 10" system but with more numbers.
- The "Two Thumbs Up" System
Really? This is literally just "Good, Average, Bad". Might as well just make it a "Out of Three" scale. This practically tells you nothing. Sorry Siskel and Ebert.
- The "School Grades" System
This gets real confusing real quick. Most of these go "A-B-C-D-F". Some of these divide these into "A+, A-, B+...", some of these strictly give some of these pluses and minuses, some of these only give a plus to A and a minus to F. There's a lack of consistency here and just makes it a nightmare to manage all of these.
My system is...different. And it's far from perfect; It can be confusing and I've given plenty of games a +2 or a -2. But I feel like it works well for what I need to use it for. If it's too complex, just convert it to an "Out of 5" like I outlined above. As a personal rule I try not to give a game a +/-9 or 10, I feel those should be reserved for true standouts.