My Rating Scales

Standard Rating Scale

Me being me, I have to be different. So when I started reviewing more games, I decided to put together a rating scale I felt I could keep consistent on. I rate everything with sufficient production value on a scale from 1 to 7:

1. Not just garbage, but offensive garbage. I hate this for more reasons than it being just unenjoyable. Extremely rare rating, but I've given it to a few games.
2. Just plain unpleasant. I don't see any real redeeming value in the product for anyone with remotely good tastes.
3. Boring, tedious, or irrelevant to my tastes. I'm sure someone will enjoy these, but not I.
4. Mediocre. It's not bad, but it also didn't stand out in my mind in any way. This is the most common rating I give.
5. An excellent experience, either overall or in a few standout aspects. However, there's something holding it back from me giving a general recommendation. This is most common for "if you're the right audience, you'll love this" media.
6. A masterpiece. Any media falling into this receives a universal recommendation from me. Think of this as the "if you don't like X, then you've never tried my X" cliche, but actually true. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an excellent example, as it can convert people on many fronts (animation, superheroes, city culture, etc.).
7. These have a special place in my heart, which is the only real difference between 6 and 7. I have only given a 7 to two games and one movie. So don't feel bad if your favorite doesn't rank a 7 for me.

Scrappy Rating Scale

It doesn't feel fair to rate small-production media on the same scale as big-budget pieces with massive crews. So I've decided I'm going to use a different scale for anything that truly feels scrappy. For perspective: if you're on Steam, you're not getting this scale. Random game-jam games on itch.io get this scale. One-person films with zero budget get this scale. Fan fictions on AO3 get this scale.

This scale uses a binary good/bad ranking of three qualities:

• Visual style (for textual works, grammar and readability)
• Artistic merit/uniqueness (I'm not qualified to judge this on a larger scale, but I'm decent enough at good/bad)
• Use of the medium (e.g. how well does it make use of the fact that it's a video game, not a movie)

"good" is worth 1 point, and I add them together for a score out of 3 purely for convenience. If something manages to hit "good" on all 3, I may consider re-rating it on the standard rating scale.