When I marked undergraduate work (at a pretty well regarded UK university), marks were notionally out of 100.

39 or below was a failing grade, and you had to bomb fairly spectacularly to get it.

40-49 was a Third, and a rarity.

50-59 was a lower Second, and not uncommon.

60-69 was an upper Second, where the marks tended to be clustered. (The way module scores were converted into an overall degree class made the clustering even more pronounced then.)

70 or above was a First, but it was practically unheard of in essay-centric subjects to get more than about 75 or 76 (officially a 'lower First'). Stories would circulate among postgrad. tutors about essays that had received 80 or more despite someone's best efforts to find fault with them.

After a while, of course, everyone gets used to it.

I'd agree there. Four stars is average on GOG. If it gets less than four stars here, that certainly is a red flag. lol

People review stuff here based on fond memories of it many years ago which is fine but doesn't really offer much useful information beyond that they enjoyed it. There are a ridiculous number of one line "reviews" that simply say something like, "Love this! Thanks GOG!" and tell you just about zero.

I also get a kick out of how quickly the reviews appear when a new release comes out. Clearly, none of these "reviewers" could be reviewing the GOG release since they could not have had time to download, install and play the game in its current form.

Remember how people were reviewing games before they released and GOG needed to turn off the ability (which should not have existed anyway) to do so, to prevent this? lol

I think as a next step, GOG should limit the ability to review and rate a GOG game ONLY to those who have at least purchased the GOG edition of the game. It might help a little. The Apple App store is like this. If you didn't buy it from Apple, you are not allowed to comment on what they are selling.

That's why it is a good idea to actually read reviews and watch some game footage on youtube instead of relying on a bunch of useless numbers. I'm in agreement with Adam Sessler on this

Sessler's Soapbox on hating numbers: http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/717762/uncharted-3-and-the-problem-with-review-scores-sesslers-soapbox/
Sessler's rant on metacritic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QsXrswJ-yM

To me a good game really depends on what you value and what your cup of tea is. I don't like first person shooters, with a few exceptions, so I'm less likely to enjoy a first person shooter than someone who is a fan of those games. Therefore, I am probably going to be negatively biased in my ratings on the game and someone who is a fan will probably be positively biased in their reviews.

I like jrpgs and anime, but there are some people who don't care for the aesthetics or the genre. There are some people who like ultra realistic graphics and there are some people who prefer graphics with more cartoony in style.

There is no such thing as true objectivity and numbers alone will not tell you what aspects are good and what aspects are bad on the game. If you enjoy a certain type a game, you'll probably like it. If you don't you'll be less likely to enjoy it. Numbers alone will also not tell you what quirks are in the game, does the game have a lower rating because there are some technical problems such as glitches and screwy camera angling or is it because the reviewer is playing a type of game they just don't care for.

Those are some very good points and I think again point to a need for GOG reviews to ONLY be possible for people who actually bought the GOG release of the game. It's not a cure by any means but it might help a little a bit. It would at least cut down on the pure nostalgia reviews from people who don't even own the GOG release.

The fact that Ultima 9 has loads of one sentence reviews which all they contain is "What's a paladin" is ridiculous. There should be some sort of word limit, because those kind of "reviews" really are worthless.

And you'll get "What's a paladin ssssssssssadas sdfgsdgdfghrt hfghddfhdfgh df h fdh fgh gh fgh fghfghdfg gh fghhdfjdfsgh hfhdfghdfgh ghfgjhjgfhdf fghjgnbfhdht fghdfghthdfgh hdcghdghdgbfth" reviews.

It's sometimes funny to see a game that was just released on GOG to receive 5/5 immediately and then to watch it drop steadily after people actually PLAY the damn game.

I don't care about the ratings though. I care only about the fact if I like the game, not what others think of it.

I'd just like to say that my love of Morrowind, at least, has nothing to do with nostalgia. I only discovered it half a year ago, some time after Oblivion and Skyrim (both of which I bought/was given half a year before that), and I still consider it a far superior game to its sequels :)

Understood. But that would then count as a spam review. Although i found one of those "buy cheap knock off gucci" spam things on the ultima 9 review section. I reported it as spam, but i have no idea how long it's been there, and if GOG actually does anything about it...

I second having a minimum word count requirement. I'd say to at least 10 words to actually require people to at least type in a full sentence before submitting. To hopefully cut off people just typing in things like:

"What's a paladin?"
"This game sucks/rocks"
"Buy cheap from scamsonline"
"This game is glitch-fest"

So hopefully people will be nudged to type in at least one example why they like/dislike a game or come up with an example of why the game is a glitch-fest.

Welcome to the Finnish school system, where the lowest score you can get is 4 (fail), 5 is passable but still shit, 6 is substandard, 7 is alright, 8 good, 9 great and 10 excellent. It's what we're used to around here and hence the way that most Finns rate games among each other. Even the biggest gaming magazine here rates games from 0 to 100, basically the school system where the decimal point has been moved a bit. Not everyone lives in the United States and not everyone is familiar with the nuances of its culture, for the better or the worse.

There's also a pretty important issue in the system you propose that you probably haven't thought about: one point can make the difference between an average game and one that "fail[s] to meet even the lowest gameplay standards", so actually the gap between a game that got 69 points and one that got 70 is much greater than the gap between a 70-point and 71-point game even though the nominal difference is the same.

EDIT: typo fix.

Another thing that annoys me with the review system is that you can't write an in depth review. I had to cut almost half the text in my review of Betrayal at Krondor. :-(

of course the ratings are skewed all the way to 5....who else is going to review decades old games except those who loved it the first time and/or are all nostalgic about it

Those who play it now?

Star ratings in practice mean "I like the game".