Hey everyone,
One of the challenges we've been seeing online is that gamers have different expectations for the same general score ranges. While many gamers see an 89 average as an omg amazing game, others see it as well, it's not 90 so it's not that good, even though an 89 or higher has typically landed games among the top games of the year. Several months ago, we made our first attempt at solving this with ranking graphs, and while they have caught on in some respects, they haven't completely addressed this issue.
With today's update, we're introducing a new tier system to continue to help gamers get a better understanding of the quality of a game at-a-glance. We've added four new badges to each game to help orchestrate this:
Average Score: 85 or higher
Roughly top 10% of games reviewed
Minimum of 5 scored reviews
The absolute best games the industry has to offer. Games that a very high number of general gamers would likely enjoy.
Average Score: 75 to 84
Roughly top 40% - 10% of games reviewed
High-quality games that deliver on the promise of a fun and engaging experience to more than just their intended audience.
Average Score: 70 to 74
Roughly middle 20% of games reviewed
Quality games that deliver a fun and decent experience in many respects, but may miss the mark in others.
Average Score: 69 or below
Roughly bottom 40% of games reviewed
Games that generally have several missteps and limited appeal beyond their intended audience.
We've also added another new feature titled "Guess The Score." We've seen a lot of online forums and communities try to guess the average score in advance but rarely do we seen an aggregate distribution of those guesses. We thought this would be a fun little experiment to test.
The early rules are simple but may change over time. Anyone can make a guess in the six weeks prior to a game's launch date. Guessing closes when the first review comes in. You can change your guess any time during that timeframe. Once you guess, you'll also be able to see the distribution of other guesses. Eventually, we hope to be able to show your guess history on your profile, but for now, you can see older guesses that you've made on the game detail pages.