Ziff Davis reorganizes, changes review scoring

by Kyle Orland on Feb 7th 2008 2:25PM

With the recent departure of Editorial Director John Davison to start-up web portal What They Like, Ziff Davis has done some behind-the-scenes shuffling of the staff behind its gaming properties. According to a press release (partially re-posted on James Mielke's blog), the online and print sides of the operation have been merged together and re-split into three new groups: "Videogames," headed by Electronic Gaming Monthly's James Mielke; "PC games," headed by Games For Windows' Jeff Green; and "Video," headed up by GameVideos' Demian Linn. Each group will funnel content into Ziff's magazines and online properties, including 1UP.com.

More apparent to the average reader will be the change to Ziff's grading system, from a 10-point scale to an A+ through F letter grade. The change isn't just on a going-forward basis either -- according to the release, "all previously scored games on 1UP.com will also be converted to the new letter scale." Historical revisionism at its finest!

Source

Tags: 1UP, 1Up.com, Davis, Linn, Mielke, Ziff, ziff davis, ZiffDavis

Reader Comments (35)

I hate it

makes gaming seem even more childish

Mainstream media is far more likely to follow a 1-5 star scale or a letter grade scale. Check out any movie review by Roger Ebert or Peter Travers and you'll see what I mean. If anything, it gears game reviews more squarely toward the mainstream - which is probably a wise move for ZD.

It was already childish and already uses the A+ through F scale. They refuse to use anything under 7 unless it is truly horrific so why not just take the final plunge and go the rest of the way into the school rating system?

I think it's better. While I'm sure a lot of people could tell the difference between a game rated 7 and 9, I don't think most people would be able to articulate why one game receives a 4 and another a 3. Basically reviewers only use one half of the scale anyway, so why not just acknowledge it and use an appropraite scale (like A-F).

No, using any form of scale instead of actually reading what the reviewer(s) has to say is childish. Any scale system is honestly irrelevant.

Hmmm...1up now dropped from Gamerankings and MetaCritic?

Gamerankings/Metacritic both convert letter grades into a percentage scale.

I wonder if this restructuring is in any way related to the Jeff Gerstmann firing - or rather, questions over editorial ethics for game reviews.

How so?

The Ziff crew was the only people talking about his situation Ign censored what they said in their podcasts and every other mainstream media site just tried to ignore what had happened.

Hell, Hsu had talked about the ad influence in the gaming industry for years before Jeff was canned.

Right, no, I agree. I'm just saying perhaps ZD is pushing to legitimize the journalistic and editorial sides of its publications because of the scrutiny the games journalism industry is facing. It'd certainly help to give them a competitive edge.

However, I think you'd have a hard time finding a more legitimate and ethically responsible gaming mag than EGM and its affiliates. But that's not to say there's no room for improvement.

I think when any game scores a C- or below, the developers should be forced to write "I will not make any more shitty games" 500 times on the chalkboard. That'll learn em!

I wish Ziff would just have the balls to get rid of a number system and encourage readers to actually read reviews.

Sites like Metacritic is exactly what is wrong with reviewing products today. People need to read reviews not look at a number.

And why is that? Perhaps not everyone has the time to read every site's review.

Ultimately I want to know if a game is good or not before I purchase it. Numbers seems to do the trick just fine.

@Atila

How many reviews do you have to read?

Why? I enjoyed the scale because they actually used the entire thing. So what's a 5 now equal to? A C +-?

Weird stuff

Phil

Hopefully 1up will be free to review future games without having to succumb to the invisible pressure of adhering to an unspoken standard.

EX: every mediocre game gets a 7.0, every decent game gets 7.5 etc.

Reviewers really need to move away from this. The sooner video game rags can display real impartiality, transparency - and balls, the sooner they can move themselves, and the industry, into some genuine respectability.

In a way this could be looked at as caving to the Ubisoft blackballing. Would the 4.5 (or 4.0 I can't remember which it was) for Assassins Creed have been as big a deal for Ubisoft as a 6.9(slightly below average) from IGN. This could really be an attempt to mend relationships with all the PR firms who get paid by the meta-critic score.

Someone should archive 1up.com real fast, and then compare the current scores the games have to their new letter scores when they come around. More cover-ups FTW!

So, if I'm being a dick in the forums do I get warned or do I now get detentions? If I'm really bad will they expel me?

Anything to screw up Metacritic and other game ranking websites, I am all for it! I am sick of hearing that a game is or is not AAA because it didn't get a 90%+ on Metacritic. Its like listening to a bunch of sheep.

Instead, why don't you rent the game and play the game and see if you like it.

I am just saying...

Maybe because I don't want to have to pay $5, or invest hours into playing a game, every time I want to know if a game is good or not.

That's the whole point of having reviews.

Attila: Reviews are there to argue good points and bad points. SCORES are useless, because what's a 7? I've enjoyed some 6.5 games and I've hated some 9.5 ones. Review SCORES don't mean crap, it's all about the review context.

But even guys on IGN said people don't even read reviews because, well, I don't think people can actually read anymore.

Agree: I loved Sonic & the Secret Rings, and that game scored borderline horribly

this is mostly for those people who simply do not understand that a 5 is average and not end-of-the-world-holy-shit bad. A game that gets a C or C+ I'm hoping everyone can understand that means average

Most of you are missing the fact that 1up is one of the only sites to actually use the full 10 point scale. They've repeatedly stated on their podcast that they're reclaiming the 5 for average games. In fact, along with Edge, theirs are the only scores I actually trust. Why change a great formula :-(

isn't it "What they play"?

EGM stopped being relevant to me when they gave Herzog Zwei a 2.

(that was a while ago)

What they need, if they want to boil a game down to a brief score. Is to answer 1- is the game broken on any levels, 2 how it compares to its actual competition and 3 what the reviewers personal preferences are.
A 9 for metal gear is competely different than a 9 or a for mario galaxy or portal.
And if a reviewer shares different dislike than mine, mariokart64, for example, while I hold it as one of the greatest games ever, his/her review of mariokart would be useless to me, regardless of the score, unless the game is broken.

I think both these changes are for the better. The scoring change has apparently been in planning for a while, judging by that episode of the Brodeo from a few weeks ago.

Too late! Do not care....go to hell ZD.

At least they can tell the idiots: "See? A 'C' grade (5 score) isn't irredeemable vomit. I'm sure you were pretty proud of yourself when you were able to score up to a C in class, right?" Although I think they should change it to just a picture of some chick and the hotter the chick the better the game; just to screw with meta-critic some more.

I think they should go with martinis to represent scores. No, ice cream flavours! Yes.

Game-revolution has been doing letter grades since forever, and the one big gripe they have with gamerankings is that they convert on a literal scale, but doesn't take in account of the +/- next to the letters (I think, they might do now, I haven't checked in a couple of years). So a B game, no matter if it has + or -, gets automatic 80. Then C's get 60, D's get 40, etc. That makes their reviews really harsh, but if you've read game-revolution you know it's not.
To me, reviews really depend on the reviewer's own opinion and their bias. So having numbers kind of distract me away from the fact that a review is still an opinion (all of you FF7 fanboys should read their FF7 review). With the letter grades, it sets a mood of how good the game is. I know I'm not describing this very well but it has something to do with "feeling out" the review.

Is there really such a thing as F+? Just barely failed? Right up there with 'mostly dead' vs 'all dead'.

Why would you attempt to go behind 1UP's editorial staff and release some sort of conversion chart? It's a huge disrespect to 1UP and what they're trying to accomplish with the switch.

Gaming journalism (haha) has little credibility, but you trying to keep it that way was a poor move. Leave the job of reporting on those who report on video games to the lower end of the bloggosphere -- Kotaku. I really wasn't expecting a hack job like this from Joystiq.

Ziff Davis reorganizes, changes review scoring

Reader Comments (35)

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