Does a perfect score mean a perfect game?

Tony Mott | Editor in Chief | Edge (UK)

GR: Does a perfect score mean a perfect game?

Tony: What we used to do a long time ago was assign a word equivalent to each score from 1 to 10, and at that point 10 represented 'revolutionary'. And more recently we realised that having the scores spelled out like that was, in a way, holding us back from using the full scale – by definition we could only give a game 10 if it really was revolutionary, and we wanted to be able to use the whole scale.

If next to 10 on our reviews intro today it said 'perfect', then that's what 10 would mean. We changed all that because we'd get people arguing about whether or not games we had given 10 were actually revolutionary. So we deliberately changed it and said that the numbers on the scale were simply the numbers on the scale, so 1 = ‘one’, and so on. It was a slightly tongue-in-cheek thing to do, and we took some flak for it, but ultimately it helps to simplify the process, and it removes a lot of the unnecessary dialogue that can surround these things.

So now we just say, the scale is 1 to 10 and a 10 is a 10. You should be able to interpret that as you will. The fact that we've only given a small number of games 10 out of 10 speaks for itself. Ultimately I’d hope, as we all do, that when your review of Halo 3 consists of four pages of text, your readers would pay more attention to what the writer has to say about the game rather than the little digit at the end.

GR: Does Edge have a set criteria of what a 10 should be, then?

Tony: This sort of thing is indefinable, I think. You can't use a checklist. If Tetris was invented today, I suppose you'd have to give it 10, but if you take that game apart, you can't say it's in any way a 10 apart from what it is as a whole. You can't break it down beyond that. You can get into an argument where you say 'Well, the graphics are perfect' because they're perfectly functional, they do their job perfectly. But I don't like to think about review scoring as a kind of science.