[bad soda]

About The Authors

Stuart: Can be considered the “brains” of the operation. This is not to say that he is any more intelligent then the rest, but he is the one who scraped together enough knowledge about the internet to get Bad Soda up and running. Stuart has become more of a hand held gamer in the last year. He owns a PSP-2000 and a DS, but he also owns a PS3. His favorite type of games are RPG’s, but after getting married he has discovered that 40+ hour games and a marriage conflict on many levels. Because he is very happy with his beautiful wife he does not finish games very quickly, so Stuart mostly posts about industry news and announcements.

At 25 he seems to have a new job every six months, but for now he looks at the stock market all the time. He lives with his wonderful wife. If you want you can learn more here: Facebook | Personal Site | Linkedin.

Rook: Bad Soda began as his stale, predictable foray in the bold, new world of web comics. It didn’t quite happen. So with Stuart he received (as if from God) the call to supply video game news and amateur reviews. He updates every weekend, usually a single NES review, but occasionally mentioning something new as well. His credits of ownership include an Atari 800, NES, Genesis, Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, PS3, Gameboy Advance, DS, and PSP.  But, after the changes that occured (and the updatest that never happened) he has once again decided that Bad Soda will be a place of his comic series:  BAD SODA.  The Episodes began in September 2008.

Video games are still a major part of Bad Soda, and reviews are likely still forthcoming.  His software collection is impressive and does a job of showing his excellent taste in video games, but the dominating NES collection is usually all that sticks in visitors’ memories; it is currently at 490 games, and rising. That means it would be more efficient to keep a list of NES games that he does not own.

Now twenty-something, he currently works at his semi-local Gamestop, having left his better paid manager position at a restaurant with the crazy idea that after three and a half damn years he might receive a meaningful raise from Gamestop. It hasn’t happened yet. He shares a house with LIGHT and Logic.

T: Came into Bad Soda after it had been up and running for a few months wondering what he could add to the site. After thinking about it for around 20 seconds, he decided that he would start to make some PSP backgrounds and put them up every once in a while even though he has no artistic ability and is not creative at all. After a month of that he decided that even though he has horrible writing skills, and cannot punctuate or spell anything correctly, he would try his hand at reviewing games.

Now working at Circuit City, spends much of his time playing, and hopefully reviewing video games. Rooms with Rook and the guy named Joe lives here with us also.

Asian: Never knowing what this character is doing or where he is at, you might see him contribute to the site in honor of his friends that let him sleep on their couch(does he really sleep?). All that is known about this person is his love for rice(NOT Panda Express), his ability to “break” impossible games on a whim[e.g Brain Age I, Gears of War-Act 2(Nightfall) Chapter 4(Lethal Dusk)], and to tirelessly play games to the point that they are no longer a game, but merely pixels on a screen [e.g every single attainable item in Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction].

When asked what type of games Asian likes best, the answer would be PC. Having logged more then 400+ hours on Counterstrike, 600+ hours on Elder Scrolls III-Morrowind GOTY, and going on 800+ hours on Eve Online, it is safe to say that he has developed a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome judging from the amount of hours he has spent hunched over his computer.

Now a legal loan shark in the great state of Oregon, he spends all his time playing, cutting down the necessity of sleep by growing his dependence on Dew. Lives in Oregon, but shows up on the futon.

About Our Scoring System

BY Rook

When Bad Soda gives a game a score of “5,” it’s not worth playing. If it is given a score of “Kurt Russell” that means there are no more games in the universe and all has been eclipsed in a new Age of Awesome. Other than the latter exception, games are scored out of 10, using quarterly fractions. Games scoring 1-5 are crap, 6-10 are not. The decision to use the scale this way was clear, but not all gamers see it this way.

Video game reviews lack a clear, uniform scoring system. Electronic Gaming Monthly and Game Informer both rate out of 10 with quarterly fractions, Official Xbox Magazine rates out of 5 using the tenth decimal, Gamespot rates out of 10 overall but with another rating for each category of the game (gameplay, graphics, etc.), and G4’s reviews use a 5-star rating with no fractions.

Still, all these systems are comparable. They essentially all can be converted to a score out of 100. Where video game reviews become incomparable is the significance of the ratings. A score of 5.25 in EGM means something very different than the same score in Game Informer. A 3.2 in OXM doesn’t necessarily convert to a 6.4 on Gamespot.

This isn’t the only article about this. The new Games for Windows magazine (formerly Computer Gaming World) has switched to a system where a 5 (out of 10) is “average.” Joystiq replied “You’re on the side of the gamer with this change.” Reverend Anthony of Destructoid wrote “In a functioning 1-10 scale, a 4/10 is the equivalent of ‘poor.’ Not bad, or awful, or shit — just ‘poor.’ Slightly below average.”

One of the significant problems with assigning the middle of the scale a definition of “average” is that average is not a term that includes any positive/negative connotations. If every game on earth was as good as God of War, that would make God of War average by definition; average because, on average, all games were that great. Reverend Anthony addressed this in a reply to a comment by a confused reader, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that such a system does cause that confusion.

Systems that use 5-star ratings are easier to understand, with 1 star being terrible, 2 almost as bad and decent games starting at 3 and going up from there. But they’re so generalized that not all 4-star games are created equal, unless they start using fractions, in which case they’re right back to the 1-10 problem.

Trying to force a system that “should be” the uniform is just swimming upstream. If the majority of gamers see a 4/10 as the equivalent of a sweat stain on a couch cushion, that means there already is a system in place. That is the system at Bad Soda.

But in the end the review defines the score, not the other way around. If a reader agrees with all the arguments in a review but not the numerical score then they may have different definitions of the scoring system, but not different opinions of the game.