Well, i am disappointed, of course.
I read the linked article.
The author raises a lot of good points,
which perfectly illustrate the weaknesses of a rating
system. Ironically, the author seemingly
does not realize that he mentioned
the perfect reason why grades are still useful
and he does not realize that non of his arguments
weaken that particular usefulness:
'They are a quick guide to the relative merit of a game,
and when accessed through ranking sites give you an instant
and convenient impression of what many reviewers think about a game.'
All his arguments do not weaken this. Of course
grades are no substitute to reading the reviews:
Every gamer with at lease average intelligence is aware
of the flaws of a grading system. This is trivial.
But this still does not change the fact
that if you are looking for a good game and do not have
the time to read 1000 reviews, reading the reviews of the high rated ones
is a good, time-saving starting point to achieve what you
want: Finding the next good game to play. JustAdventure just
provided that: With the help of its grades, i found a lot of great
games that i had never heared of before. I would have never found them
if i just had stared at a list of 1000 reviews with only game
names like it's on Gameboomers: The list would be of equal worthlessness
for my purpose if it did not contain the names of the games, but just list them
as game1, game2, game3 etc.
But you made your decision, so i will have to use other
sites for finding good old games. I still like the GB-site though