Measuring what, exactly?: Eight Point Eight

For today's game of Guess The Trope, we have the page Eight Point Eight. Without looking up what it means, would you say this is about rather strong earthquakes? How about gale-force wind? Is it perhaps a mathematical approximation of (2π + e)? A smily for someone wearing two pairs of glasses?

Google is of no help here. It points primarily to the aforementioned earthquake, the IM Db page for City Of God, a type of anti-aircraft gun, and the current inflation rate in Azerbijan. Simply put, outside of Tvtropes itself, the term 8.8 has absolutely no relation to what our page is about, and it's not on Know Your Meme either.

So yeah. Time for a rename, people? Among trope names, this is about the least indicative that I've seen on the site, and you can't even claim it's witty, punny, or a reference to your favorite book or movie, because it's none of the above. The usage count is 125, which is not all that good (most successful tropes I've seen start in the 500-100 range). For some reason it's got quite a number of inbounds, but that's what we have redirects for.

It took me 8.8 seconds to write this post. So there!

Controversial Review. *

More seriously, TV Tropes is the first hit for a Google search of "8.8", the second being the Trope-Naming videogame review, but everything else is about the recent Chilean and/or Japanese earthquakes.

Numbers at this time are 125 wikilinks and 3818 inbounds. With inbounds like that, should we be seeing more search results to the Tropese usage of it?

edited 17th Jul '11 1:23:11 PM by Stratadrake

Eight Point Eight Review might be more indicative.

Or Eight Point Eight Out Of Ten.

125 wicks 3818 inbounds actually seems fine, though. This isn't the most common trope in the world. Look at some similar tropes. He Panned It, Now He Sucks! has 67 wicks 731 inbounds. Quality by Popular Vote has 49 wicks, 180 inbounds. Four-Point Scale has 55 wicks, 4901 inbounds. As far as Criticism Tropes, this one's doing pretty well.

,I don't like either of those, because for any medium except Video Games, that's a very good review.

If we re-name this, the new name should indicate that the review in question isn't just a controversial review, it's a review that's controversial despite actually praising the game. An 88 percent is a high B, you know.

Good Isnt Good Enough Review? Meh, I'm not fond of that.

But for a videogame review, it actually isn't all that high. The reason the original was controversial was that while people who disliked the game thought it was too high, people who liked the game thought it was too low.

"But for a videogame review, it actually isn't all that high. The reason the original was controversial was that while people who disliked the game thought it was too high, people who liked the game thought it was too low."

Not to split hairs here, but an 88% score is generally looked upon as very good to stellar.

The original score/review in question had nothing to do with people disliking the game. It was the outrage that resulted from a fanbase that hadn't even played it, but expected a perfect or close-to-perfect score. The controversy wasn't on the reviewer's side, but the rabid fanbase's.

As for the trope itself, it needs a better name. I'll support a rename.

88% is lower than it seems like it should be because of the ubiquitous Four-Point Scale.

According to the page itself, Eight Point Eight is the reaction of a fanbase to a review that is better or worse than the critical consensus. I had thought the trope was limited to what I described earlier (still positive review that earns a fanbase's ire because it's marginally more critical than others), but apparently I was wrong. It happens, occasionally.

That being the case, the re-name doesn't seem that complicated. Notably Different Review. Notably Aberant Review. Consensus Breaking Review. Etc.

I like Controversial Review.

I should point out that 8.8 is still high and good for a video game review. There's just a handful of franchises that routinely get higher reviews (e.g. at least a 9.5 for Super Smash Bros). Giving an 8.8 to SSB would be this trope; giving an 8.8 to most random other games on the market would not be this trope.

Eight Point Eight is fine as is in my opinion. It doesn't necessarily matter whether the 8.8 itself a high review score or not, what counts is the backlash, and there was plenty of it in that case. Seeing as this page is at the top of Google results for "8.8", it's tough to support taking the unique title away for another generic rename.

That is Fan Myopia - you know which incident it refers to, but most people don't. Note that Tvtropes tends to be the top google result for any term, that's just how google ranks things.

The very next result on Google is the incident that named the trope, though. Also, I am not sure, but I believe it is a pre-existing name?

I think we shouldn't do a rename. I wasn't familiar with the original source and yet I understood the context. Besides, since we're the top result for 8.8, wouldn't renaming it knock us down?

Wicks check, anyone?

I have a feeling it's going to be hard to define what constitutes misuse here. It's true that the name is mostly non-indicative because the number lacks any units of measure to help label it by. Even Eight Point Eight Review is far more descriptive (though it still gives no hint that said review is considered controversial)

But let's see what I can find. Sorting as I go:

Reference to the current Trope Namer

• Game FA Qs

Indexes and other exempt articles:

• Audience Reactions

Referencing an actual critical review

• Alien Breed
• WebOriginal.Applied Phlebotinum Blog

Cause for concern

• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: "Gamespot famously deducted points from Metroid Prime 3 because the controls were too good and thus the game was 'too easy'."
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: "If you can beat the game in a day or two, or worse, in one sitting, expect review sites to, at best, cut off a whole point or letter grade."
• Nerf Now: "this against game reviewers"
• Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 Lets Play: "The reason pokecapn started this LP in the first place was because he heard the game was bad from reviewers, and given their history of reviewing Sonic games, didn't believe it could really be that bad."
• Amiga Power: (removed) Already covered by Four-Point Scale.

Stopping before the B range. These are pretty tough to classify....

edited 19th Jul '11 9:59:24 AM by Stratadrake

A Bad "it's above average" review? Or... A Controversial "it's ok" review?

edited 19th Jul '11 9:27:57 AM by Raso

Perfect 8 Out Of 10 perhaps?

Good Bad Review ?

It took me 8.8 seconds to figure out what the hell the trope title was referencing! :p

edited 19th Jul '11 9:29:15 AM by OmegaKross

I have more of a problem with the fact that its written as if its a Video Game-only phenomenon, despite half the examples being non-video game examples, than I do the trope name. I figured out what it was about in, as the joke goes, eight seconds, to the title is fine for me... but the trope description itself sucks.

Just so we're clear, the trope page itself says that this phenomenon exists when there is a review that is either much more glowing or much more critical than the previous consensus. If that's not what the trope should be, then this thread has a much wider task than a mere re-name. If the trope description is accurate, than a name that implies the trope only applies to surprisingly critical reviews is inaccurate.

That sounds like an Outlier Review, then. If it were fifteen or twenty years ago, I'd suggest "The Russian Judges Score", but I suspect that meme has died the death of forgottenness.

edited 19th Jul '11 12:31:46 PM by Madrugada

I'm young enough to not have been alive during the period that spawned it, and I'm still familiar with it.

edited 19th Jul '11 1:26:50 PM by INUH

8.8 is when the review is high enough to piss off the haters, and low enough to piss off the fanboys.

Shouldn't this be Trivia? It's the review that's controversial, not the actual work in question.

Actually, I think it would be best to restrict it to review shows giving them out. The reviews aren't even very important as far as our mission goes.