There are literally hundreds of games in GOG.com's catalog, divided across a wide variety of genres and spanning several decades... How do you guys and girls apply the 1-5 star rating system to the games in your collection? What do you put into each of those stars? Inquiring minds want to know.

for me it's mostly simple

1 - this game should not be on GOG (like empire earth 3)
2 - at most mediocre.
3 - good game
4 - great game
5 - milestone

Yea, that sounds similar to what I was thinking:

1 Bad game
2 Mediocre game
3 Good game
4 Great game
5 Masterpiece

And I try to only rate games against other games within their own genre, but it can be quite difficult and feels unfair at times.

On a related note, how do you modify ratings if you changed your mind? It seems easy to increase them but I don't see a way to remove any stars you've already given out ...

And is it possible to remove the rating altogether?

I'm with Keeveek and Lorfean here, as I tend to rate somewhat similarly. Unless I've played the game extensively before, I won't review it it until I've finished it.

You should be able to hover over the number of stars and it will change the stars to that be that number more or less (at least that's its behavior under >My account>Game info. However, I think once you have given a rating, I don't *think* there is a system to completely remove your rating from a game.

Seems to me this can be done either by left-clicking on the game in your shelf and adjusting the rating on the "Game info" tab, or by going to the "User reviews" section of the game's gamecard and adjusting it there.

Edit: And yeah, I don't think there's any way to completely remove your rating.

Oh, okay, thanks. I didn't check under "Game Info", I just checked the games list under "My account" (the alternative to the shelf display). In that list strangely enough you can add stars but not remove them ...

you're right ... I just tried that out. It must be a bug. There was a website bug report thread somewhere ...

Unfortunately the ratings here seem to be very much tilted toward 5 stars, making them a bit less useful than they could be. Many people seem to rate like this:

5 stars: masterpiece/very good game/pretty decent game/I remember this game from when I was a kid
4 stars: okay game, I guess
3 stars: pretty bad game
2 stars: terrible game
1 star: Master of Orion III

Unless the game has a fascinating concept anything under 3 and a half stars isn't really worth it.

As most people have pointed out, the star ratings tend to skew towards the high end. That's par for the course with any game ratings, though - despite being a full 5 stars (or 0 to 100%), in practice ratings always tend to fall in the 3-5 (or 60-100%) range.

That's why when I look at ratings, I mentally normalize them to their actual range.

5 - Good to great
4 - Good to average
3 - Bad
2 or less - Crime against humanity

How I rate:

5 - great game
4 - enjoyable game
3 - all right game
2 - bad game
1 - awful game

How I read GOG ratings:

5 - good to great game
4 - all right game
3 - pretty bad game
2 - awful game
1 - Hey, when did E.T. the Extra Terrestrial show up on GOG?

5 - a must have
4 - great, but has minor issues
3 - meh, if you get it cheap it's wirth a go
2 - not worth it, unless it's free
1 - for free you say? keep that away from me

5 - INSTTAAAAANT PUUUUURCHASEEEEEE
4 - Playable
3 - Pretty crap
2 - Total shit
1 - KEEEEL IT WITH FIYAH