As well as my above posts explaining my opinions, I'll add that this idea of yours would doom the game industry. If all that's rated is fun, games won't score any more highly on technical achievement, at which point why bother to get the best looking, 60fps game you can?
Ok, firstly, I really don't like the word 'fun', which implies a specific kind of superficial gratification, when in fact there a huge number of ways in which we can be entertained, on an intellectual emotional and psychological level. Is a game fun if you're scared, angry or sad? Yet these kinds of emotional responses are essential part of entertainment. Now, my argument is that this broader sense of the word entertainment is what we should use as the sole criterion for judging a game's overall worth. We play games for no other purpose. So if graphics don't contribute to the entertainment value of a game then they're completely irrelevant, and can be ignored.
However, the reason this strikes you as crazy is because graphics
do contribute to a game's entertainment value, acting as a method of drawing the player into a game, ensuring he is immersed in fully cohesive world, and rewarding him visually for completing objectives. So of course they should be taken account into account in the scoring process! But only to the extent that they actually enhance the experience itself. Who cares if graphics are made more technically advanced if that doesn't benefit the player?
Rating graphics according to this metric helps developers make better games, rather than better tech demos, it helps them realise the role graphics play in rewarding the player - it makes them realise the importance of good art, of effective visual communication. Finally, it stops them from falling back entirely on graphics and ignoring the core of the experience - the gameplay. That can only be a good thing.
But graphics will never take a back seat precisely because they're used by developers to differentiate their games and attract interest. If a company announces a new game and posts a few mediocre screenshots then nobody will care, but if those screenshots showcase an unprecedented level of graphical detail then suddenly the entire gaming community will be interested in that game. So forgetting about graphics is sure fire way to doom your game to obscurity, and as long as the industry remains screenshot focused, that's not going to change.
Could just settle for a technically inferior game. Consider buying a car (our favourite console analogy!). If you're buying it for fun to drive, that'd be the only score worth considering, right? But also important, even if it's not the key factor as fun to drive, is what the car looks like, what it's economy is, what capacity it has, annoying aspects to the car, etc. Thus when reviewing two cars, both 10/10 on fun factor, the one that's also great to look at, economical, and fits the kids as well, should score notable higher than the one that's ugly as sin, does 3 MPG, seats two people at best and has lots of annoying issues. They can't both be awarded a 10/10 score and be presented as equal choices.
Right, because cars have a specific purpose, to get from A to B, and so must be rated in terms of that purpose. It's no different for games, which are a form of entertainment, not a functional tool.
Furthermore fun is subjective. A high fun rating from one person doesn't equal a high fun rating from another.
Of course, and that's true for any quality rating. You will never escape subjectivity. What measure do you use to rate how technically accomplished a game is?
We actually don't need fun ratings to tell us about a game these days, because we have demos. We can see for ourselves whether we enjoy it. Thus why have an average subjective score for fun as the only GameRankings metric? Instead, by going with a technical average, the GameRankings score will actually mean something. A 9/10 means a technically good game. Download it and see if you like it. A 5/10 means a technical dog. Perhaps one to miss. Even though you might enjoy it, the developers need to lift their game rather than be content to produce low-grade products. Then again you might want to check it out.
And you could equally argue, why have reviews to rate the technical aspects of a game when you can simply play the demo? The point however is that demos still don't allow you to experience the whole game, and not every game will be released in demo form.
So to get a better idea of how a game's mechanics function, you're going to have rely on the review. And if all the review does is tell you how technically advanced a game is then it's completely worthless as an assessment of whether you should buy the game.
Furthermore, I think the whole idea of coming to some sort of objective rating of a games' technology is equally suspect. How does level size trade off against lighting detail or animation? Do you consider art? Does it matter if a game looks absolutely horrific because the art is terrible, if the underlying technical base is great? Will the player experience the terrible graphics and think 'damn these graphics suck buts it's no big deal because the game is running on the Doom 3 engine, which I know is very solid?'.
Ultimately the whole single-score system is floored, and opinions will surely remain polarized. Hopefully I've at least explained the other side's view so people can understand it!
I can agree with using reviews to rate individual elements of a game like sound or technology, but at the end of the day the only way of combining those elements into a rating that makes sense is to ask 'how entertaining does this make the game'.
