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I keep a diary. I've kept one for 6 years, now. My Mum offered me £5 to keep it up for a year. I was so miserly with money back then I took up the offer. Now I'm hooked. My once simplistic diary is now- wait a second... deja vu. As the year draws to the close, and my diary updates become fewer and fewer (Currently 15 days behind and struggling to keep it at that) , I prepare myself for 2010. Should I look for a job? Should I revise harder for exams? More importantly- what sort of rating system will my diary have?

I remember the Official PlayStation magazine. They would give a game a rating out of 10 for graphics, gameplay and playability (I think). Then they'd give it an average score. It wasn't a fair system. A game with a beautiful soundtrack wouldn't be rewarded. A fun but dull looking game would be rated down. But I didn't care about any of that back then. I just wanted a percentage system. Why is it out of 10? Surely out of 100 is like... 10 times better? My logic told me that it would allow for more accurate ratings. I would finally be able to see what was better out of two games that got perfect 10/10 scores! I had a half hearted attempt at keeping a diary back then. I used percent because I was superior to the PlayStation magazine. I wouldn't just stop at percent, though. Since most of my days were between 70 and 90 percent, I had to add half percents. Then quarter percents. It got ridiculous.

More possible scores does NOT lead to a more accurate measurment. Don't argue. What's the difference between 86% and 87%? Would the game get the same score if it was judged by the same person, twice? I doubt it. In fact, I reckon it could easily be 5% different if the same game was to be rated again. At least.

Ratings are flawed. I see 5 second special effect demonstrations getting 5 star ratings on youtube, only to see 20 minute home made movies getting 3 or 4 stars because it wasn't constantly up to the standard set by the 5 second special effect demonstration. People seem unaware of how unjust such a system is. Imagine I made a computer game that included one level and it took about 20 seconds to complete. However, I lavished that one level with hundreds of special effects and lots of polish. Now imagine that some one else makes a 20 level game with a proper storyline, about 10 times more music, far more gameplay and length, only for them to be rated down lower than my game because their screenshot of their game doesn't look as pretty as mine. Ouch.

It happens all the time, in all areas. I see it happen in music, game making, map making and video making. The hard workers who actually finish stuff are often ignored as everybody crowds around a 5 second wonder. Some people even rate things based on a 5 second sample because they want to get their points up on a site by rating stuff, but can't be bothered to give it a proper chance. In fact, I think that most people do that. Hell, even I do that some times. I might go on a flash game on newgrounds, jump about for a couple of seconds and make a rating for the game based on my first impression. It's not fair, even if I think that I'm going to be right at the time.

I'm ranting about this, but I don't have a solution. As long as humans are the ones rating things, they will always deliver unfair, random ratings. My advice to anybody starting off in any of the fields mentioned above is to start simple, because it hurts too much for your year long project to get dashed by one person's 5 second rating, which then deters others from giving it a chance. It's a cruel world. I see popular people release things that are more polished, yet less fun to play than other people's games, yet because of their reputation, people will download and enjoy the game because they give it a chance. It's like saying that a stranger you don't know isn't as nice as a friend you've known for months, simply because you only walked past them in the street and didn't get to know them. Unlike that comparison, works of art are pleading to be noticed and loved. They don't give you strange looks if you try to befriend them, either.

I've decided how I'm going to have a ratings system for my diary. I'll rate days on a rating from 1-5. You can't go wrong with that. Only a NOOB could go wrong with that! 3 for an average day, 4 for good, 5 for excellent. So simple, so effective. Just as long as I remember to try and rate things a 3. It's tempting to give normal days a 4, because I wouldn't mind reliving them and I DID get 3 hours on a fun computer game. But that's normal for me. It deserves a 3. And once in a while, a really good day will come along that's worth a 6 just to make it stand out as one of the best days of my life. But then a better day might follow it, warranting a 6 and a half. Then the day after that might be okay, but 3 is too low in comparison to the 6 and a half rewarded the day before, so instead I'll give it a 4. Oh dear.