While I agree that a score system in itself is not perfect, sometimes people also may just overthink it (or in that regard, make them way too complex). With 5 stars, you basically have a scale of (Not at all - mostly not - middle ground - mostly yes - very yes). You can either define that by how much you enjoyed it subjectively, how good it was objectively, or a mix of both - which you then can specify with the optional review function.
Viewing post in Dilemma with rating games here
Steam only uses two stars. Recommend or not. And devs still get sad about "negative" ratings. But honestly, the rating system calls it by name. Would you recommend this game? Yes/No? But it lacks context. It would be better if it would read: would you recommend that game to players that share your taste in games? We all know our vanity games. We might like them a lot, but might not "recommend" them.
But they do use public reviews, so people can browse those and read up why exactly the games are recommend - or not. Itch does not have those, probably because of the nightmare it would be to moderate those and the whining of the amateur devs that get two reviews and one of them is negative and unfair.
Oh and look, a reply in an undeleted thread. Might be coincidence, but you know what I mean. Also, about that nightmare, the reviews on Steam have comments and their own ratings. The rabbit hole is deep there.
I believe with Steam you at least have to give comment on your recommendation, so that people can 'review' the reviews. That of course does not change how the rating system works and that those ratings will always be a mix between subjective opinion and objective analysis.
The system could also be expanded to make it more custom-tailored and fair. But that is a topic that could be discussed a lot. Some had considered a middle option to choose instead of just recommend or not. Maybe giving viewers some tags or filtering the reviews based on the collected account interests could also be a viable solution.
In regards to itch.io, I get why they have 'limited' the reviews here - but it also makes their function just that - limited. Maybe they could also expand it for users to check some questions when rating, like 'What did you like/not like - Gameplay - Presentation - etc., or simply giving stars to more categories and then summarizing this to give a better insight when checking the review section for a user.
Then again, it seems not a lot of people are using the rating system to much extent anyway. And you can also always just open up your comment section if you want people to share their opinion on your product. The system might not be perfect, but I guess it is an additional thing to serve its purpose for users and when considering results in the search system.
Then again, it seems not a lot of people are using the rating system to much extent anyway.
This.
Of course it is a bit of a feedback loop. There are people not using it because the reviews are not public. So why bother writing one.
To clarify: on Itch a rating is a review without text. A review is a rating with text. (At least that is how I understood it. They are used interchangeably often.)
Anyone wanting to see an overview can do so on the global feed.
https://itch.io/feed?filter=ratings
And, well, a short skimming on that says:
no 2 star, no 3 star 80% 5 star 10% 1 star 10% 4 star. And maybe 5% have text.
If no one uses 2 or 3 and rarely 4 star, they could just as well switch to positive and negative like Steam did. I see merit in this. It is not "perfect", but it has about the same information value as a 5 star rating system.
Maybe jam ratings are a bit more nuanced since the games therein do compete with each other and you have something to compare the games to.