T w e n t y S i d e d

Another week, another dump of video game data of unspecified origin. As before, the data has titles, release date info, and Metacritic ratings for a few thousand video games between 2001 and today. The difference this week is that we have data for several major consoles instead of just PC games.

Here’s the breakdown:

This makes it look like the PC is this huge platform, but remember the PC covers the entire range from 2001 to 2020, while the consoles are limited to specific time periods.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Video Game Chart Party 3: Showdown”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Two things happened last weekCorrection: More than two things happened last week. However, I only care about two of them right now.. First, I published that chart dump of video game data. Second, I got another delivery. Late last night someone threw a brick through my window. Once I finished sweeping up the glass, I noticed it wasn’t actually a brick. It was a MySql database, wrapped in a note that said, “Don Data sends his regards.”

This data is a lot more complete than the last batch. It has information on publishers / developers, which might be useful if I knew what to do with it. But whatever. Let’s make a new version of the charts from last week:

Here I’ve limited the chart to the twenty years from 2000 to 2019, since the data outside of that range is too sparse to use. Also, this chart just shows the range between 60 (worst game ever) and 80 (best game possible).

Last week some people expressed concern that my methodology was off. Specifically, what happens if Shoot Guy 4: Shoot ’em All gets a 100% from one thousand critics, and if the slightly obscure Punch Guy 3: Knuckles of Doom only gets one review of 0%. If those are the only two games that year, then won’t that result in an average of 99.9% for the year?

Short answer: No. Long answer: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Video Game Chart Party 2: Chart Harder”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.