EXT – The Internet – Night<\/h4>\n
Shamus is minding his own business, scrolling Reddit and generally wasting time, when Don Data enters. He’s an exaggerated stereotype of Jersey-area Italian-Americans. Maybe he’s played by the late James Gandolfini, but maybe not. It’s hard to tell in this lighting. He looks around, and once he sees the coast is clear he invades Shamus’ personal space.<\/p>\n
Don Data:<\/h4>\n
Hey. You’re that internet guy, right? You do programming and stuff. You know about databases, right?<\/p>\n
Shamus:<\/h4>\n
(Visibly uncomfortable.) Yeah. I mean, sort of. I’m kinda… I more of a graphics…<\/p>\n
Don Data:<\/h4>\n
Yeah, yeah. Close enough. Whatever. Check this out… (Don pulls a DATABASE out of his coat and hands it over.) I figured you might want to have a look at this.<\/p>\n
Shamus:<\/h4>\n
(Eyes the database suspiciously.) I don’t get it. It’s just a list of video games and… what is all this?<\/p>\n
Don Data:<\/h4>\n
(Shrugs.) I heard it was, like, a list of all the Metacritic scores for the last 20 years.<\/p>\n
Shamus:<\/h4>\n
(Raises his eyebrows.) Where did you get this?<\/p>\n
Don Data:<\/h4>\n
(Shrugs again.) I know a guy.<\/p>\n
Shamus:<\/h4>\n
Okay, but where did THAT guy get it?<\/p>\n
Don Data:\u00a0<\/h4>\n
It fell off a truck.<\/p>\n
Shamus:<\/h4>\n
A database fell off a truck?<\/p>\n
Don Data:<\/h4>\n
(Chucks him on the shoulder and nods.) Have fun, kid.<\/p>\n
Shamus:<\/h4>\n
Kid? I’m nearly 50… (Shamus looks up from the database to see that Don has vanished.)\n<\/p><\/div>\n
So that was a little weird. Anyway, let’s open up this database and have a look.<\/p>\n
The first thing to note about this data is that it’s only PC games, and it seems to only include games that scored over 30-ish. That works out to a little over 4,000 games. The data set is pretty small in the… hang on. I’ve got the data, so why don’t I just show you?<\/p>\n
<\/div>So the data is obviously very thin before 2000. This makes sense. Metacritic was launched in 2001<\/a>. Do try to keep this in mind as we go forward. This sample size isn’t that big to begin with, and it’s microscopic in the 90s. <\/p>\n We always hear people say that reviewers are less critical today than they were 20 years ago. I sort of instinctively lean towards this assumption, but let’s see what the data says. Here is an average of all scores given by critics, by year:<\/p>\n Note that this graph is re-scaled to show the 60-100 range.<\/strong> Still, that’s interesting. Obviously we need to ignore the outliers in the 90s. If I’d had more time to redo these charts I probably would have made a version of the spreadsheet without the pre-2001 data. In any case, we can clearly see a sawtooth pattern there in the middle. That low spot in 2006 is the launch of the PS3 \/ Xbox 360 generation. We tend to get really horrendous PC ports in the early days of a new console. Plus, this was the dawn of phone-home DRM. <\/p>\n
<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div>