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Forums - Gaming - A comparison of the ratios of good games to bad games on 6 consoles

Kasz216 on 15 May 2008
Sqrl said:

The X axis is unlabeled and unexplained, the methods used for selecting games is undisclosed with the exception of top 10 chart, and in general there isn't enough information given to do anything but guess what its trying to say. So in essence we are left to take it on good faith that the graph has meaning.

But beyond all of that they are review scores and as I pointed out review scores are worthless unless you have the exact same tastes as the reviewers....considering metacritic is a composite review score its pretty much guaranteed to that the scores aren't born out of your tastes.

I'm not trying to be mean here but there are flaws beyond just my disagreement with the review scores. The effort was well-intended I'm sure but the result isn't that great to be brutally honest. With some adjustments it probably can be made useful but that would just get passed the technical issues with the graphs and we would still be left with the subjective nature of the data.

Which is really the point. Lots of subjective data does not create objective data. It is still subjective and by that virtue alone the data isn't meaningful unless you share the views and tastes.


 I would argue lots of subjective data gets objective when you get more data and it's evenly distributed... of course that's a problem with this data since reveiwers are likely to be nowhere near evenly distributed as score consistancy rarely even makes sense in site.

Of course also based on this method I'm sure Dane cook movies would rank way too favorably overall. 



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Kasz216 on 15 May 2008
sinha said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
theRepublic said:

Just look at Wii Sports (76) and Wii Fit (80). These two titles are probably the biggest revolution in gaming since the transition to 3D, yet there is not a whole lot of love from traditional reviewers. In the meantime, the mainstream media and public can't get enough of this stuff.

Sort of how movie critics hated on Star Wars, because it wasn't Easy Rider or The Godfather. Not saying those are bad movies, just pointing out the critical discrepancy.


To quote George Lucas on Star Wars, from the back of the book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls":

"Popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why do people go see them? Why is the public so stupid? That's not my fault."


Haha, that's a great quote.  It's all about the bell curve i'd imagine. 

Sqrl on 15 May 2008
Kasz216 said:
Sqrl said:

The X axis is unlabeled and unexplained, the methods used for selecting games is undisclosed with the exception of top 10 chart, and in general there isn't enough information given to do anything but guess what its trying to say. So in essence we are left to take it on good faith that the graph has meaning.

But beyond all of that they are review scores and as I pointed out review scores are worthless unless you have the exact same tastes as the reviewers....considering metacritic is a composite review score its pretty much guaranteed to that the scores aren't born out of your tastes.

I'm not trying to be mean here but there are flaws beyond just my disagreement with the review scores. The effort was well-intended I'm sure but the result isn't that great to be brutally honest. With some adjustments it probably can be made useful but that would just get passed the technical issues with the graphs and we would still be left with the subjective nature of the data.

Which is really the point. Lots of subjective data does not create objective data. It is still subjective and by that virtue alone the data isn't meaningful unless you share the views and tastes.


I would argue lots of subjective data gets objective when you get more data and it's evenly distributed... of course that's a problem with this data since reveiwers are likely to be nowhere near evenly distributed as score consistancy rarely even makes sense in site.

Of course also based on this method I'm sure Dane cook movies would rank way too favorably overall.


Subjective information never becomes objective. It can be the predominate feeling and it can be the general consensus but neither of those things is objective. What you are thinking of is anecdotes becoming data. Which is true, if you use proper sampling and use a sample size of sufficient size you can take several anecdotes and produce data. But if, for instance, those anecdotes were reviews (subjective) then what you have is hard data about people's opinions, a breakdown of how many people believe what (depending on how you organize the data). But at no point are you ever able to say that one of those reviews or opinions is more correct than any other.

The same can be said for sales data, each person accounted for is essentially saying "I think this is interesting and its a fair/good value.". But I don't think you can say that the Wii's high sales prove that its a better console than the PS3/360. You can say more people like it, but it is still a subjective opinion held by a group of people, albeit a large group.

In the case of the sales data at least there is random sampling in that anyone can purchase the system. With composite metacritic reviews we are talking about an extremely bias sample, by even the most leniant of sampling practices.



To Each Man, Responsibility
Rock_on_2008 on 15 May 2008

Lots of average/ crap sub 50% games on the Wii. PS3 has the least amount of average/crap games sub 50% Due to PS3 games costing the most amount of money to develop for, developers will not just simply spend money to bring out heaps of crap games on the PS3.



catprog on 15 May 2008
sinha said:
naznatips said:
MontanaHatchet said:
sinha said:
naznatips said:
This graph is ridiculous. It shows absolutely nothing. I have no idea what you people are thinking who are agreeing with this, but you should probably take a few seconds to actually read what it's trying to show.

What makes the graph ridiculous, and how does it show absolutely nothing?

Someone is being a grumpy gus today. The graph shows something. It certainly can't show nothing when it has lines and numbers.


Okay, it shows something meaningless... are you people actually reading that? There is no way that data has any relevance whatsoever. It shows no ratio, it has no key. It is completely nonsensical. For once I agree entirely with KingofWale.

Seriously do you people just look at any graph and assume it as meaning?


 

Wow, naznatips and some of the rest of you need a serious lesson in chart-reading. What is the average age here, 15? Take a statistics course or two, folks.

"If that graph were true, the Wii would have less games of every review score, including the bad ones."

LOL!

To make a self-evident comment that is a borderline tautology:

EVERY ONE of the six consoles has... 100% of games... on that console. The actual number of games per console is irrelevant (as long as it's a decent number and not just a few games, in that case there would be sample size problems). And it's looking at every game with a review score rating, not a cherry-picked list (speaking of the first chart).

The bottom is percentile. Kind of like, say, a ranking by percentile for exam grades ("leoj's SAT score was in the 35th percentile"), or Gini coefficient, or many other graphs that are "true"...

Not surprisingly, it's explained right in the original post:

"1% of games increments across the bottom"

There are currently 200 Wii games with ratings, so if going by whole percentiles, "100%", or the 100th percentile, would be Super Mario Galaxy (97) and Zelda (95), so a score of 96. 0% would be Balls of Fury (19) and Anubis II (19), so a score of 19. Wii is 96 at 100%, check, 19 at 0%, check again. Well then, that settles that.

"Seriously do you people just look at any graph and assume it as meaning?"

Unfortunately, the only "seriously" here is that you are seriously embarrassing yourself. That other folks such as Mr"stat"ball were able to look at the graph and find its meaning should have been a clue...


 Actualy it is 97 95 91 89 for the first 4 wii games(limitation of my spreadsheet) but your explanation is generaly true (and much better then mine).



My websites

http://catprog.org

Online games that I play:

http://www.animecubed.com/billy/?Catprog

 

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Sqrl on 15 May 2008
sinha said:
naznatips said:
MontanaHatchet said:
sinha said:
naznatips said:
This graph is ridiculous. It shows absolutely nothing. I have no idea what you people are thinking who are agreeing with this, but you should probably take a few seconds to actually read what it's trying to show.

What makes the graph ridiculous, and how does it show absolutely nothing?

Someone is being a grumpy gus today. The graph shows something. It certainly can't show nothing when it has lines and numbers.


Okay, it shows something meaningless... are you people actually reading that? There is no way that data has any relevance whatsoever. It shows no ratio, it has no key. It is completely nonsensical. For once I agree entirely with KingofWale.

Seriously do you people just look at any graph and assume it as meaning?


 

Wow, naznatips and some of the rest of you need a serious lesson in chart-reading. What is the average age here, 15? Take a statistics course or two, folks.

"If that graph were true, the Wii would have less games of every review score, including the bad ones."

LOL!

To make a self-evident comment that is a borderline tautology:

EVERY ONE of the six consoles has... 100% of games... on that console. The actual number of games per console is irrelevant (as long as it's a decent number and not just a few games, in that case there would be sample size problems). And it's looking at every game with a review score rating, not a cherry-picked list (speaking of the first chart).

The bottom is percentile. Kind of like, say, a ranking by percentile for exam grades ("leoj's SAT score was in the 35th percentile"), or Gini coefficient, or many other graphs that are "true"...

Not surprisingly, it's explained right in the original post:

"1% of games increments across the bottom"

There are currently 200 Wii games with ratings, so if going by whole percentiles, "100%", or the 100th percentile, would be Super Mario Galaxy (97) and Zelda (95), so a score of 96. 0% would be Balls of Fury (19) and Anubis II (19), so a score of 19. Wii is 96 at 100%, check, 19 at 0%, check again. Well then, that settles that.

"Seriously do you people just look at any graph and assume it as meaning?"

Unfortunately, the only "seriously" here is that you are seriously embarrassing yourself. That other folks such as Mr"stat"ball were able to look at the graph and find its meaning should have been a clue...


Considering several folks, myself included, asked him to give a better explanation of the X-axis and received none I don't see why you feel the need to be an ass about the issue, particularly when the point does nothing to counter the major problem the graph has. Insulting and laughing at other members, especially mods, isn't the smartest thing to do.

There is a reason you're supposed to label a graph, I hardly see how anyone is to be blamed for not immediately understanding what was there when it wasn't properly labeled.

In regards to this comment:

"That other folks such as Mr"stat"ball were able to look at the graph and find its meaning should have been a clue..."

I couldn't care what other people say about it, if I don't understand it I'm going to ask. I seriously hope you're not silly enough to just believe what someone posts because MrStickBall (or anyone) seems to agree with it. Aside from that silliness I actually have a solid stats background and I didn't get what he was doing, which is why I asked. Considering nobody, MrStickBall included, responded to the questions until now I'm pretty sure nobody actually got it and that most of the folks were just jumping on the "haha wii sucks" bandwagon. But I'm sure we'll get some folks claiming they got it the whole time but just chose not to explain it to the folks who asked...yeah sure..uh huh.... 

As I've said several times in this thread, even when the graph is properly explained it doesn't negate the fact that it is 100% subjective and that the sampling for those subjective opinions is horribly biased. It would be like taking a group of movie reviews from a Yoga school and then marveling that the Lethal Weapon movies didn't get good scores.

PS - A graph that only 3 or 4 people can read is in fact worthless to the 10 who can't. Hence the reason why you're supposed to clearly label graphs.

The way you wrote your responce it sounds like you had to double check that you were correct, why would you have to do that if it was so obvious?

 

 
To Each Man, Responsibility
sinha on 16 May 2008

Again:

Not surprisingly, it's explained right in the original post:

"1% of games increments across the bottom"



We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

sinha on 16 May 2008
"I don't see why you feel the need to be an ass about the issue"
"Insulting and laughing at other members... isn't the smartest thing to do."
.
Umm... did you not read the comments by naznatips that preceded my comment?
.

"This graph is ridiculous. It shows absolutely nothing. I have no idea what you people are thinking who are agreeing with this, but you should probably take a few seconds to actually read what it's trying to show."


"Okay, it shows something meaningless... are you people actually reading that? There is no way that data has any relevance whatsoever. It shows no ratio, it has no key. It is completely nonsensical. For once I agree entirely with KingofWale.
Seriously do you people just look at any graph and assume it as meaning?"
.
Who was being an ass about the issue and insulting other members? 
The person who is no longer posting in this thread.


We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

sinha on 16 May 2008
"I couldn't care what other people say about it, if I don't understand it I'm going to ask. I seriously hope you're not silly enough to just believe what someone posts because MrStickBall (or anyone) seems to agree with it. Aside from that silliness I actually have a solid stats background and I didn't get what he was doing, which is why I asked."
.
Oh, you didn't understand the chart, so you ASKED.  You didn't say it was "ridiculous", "meaningless", showed "absolutely nothing", had "no relevance whatsoever", and was "completely nonsensical"? 
You ASKED.  And that's why my comment was not directed at you.
.
Regarding the middle sentence, obviously I didn't believe the chart just because mrstickball agreed with it, it should be obvious that I understood it on my own, since I'm the one who explained it.
.
And I'm not saying believe someone's posts because someone else agrees with it, that's a ridiculous distortion of my statement.  I'm saying if others understand something and you don't, perhaps instead of declaring that it is "ridiculous" and insulting those of us who DO understand it, it would be better to... ASK! 
Just like... YOU did!
.
---
.
"It would be like taking a group of movie reviews from a Yoga school and then marveling that the Lethal Weapon movies didn't get good scores."
.
Can you explain how game reviews from game review sites and magazines are comparable to movie reviews from a yoga school?
.
Because personally I would say game revews from game review sites and magazines are more similar to... movie reviews from movie review sites and magazines.
.
---
.
"The way you wrote your responce it sounds like you had to double check that you were correct, why would you have to do that if it was so obvious?"
.
Ummm, NO, not at all.  That was obviously done for the benefit of people like you and naznatips who didn't understand the graph.
.


We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

amcdc79 on 17 May 2008

Where is the Dreamcast?



Dreamcast-18 years later "It's Still Thinking"