I didn't include Death Stranding because I wasn't counting console/timed exclusives that were available on PC (although I accidentally did include too human). I chose not to include PC games because first off I think they're less prone to anti-manufacturer bias (at least without considering Microsoft which gets sticky), and also because their are a lot of smaller indie games which I don't know which platforms they released on. I'm not sure what else would be added if you wanted to do it that way, aside from Shenmue which is the game I got to when I decided not to include them. For the record, Shenmue's VGC review was the same as its MC. You could include Death Stranding if you wanted, but then you get a situation where the entire difference hinges on one game that was pretty divisive. Not a great argument to show there is widespread anti-sony bias.

As for whether or not to include games beyond 2 years, we're already dealing with a fairly small sample. If you want to take out everything pre 2019 and Persona 5, we're talking about 6 games. And honestly, that feels a bit arbitrary. For that to be the case, they would have had to seen Jim Ryan take over, instantly say "fuck that guy" and start shitting on Sony games despite having no anti-Sony sentiment beforehand. I just don't see the whole review team turning on a dime because of the executive in control. Also, keep in mind, this is a mainly volunteer job that based on experience (not with this site but a couple of others) pays relatively little. If I were to become a writer for this site, and they said "take 10 points off whatever you want to give Nintendo games), I'd say fuck you and stop. Can't speak for the writers, but VGC has very little leverage. They could try subtly cultivate anti-Sony people through the hiring process, but that'd be pretty difficult.

As for Persona 5, I don't know why you wouldn't want to count that, especially if you want to count Death Stranding. Why would anti-Sony bias be limited strictly to games that are published by Sony even if they are available on Windows? Why wouldn't it extend to a game that is truly exclusive to Sony home consoles? I'd say, admittedly based on anecdotal evidence, that diehard fans (fanboys if you will) of a particular console tend to place a greater amount of emphasis on exclusive content than other third party offerings, even if not the same amount as they do for first party exclusives. I would say, again based on anecdotal evidence, that exclusivity is more important of a factor than publisher.

I feel that taking the ten most recent exclusive titles was the best way to go about things. Taking titles released after February of 2019 and not including exclusives weren't published by Sony/Nintendo feels like massaging the data. And even if it's not intentionally leading the data to the desired conclusion, it leaves us with a very small sample. It also leaves us with way more Nintendo titles, which means outliers will skew the data for Sony than they would for Nintendo. The fewer the data points, the less reliable the data. If we looked at 100 games, it would be very unlikely that Nintendo games should score significantly higher without intentional bias. With 6 games, it's pretty plausible that a couple of reviewers just didn't like a couple of games and dragged down the average with no bias. 

As for why Nintendo products are reviewed more often, that's simply because there are more of them, at least over the time period in question. In 2018, (according to Wikipedia) Nintendo released 18 retail games compared to 8 for Sony. In 2019 it is 16-5 in Nintendo's favor. This would also tie into why you might perceive the gap as bigger than it is. I believe that Death Stranding was literally the only Sony retail release from 2019 that was reviewed, so if that score was low, it's going to stick out more.

At any rate, I think my methodology is pretty fair. But, even if you want to argue about whether or not a couple of games should have been included, I don't think there's nearly enough to demonstrate a calculated anti-Sony bias.

I like the message of your post Jaicee, especially the last paragraph, and I understand your thinking but for me personally I don't think it applies to a lot of big game companies, which includes Sony. It's just that Sony has so much capital that making a few games that are commercial failures won't bankrupt them and because of this powerful position they really aren't taking risks are they? I think your argument would work better if it was talking about indie devs no?? They have the most to lose and they take risks anyway, recently the most heartfelt games I've played haven't been from AAA developers but from indie devs.

Is the studio big and has a lot of capital? If so then it's not a risk, it won't matter if it doesn't sell well or gets picked up into another installment.

In terms of capitalistic investment it's not really a risk if you can afford it 10 times over. Just another game developed in your portfolio.

You're in charge and you can do things how you want to. That being said, I strongly disagree with the review system.

The 1-10 scale is essentially a language. The purpose of language is to communicate clearly and effectively. And, when you are using language in a different way than everyone else, that's going to lead to confusion. Which is kind of what we see hear. I obviously don't think Jaicee's accusation of bias was justified, but it's not hard to see how she came to that. Like I said, I got that impression as well. And most people probably have more active social lives and would not spend all that time on actually testing things out.  

I get how the review methodology works, but I think it's flawed. According to the methodology, anything above an 8 is a potential GOTY nominee, at least for some category. That means that about 1/4 of the possible scores are reserved for the handful of GOTY nominees. Meanwhile, 6.5 or below is considered "decent" with anything below a 6 being classified as an unsatisfying or incomplete product. That's 12 of the possible values. 

So if anything 8 or above is reserved for GOTY candidates and anything below 7 is, at best, decent, where does that leave games that are good but not quite great? Well, somewhere in the 7 range.

Which is what I found when I looked into it (at the time there were no half values which help a little bit). There were zero games that scored a 0, zero that scored a 1, one that scored a 2, zero that scored a 3, four that scored a 4, five that scored a 5,  seventeen that scored a 6, thirty nine that scored a 7, fourteen that scored an 8, five that scored a 9, and zero that scored a 10. Nearly half (43.8% to be exact) of all the games scored a 7. 57% score either a 7 or 6. 71% scored between a 6 and an 8. Maybe that has changed since I looked into it (I believe that the most recent game I looked at was Xenoblade Chronicles HD), but as I see it the review methodology funnels everything towards a 7.  Of the games I looked at, Resident Evil 3make, DBZ Kakarot, Iron Man VR, Minecraft Dungeons, Shenmue 3, Trials of Mana, Hatsune Project Diva, Pokemon Sword/Shield, Retro Brawler Bundle, and The Last of Us 2 all received a 7. Are all those games really of equal quality? I know that there are half points now, but still, the review methodology leaves almost nowhere to put "good not great" games.

And honestly, most games should be in that "good but not great" range. Games get reviewed either a)because they sent in a copy or b) because the reviewer bought it themselves and wanted to review it. Companies generally aren't going to send out many games that are genuinely bad (which is why the data I have shows only 10 reviews under 5 out of nearly 100 games), and very few will be GOTY worthy. So, having so few options for "good" scores is a major problem. 

If you think the typical 1-10 scale is flawed, then using it in an idiosyncratic way is not the answer. Again, whether justified or not, people are going to think you're speaking the same language as other sites who use 1-10, and that's just going to lead to confusion. A much better solution is to use an entirely different system to score games. Gamexplain for instance uses a system that goes from something like "hated it" to "loved it" which is a a really clear way to express how the reviewer felt about the game. An F to A+ system also works really well IMO because it's something that's familiar to people, and it allows a wide range of scores. You have 12 different "passing" grades, so you can still reserve As and A+s for the cream of the crop while also having a nice range of possible scores for games that are above average but fall short of greatness.

Again, it's not my site, and you could do things how you want, but since I did moderate the comments of reviews for a while, I can say that there are a lot of people who take reviews the wrong way (which to be fair is maybe unavoidable on the internet). If your goal is for reviewers to be able to convey their thoughts on a game as clearly as possible, I don't think the current system accomplishes that. By using a completely different system you get to do things differently than other sites with less risk of being misinterpreted. Everyone's on the same page, which is the whole point of communication.

First off, welcome back!!

Secondly, yeah for sure. But I also like to see those sorts of games get proper budgets and more visibility for a change and unfortunately first-party publishers are a main pathway to that. To that end, I definitely think about the amount of creative freedom that developers get under various publishers. Many publishers view their role as essentially one of mitigating between what the people making games want to do on the one hand and what they perceive will sell and make them a profit on the other and I'm just against that.

No, a company like Sony is obviously at no serious risk of collapse or anything like that. But a company of that scale also tends to have a different, greedier definition of risk than you or I can even fathom. Risk to them means like the possibility of losing capital, not of folding, and in that sense there is real risk involved here in some of these projects. Why do you think their Japan Studios are being consolidated right now, with most of the workers being laid off? Because losses from the Japan Studio could cause Sony, the multinational conglomerate, to collapse? No, it's because losses in any one area are commercially inefficient. I'm just hoping that that soulless mentality doesn't get applied to more projects going forward. That was really my point before.

Anyway, I'll conclude this reply by shamelessly hawking another thread of mine 'cause I'd be interested to know what your favorite newer games have been. (An expanded version of my list can be found on the second page.)

Well let's put it this way: there would be a whole lot of 9s and 2s because I just tend to either fall in love with a game or else hate it. because they'd be viewing it more objectively. I don't think I'm really capable of objectivity when it comes to judging art. For me, it's about the subjectivity of what it does for me, and things in that sense tend to either work well or not at all, so I think I'd make a terrible critic.

I think it's fair to use the data from before half scores, provided that I acknowledged the data may be slightly out of date. If things are different now cool. But, it's a bit too time consuming to look into for me atm.

I think all reviews have certain ranges that are going to be more used, because like I mentioned most games that get reviewed are going to be on the good side due to natural selection bias (i.e. publishers are less likely to send in shit games to be reviewed). But, most sites would consider 9.0 and above GOTY Range, which leaves 7.0-8.9 to cover the range of good games. So, there's more room for those games. And I think it's more important to be able to differentiate between the varying levels of "good" games, than it is to be able to differentiate between exactly how good games in the GOTY range are.

As someone who watches Gamexplain, I had no idea that there were any numbers that correlated to their reviews (and I'm not sure if they mean for that or it's something opencritic did of their volition). When people see a number, I think they're naturally going to view it in relation to other sites that use numbers. When I see "liked it a lot" all I really think is "oh that reviewer liked it alot". So there's no baggage there.

But that's just my two cents, and at the end of the day it's your/the writing team's decision. But thanks for listening.

Ahh I see what exactly you're getting at. Maybe I was just reading it with a too jaded view of Sony as I'm not partial to big corporations lmaooo but yeah I'd agree and my hopes with the gaming industry going forward is the same. Heartfelt indie games that take risks are great but it's a shame, and it's true like you said, they don't get proper budgets or visibility like AAA first party games.

And thanks for the welcome! I'll be sure to def check out that thread!