An Empirical Analysis of Game Ratings Impact on Game Sales

Is opinion dead in game journalism? Have writers traded in their opinions for economic data and social statistics? A new trend, which has the potential to remake game journalism, is afoot where witty-banter about cultural-keepsakes is abandoned – traded in for ordinary least squares linear regression models, beta coefficients, and plots where raw data dance around a supposedly best fit linear equation. Opinion has been replaced by research.

The following is a qualitative case study with a sample size of one (N=1); an opinionated reflection on the article “Watch Out! Your Video Games are Dropping in Price.” The article’s jaw-dropping thesis: if a game is reviewed at a relatively higher score than other games released in the same year, then that game tends to retain its respective value better per day than a game with a lesser score. Conclusion: better rated games make more money over the long-term.

My thoughts:

Foremost, good games are rated higher for a reason: they’re better. Is it any surprise that they retain their value, comparatively? Are the games retaining value, because the games are great or because the reviews are high? There is no way to tell. In my high school statistics class, we referred to this sort of logic problem as Occam’s Razor.

If you want to appropriately analyze this topic, then I would suggest conducting the following litmus test: reviewers should inverse their rankings. Would it make terrible games more economically viable, if they received great ratings? Could reviewers kill a great game by giving it terrible ratings? Does anyone care about the glorified press releases dressed up as reviews by IGN? According to Game Rankings, “Ninjabread Man” averages a 17% reviewer score. What if gamers and reviewers alike had suggested that this game was a blockbuster – that fighting evil armies of monster cakes in CandyLand was hot cake-killing action – would it have changed anything? Although I don’t have any data to support this, my guess is “no.”

Moreover, the study fails to explain the current trends in the popularity of game consoles, as reflected by the ratings of their games. In particular, explaining why Wii sales remain gangbusters, while its games receive the worst ratings on average of any console on the chart. Riddle me that, positivist.

Despite this study’s obvious imperfections, I think that it is an interesting empirical approach to this topic. There has been an ongoing, active debate on game blogs for awhile now, as to whether or not ratings impact sales.

If this article said anything to me, it was this: game ratings still help to drive the market value of games. Not exactly a revolutionary idea, but worth stating in a statistical light, given all of the non-empirical attention being devoted to this issue.