Contest and Stats Discussion - Part 1385

That was the day before our country closed. Likely not getting into Smash boost if anything, and from being a meme I suppose.

Leonhart4 posted...

is Donkey Kong a Mario character or just a DK character

Uhhh trick question Mario is a DK character

pj gets it

I'm kinda surprised that only barely half of this site has played Chrono Trigger to the end.

If the playrate were any higher ocarina would start to get sff'd

We've previously seen its playrate be near 3/4 of the site, but considering how beloved it is here it is surprising to me how many of those did not see it to the end. Granted, that was some years ago now and votals are smaller now so it could be shifted slightly.

I played the game a few times without beating it before I did. I think the endgame gets kind of obtuse to some people because of its open-endedness.

I think we'd be surprised at how high of a percentage of people played a game but never beat it for most games

I often have to force myself to finish games even if I'm enjoying them and legitimately want to see the ending. A lot of other people are the same. Just a weird mental thing.

Well, a lot of times you've seen most of the gameplay content by that point, so the only real discovery left is the story.

Leonhart4 posted...

I think we'd be surprised at how high of a percentage of people played a game but never beat it for most games

I’m always shocked by those stats when you see a trophy percentage or something.

R.I.P. PotD

Bump

About a month away from the start of our final set of retrospectives

Actually, we do have a couple of vote-ins on April 12 and 13 for Years, so I need to remember those dates

UltimaterializerX posted...

I’m always shocked by those stats when you see a trophy percentage or something.

Once developers started getting a good understanding of this data (PS3 / 360 era) you can see how it influenced design to encourage more players to beat the games they make.

Some modern games have quite high completion rates despite being long (I'm always surprised to remember TLOU2's is about 55%). FFVII Rebirth is about 45%. Silksong (game without easy mode) is about 30% for the 1st ending and 20% for the true. Based on trophy rates.

Around 40% of Elden Ring players have the achievement for beating the penultimate final boss, which I think is very impressive for a game that absurdly long, dense, and not super accommodating to casual players.

You dont actually have to play for a long time to get there, though. I can see someone just following the minimum amount of grace and getting to the end with just a few bosses beaten.

pjbasis posted...

You dont actually have to play for a long time to get there, though. I can see someone just following the minimum amount of grace and getting to the end with just a few bosses beaten.

Unless you're following speedrun strats, I think a super straightforward, ignoring side quests playthrough of ER is still like 40-50 hours.

Apparently the original Resident Evil has a higher playrate than its remake even though its remake spent 24 years as the definitive version while the original spent 6 years as the "only" version.

It took 13 years to come off Nintendo hardware. Maybe that caused the difference.

Bump

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6666-best-year-in-gaming-vote-in-round-day-1-1970s
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6667-best-year-in-gaming-vote-in-round-day-2-1980s

Whoops, I forgot to post the first one yesterday, but it's fine to post these together. No real surprise about these outcomes, and we all knew everything in these polls was weak.

I'll be honest. I remember virtually nothing about the lead up to this contest. I assume we didn't have nominations since we just included all the years, but I forget how Allen put the bracket together. Did he just do it all himself? Did we have any input? I do know there was very little enthusiasm for this contest, especially since we didn't get one at all in 2016, but at least it was a contest.

Kind of a shame that 2017 never got a shot at that contest.

it's kinda cool that enough people are knowledge about 1970s gaming to actually make a big difference in results

I'm sure a lot of 72 voters just did it because it was the first one though

never discorders proven correct

FFDragon posted...

never discorders proven correct

^5

Wonder if Star Fox is getting a bump from the Mario movie

I think Star Fox 64 is the most popular game from any of these franchises on GameFAQs? Not sure how Earthbound and Golden Sun compare.

that's an easy F-Zero from me dawg

let's get Falcon in that Star Fox movie

GOTD was briefly talked about in a podcast. 1:28:31 until 1:32:20.

 https://youtu.be/f9O_HUm-z8o?si=YZhO9GJWSCo8xsbV&t=5311

Are those guys not aware of the background of GameFAQs?

They're totally right about some of those results not making sense for the general public but we're a bunch of weirdos in here.

I don’t think they realize that we are like twice their age.

I mean 2010 games are not nostalgia here, they are just released games. >_>

Almost time for the Best Year in Gaming retrospective to begin

I'm sure you all can't wait

the best year in gaming was the year we had the best year in gaming contest

It was rather unfortunate for 2017 to miss the cut.

Well, we're coming up on the 10th anniversary so maybe we could get BYIG2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6686-best-year-in-gaming-wildcard-round-day-1-1979-vs-2009

We had two matches per day for most of this, so I'll post one result at midnight Eastern and the other at noon Eastern.

Anyway, we started off with a Wild Card round of the vote-in winners against what I guess Allen perceived were the weakest years not in the vote-ins (spoilers all the vote-in winners got crushed).

Also this contest featured a rotation of match pics for each year. I'll try to remember to post which games were chosen for posterity (especially since they turned out to be kinda important for the closer matches). The pics rotated every five seconds, and there was a question of how many people would actually sit and wait for all the games to be revealed before voting. As such, it felt like whatever game was featured first would probably matter a lot. This is the only contest where we've had to take something like this into consideration, so BYIG is unique in that regard, at least.

1979
Adventure
Lunar Lander
Asteroids
Galaxian

2009
Uncharted 2
Minecraft
Street Fighter IV
Batman: Arkham Asylum

Also I'm reading through the Stats Topics archives just because my memory of this contest is so fuzzy, but there were issues with the match pics rotating and not displaying the year unless you hovered over the pic for a few seconds.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6687-best-year-in-gaming-wildcard-round-day-1-1983-vs-1989

1983
Dragon's Lair
Mario Bros.
Star Wars
M.U.L.E.

1989
Tetris
Dragon Warrior
Bomberman
Guardian Legend

Yeah, just looking at that lineup of games, it's pretty obvious why 1989 won.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6688-best-year-in-gaming-wildcard-round-day-2-1981-vs-2006

1981
Donkey Kong
Ms. Pac-Man
Galaga
Ultima

2006
Okami
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Gears of War
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

1981 was generally considered the strongest of the vote-in winners, and even the most it could manage was narrowly avoiding a tripling. Allen never explained his rationale for what years he put up against the vote-in winners, but 2006 was an odd choice, especially looking at that lineup, which doesn't even include Kingdom Hearts II. We thought this lineup could actually pose a problem for 2006 going forward if it stayed the same, not just because KH2 was omitted but also because Twilight Princess was last.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6689-best-year-in-gaming-wildcard-round-day-2-1978-vs-2005

1978
Football
Space Invaders
Super Breakout
Canyon Bomber

2005
God of War
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Resident Evil 4
Shadow of the Colossus

Unfortunately, gigantic blowouts like this were not uncommon for this contest. This wasn't even the biggest one. That would come in the next match (spoilers).

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6690-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-1-1995-vs-1986

1995
Full Throttle
Chrono Trigger
Rayman
Panzer Dragoon

1986
Balloon Fight
Bubble Bobble
OutRun
Alex Kidd

As stated previously, this was the blowout of the contest. There was a lot of debate over how strong 1995 could be with Chrono Trigger as its anchor and nothing else that was really strong (especially with the lineup Allen chose for round 1). The big question was if it was better to have high top end strength or lots of depth (and 1998 had both, which was why it was the heavy favorite, but more on that later). Well, 1995 passed the test here, so it was off to a good start.

Full Throttle being the headliner over Chrono Trigger seemed to be another really puzzling choice by Allen in terms of match pic order, but we aren't quite there in terms of when it would be relevant.

I get why but 1986 really deserves to have the launch of the NES and smb1 attached to it.

That oct 1985 date that everyone refers to was just some NYC test launch, and nothing would be done again until mid 86.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6691-best-year-in-gaming-round-1-day-1-1985-vs-1987

1985
Excitebike
Super Mario Bros.
Space Harrier
Duck Hunt

1987
Metroid
The Legend of Zelda
Castlevania
Mega Man

This was the first debated match of the contest, and it was a test of strength vs. depth. Mario 1 was probably the strongest and most iconic game here (it had beaten Zelda 1 twice in 2009), but 1987 marked the beginning of multiple popular franchises.

Well, the results speak for themselves. 1987 almost scored a tripling here, making this a big victory for the depth argument.

It's fun enough reading these, but unlike most contests I can't recall what I predicted whatsoever lol. I can make reasonable guesses and of course I had 1998 winning, but that's about it.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'd have to see if I can find the Guru picks at some point.

I don't remember much of that contest, except that I was one of the few who sided with 1987 over 1995 in my bracket. And yet even after 1987's commanding performance, respected Oracle Challenge predictors were picking 1995 to get about 65% of the vote over 1987 (I wish oraclechallenge.com had predictions for BYIG....I can't find them anywhere). And yes, I do recall that the match pics were known beforehand.

1995 still won, but seeing the match wreck the Oracle predictors felt somewhat vindicating (though I think they scared me into predicting 1995 with like 60%...hm, I could have been as low as 55%). I can't even remember how 1995 did the next round.... (probably not good)

Oracle consensus was 66.04% for 1995 over 1987.

You picked 1995 with 63.25%.
"1995 - 63.25%, because somehow I think we're really going to get a new pic."