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On July 20 2011 06:02 Kupon3ss wrote:
The problem with the list is that the game's skewed by niche games that have under 1000 votes, I think if we removed those games, we'd have a list that's much closer to the average idea of "best PC games"
Grim Fandango, User Score 9.4 3509 votes
Half-Life 2, User Score 9.4 39650 votes
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, User Score 9.3 32524 votes
Starcraft, User Score 9.3 14060 votes
Rome: Total War User Score 9.3 15090 votes
Fallout 2 User Score 9.3 6060 votes
Planescape:Torment User Score 9.3 3105 votes
The Curse of Monkey Island, User Score 9.3 2764 votes
FreeSpace 2 User Score 9.3 2107 votes
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn User Score 9.3 6509 votes
Starcraft: Brood War User Score 9.3 9878 votes
Unreal Tournament User Score 9.3 5715 votes
Half-Life User Score 9.3 14278 votes
seems pretty reasonable for a PC top 10 now to me (never heard of grim fandango tho)
this makes sense to me  Although I still haven't heard of Grim Fandango o.o
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On July 20 2011 09:36 OmniEulogy wrote:this makes sense to me Although I still haven't heard of Grim Fandango o.o
It's hilarious but old. Have you ever played Curse of Monkey Island? It's kinda like a predecessor to that, like a walk around puzzle-ly kinda game.
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On July 20 2011 09:07 xarthaz wrote:
In the darts game example the middle or correct rating is defined seperately from darts. In the case of game rating the location of the rating itself is the rating by definition. There exists no dichotomy between measured rating and assumptions made about correct rating that the darts example attempts to show. Osama, the low deviation of scores implies your hypotheses being incorrect.
My hypotheses? I didn't present one, I was commenting on how broken yours was. You're still not answering why deviation doesn't matter given that your hypothesis is bunk in the first place, even if your methodology is sound (which it isn't).
First, you didn't address my point about the terrible concept of "the best game." Maybe your goal was to ascertain the "highest rated game" or "the most popular game," but best and popular are NOT synonymous, nor do you clarify a definition of that that does so. As a result, when you claim that "In the case of game rating the location of the rating itself is the rating by definition" (regarding the target example) this rests on the assumption that best = popular, which is not the case. Because of that, popularity only attempts to approximate the "best" game, which make it the dart, making that target analogy very apt.
Second, even if you rectify that issue and produce a reasonable framework for why "best" should be defined in terms of popularity, you haven't answered the fact that lurking variables and volunteer-bias distort your sample, making standard deviation irrelevant, since your low deviation only creates a conclusion about that particular segment of society's understanding of the best game, rather than a truly representative sample of all PC gamers' rating of the best game.
Here's an example: if you open up a response poll in a Louisiana district that has a particular vocal far-right wing group, given that they'll be the main sample, they'll all agree on conservative options, making it a low deviation, but that clearly wouldn't represent the entirety of the US. There's nothing that establishes a valid sample in the OP besides "well I didn't have anything else," which is nothing but a bad copout.
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On July 20 2011 06:05 Chill wrote:
I replaced 'objectively' with 'statistically' in the title.
Chill so pro.
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in what way is a game review objective? Game reviews are always subjective. Ratings at the end of reviews are not worth the paper/website they are printed on. The only thing reviews are useful for is the actual things the journalist specifically says, which still requires some independent thought to decide if you agree with his complaints or not. Nearly every review for the PC port of The Force Unleashed, for example, gave it a poor score and cited it to be a horrible port. I had no such experience with it on PC.
The only truly objective ranking for top games is sales figures, and even those are a measure of popularity, not quality. I don't think anyone would claim that The Sims or World of Warcraft are the best computer games ever...very good games, certainly, but not the best. yet both appear consistently on top sales lists for the last five years.
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I take back my earlier criticism. This thread is hilarious, xarthaz.
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TOP 10 PC games, objectively
Using Gamespot user ratings, it is possible to determine the games with highest interpersonal valuation indeces, in other words, the best games of the PC platform.
Sigh. I guess I shouldn't expect a great amount of intelligence from you after seeing your thread about Somalia. Although you threw a lot of... cool... jargon in your post anyone who can read through it will see that it is full of shit. This list is far from objective. This list is based on the opinions of a select user base that frequent one website. Most people that play a game do not rate it on Gamespot and this is obvious if the number of sales is compared to the number of votes. This isn't even a good statistical list. It only encompasses the opinions of the target audience that Gamespot pulls in who actually decide to rate the game. This list is the best games according to the opinion of the Gamespot user base that actively rates games.
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5930 Posts
The problem with picking "Gamespot" (isn't Gamespot literally Gamefaqs? I mean literally), of all the sources you could have picked, is that the people who venture to that website are likely younger or are "gamers". Basically, with a lot of these games you end up getting people who vote extremely high or extremely low - a lot of games that don't enter these lists either have a fanbase that doesn't really bother to vote or a fanbase that tends to give more sensible scores.
The fact that there is no Doom, a game that is still extremely popular to this day and has a fairly strong modding community still, within that list is enough to suggest that the voting base is likely to choose. Objectively, Doom is one of the few FPS, heck PC games, that has stood the test of time yet its not within this list. Presumably no one there cares about Doom, people who played Doom don't post there, and people who still mod/play Doom don't care about stupid userbase scoring systems.
Similarly, Planescape:Torment scoring so high is bizarre because everything but the story was utter rubbish. It may have an extremely strong story but even during its time the interface was pathetic and its combat was miles behind its Infinity Engine predecessor, Baldur's Gate/Tales of the Sword Coast. This is the case with basically all RPGs (Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, etc): people who vote in these things either vote very high or very low - Placescape: Torment especially seems to suffer from huge amounts of nostalgia glasses.
I mean this has been repeated a billion times within this very thread but a lot of these games were pretty bad to play, even back in the day. They rank high because of nostalgia, cognitive dissonance, and that fact these scores were sourced from Gamespot. Anyone familiar with the Fallout series might know the forum, No Mutants Allowed. Not sure about now but a while ago people there literally thought Fallout had the best tactical combat system of all RPGs. This isn't true today nor was true back in 1990 - if you so much touched Jagged Alliance 1/2 or the XCOM series, this would be obvious to you - but they've seem to have convinced themselves Fallout 1 was the perfect game in every single way.
These are the sort of people who vote on these polls...I mean there is no way you can "prove" why so and so doesn't deserve to be on the list through pure figures (which is why this thread is dumb). The only thing you can prove is that everyone really, really hated Fallout 2's beginning temple.
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Based purely on the amount of time I've spent playing them
1. Starcraft II - BEST GAME EVER
2. Shadowbane - Best MMO ever
3. Counter-Strike - Best FPS ever
4. Age of Kings & The Conquerors
5. Warcraft III & Frozen Throne
6. Diablo II & Lord of Destruction
7. Age of Empires
8. Starcraft & Brood War
9. World of Warcraft - I'M ASHAMED GOD DAMNIT 
10. Team Fortress Classic
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Wom, Planescape has the most developed dialogue of any video games - ever. It is widely recognised the most adult game out there.
The problem with Doom is that it didnt demonstrate maturity in its genre, fpses were very young. in such lists the games that get rated highly tend to be the "culmination" or artistic high point of the genre, not a high point of an era.
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5930 Posts
It doesn't matter if it has "developed" dialogue, its a terrible game. Its literally one of those visual novels with half baked combat elements and I really, really hate that defense. Its the old Final Fantasy 13* defense when people say that the story gets so good that it invalidates the horrible linear monotonous auto-attack system, sometimes amazingly bad cutscnes, and 20 hours of tutorials.
It doesn't mean I don't enjoy Planescape. I agree its one of the few well written RPGs out there but I'm not blinded enough to admit that its actually a good, well-rounded computer game and certainly doesn't deserve close to a 10.
Whether or not Doom is in the list is irrelevant. The point is that it isn't in there for a good reason: its fanbase probably doesn't post on Gamefaqs, a website that shares its boards and viewer base with Gamespot. Which is why you can't just take any single source, add up some figures, and claim its objective. Because it isn't and statistically it isn't interesting.
*Side note: What will be interesting is to see the reaction to Final Fantasy 13-2 with the huge amount of backlash Final Fantasy 13 got. Will the brand name of a flagship product carry it to success or will it suffer from the same amounts of used game sales?
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Well FF13 has terrible rating so the rating experts have given their voice ,, not quite so with Torment
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On July 20 2011 09:38 slyboogie wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2011 09:36 OmniEulogy wrote:this makes sense to me Although I still haven't heard of Grim Fandango o.o It's hilarious but old. Have you ever played Curse of Monkey Island? It's kinda like a predecessor to that, like a walk around puzzle-ly kinda game.
Grim Fandango was actually made after Curse of Monkey Island. It's basically the last hurrah for the adventure genre in the 90s, and IMO absolutely a work of genius and the pinnacle of the genre. For me my personal favorite three PC games are Deus Ex, Grim Fandango, and Planescape: Torment. If you ever get a chance to play Grim Fandango, do it.
Regarding Oblivion's high rating: It's tough to judge Oblivion, because while vanilla it is extremely flawed and not a classic by any means, modded it easily would get in my top 10 list. So if mods are included then I think Oblivion's score is well-deserved and understandable.
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xarthaz: why do you post with such convoluted language? It is difficult to evaluate unintelligible arguments.
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Why the hell isn't SC2 here? And the list doesn't look very good. I can't believe Counter Strike isn't on it either.
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Where is UFO defense, basically the greatest game of all time?
I couldnt believe it so I checked gamespot and i see this, User Score 9.4 1,832 vote??
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My bad, sometimes google indexing doesnt return all the results
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I'm suprised to see 2 of the real classics on the Top 8 list. Master of Magic was one of the best fantasy strategy games ever created, it's successor age of wonders was far inferior (though still a good game, just don't talk to me about age of wonders 2... it doesn't exist).
The other is X-Com: Ufo Defense... Unique Art style, extremely hard but was a lot of fun (including the dwarven fortress type of fun... chrysalids still cause me nightmares).
Still, the list isn't really that good since the number of votes variies a lot and it favours games with less votes. As for the 9-10 list, i agree with most of them (I played SW:Tie Fighter for weeks, spent days creating a perfect transport system in transport tycoon (no deluxe at that time) and burnt a thousand gnolls as a mage in baldurs gate 2 (and tried to steal drizzt do'urdens swords... unsuccessfully :p)).
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Maybe I'm not good with riddles or something, but I'm pretty sure 1000 people voting 9.1 on average for something fails to prove anything except that 1000 people voted 9.1 on average for something.
I don't see how this conversation, as started by the OP and continued by others, is suitable for this forum. The conversation at this point involves the nature of reason, the meaning of objectivity and of subjectivity, the nature of evaluation, the purpose and value of video games, among other things. Men have written entire books on these subjects; how could any of this be resolved in any way on TL?
I'm even more confused as to how some rambling, disjointed, pseudo-philosophy applied to a meaningless opinion poll has even created such an unnecessary and fruitless debate.
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Other than the fact that the OP talks like a huge douche, I like the post and the list. I'm going to have to play through some of those older ones again someday.
Nice to see Oblivion up there too, 4-5 years and I still love the game to no end. (mods ofc make the game truly lasting)
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EPT
