2012: A Year in Reviews

Considering the world is ending on Friday, I figured I should go ahead and post this data that I've been compiling all year. Well, at least the reviews data. I'll have a slew of user-related data in a couple weeks...if we're still alive.

As you're all aware, it's been a crazy year on Giant Bomb. Despite this, the guys churned out nearly 100 reviews. For a crew that is primarily just three dudes doing reviews, almost two per week seems like a lot. There's not a whole lot of analysis with the data I'm presenting here, admittedly, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. It's basically just a bunch of colorful wedges, pies, and bars. Feel free to embiggen them as well.

I've livened things up a bit by including some of the best user-created art from this year. If you love the Persona style renditions of each staff member, send all of your thanks to @SupernormalStep . And if you love the pixelated stuff at the end, you can send your praise to @Fobwashed .

• SupernormalStep's Persona 4: The Golden Duder
• Fobwashed's More Pixelated Giant Bombers
• Marino's 2011 Year in Reviews

The Raw Data

Ryan's gotten lazy about reviews , I see . Though , quick looks are the main focus .

Great job @Marino

@spankingaddict said:

Ryan's gotten lazy about reviews , I see . Though , quick looks are the main focus.

Nah, not lazy. Just has other duties now.

3-4 is much better than 4-3

@Fredchuckdave said:

3-4 is much better than 4-3

Huh?

Just like last year with the 3DS, it doesn't feel like the Vita came out this year.  
Great read, glad to see that there were only 5 less reviews than last year, especially considering that Giant Bomb has pretty much been rebuilding all year.

That is some hot, hot data.Thanks for the breakdown =D And goddamn that persona art is nice. . . Someday, I will return -____-;;

It may be something just godawful to put together, but any thoughts on doing one of these for QuickLooks? I'd just like to know who's been in how many though you may be able to take it further down the rabbit hole and also chart who's been in them with who this year to find out if there are any stand out pairings. Or has it already been done? In which case. . . . I'm an idiot.

Man there are games on this list that don't feel like they came out this year. Warp, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Gotham City Imposters, and SSX all feel like they came out a long long time ago. This year was packed with great releases all year.

That last graph would suggest how much better this year's been in comparison to the previous four, if you assume that 2009's 5-star column is only higher because the year had way more reviews in general. I hadn't really noticed, but I guess it's been a year of happy surprises and sleeper hits more than big stand-outs like last year's Skyrim. I imagine a few of those 5 star reviews came about because of how unexpectedly good the games they pertained to turned out to be. And - barring my deliberate attempts to decrease the overall quality level - it's evidently been a good year for Giant Bomb fan art as well.

Talking of which, your reviews per staff member pie charts inspired me to make one for myself. Now I have no regrets for the end of the world:

@Marino said:

@Fredchuckdave said:

3-4 is much better than 4-3

Huh?

3 defensive linemen and 4 linebackers

@Fobwashed said:

It may be something just godawful to put together, but any thoughts on doing one of these for QuickLooks? I'd just like to know who's been in how many though you may be able to take it further down the rabbit hole and also chart who's been in them with who this year to find out if there are any stand out pairings. Or has it already been done? In which case. . . . I'm an idiot.

It's not a bad idea. Would be fairly time consuming though to start from scratch. Might be something I can do for 2013 by accumulating the data as the year goes along like I did for this. I'm not going to be able to do achievement data anymore with the new site, so QL stats could fill the gap.

@dvdhaus said:

Man there are games on this list that don't feel like they came out this year. Warp, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Gotham City Imposters, and SSX all feel like they came out a long long time ago. This year was packed with great releases all year.

A lot of the indie/downloadable games feel like they came out forever ago to me because I saw them every six months at PAX for three years in some cases.

@Mento said:

Talking of which, your reviews per staff member pie charts inspired me to make one for myself. Now I have no regrets for the end of the world:

Stick people are people too.

@fuzzybunny566 said:

@Marino said:

@Fredchuckdave said:

3-4 is much better than 4-3

Huh?

3 defensive linemen and 4 linebackers

Okay...I understand football defense, but if that's what he meant, what does it have to do with any of this?

/confused

@Marino said:

@Fobwashed said:

It may be something just godawful to put together, but any thoughts on doing one of these for QuickLooks? I'd just like to know who's been in how many though you may be able to take it further down the rabbit hole and also chart who's been in them with who this year to find out if there are any stand out pairings. Or has it already been done? In which case. . . . I'm an idiot.

It's not a bad idea. Would be fairly time consuming though to start from scratch. Might be something I can do for 2013 by accumulating the data as the year goes along like I did for this. I'm not going to be able to do achievement data anymore with the new site, so QL stats could fill the gap.

I actually started doing this, but have not finished. Catalogued over 400 QL's. Might finish it someday! But from "early" data, Jeff & Ryan are by far the most common pairing. They are also in the most QL's overall. I think this pattern would hold up even if you added all the other ones, but can't be sure! Haven't done any kind of breakdown by year or something fancy like that yet.

GLORIOUS DATA!

Huh. They probably missed out on quite a handful of games with the whole CBSi acquisition, so that sort of explains the slightly less amount of games reviewed, but it doesn't necessarily explain why the number of four-stars reviews has been drastically decreasing each year, while the number of three-star reviews increased slightly since last year. Are there less good games now? :O

We also had four 1-star reviews this year, and only two of them were by Alex! Shocking statistics.

Thanks for doing these.

Pie charts return to save the day. Great stuff @Marino

Quite an interesting bit of data. Good stuff.

Man, Alex's activity is pretty impressive, considering he's on the other side of the country.

On the other hand, maybe that means he spends less time dealing with piles of cardboard boxes and sticky vintage games.

Mmmmm data, delicious data...

I found it surprising that Ryan only reviewed 5 games this year considering he's the best writer of them all.

Hasn't Ryan been spending a lot of his time in meetings?

hoof, I'm dizzy from the effort to actually take in any of this information.

Alex was a beast this year, I can imagine him writing a review while untangling a pair of headphones. Great job Marino, from that last chart 2009 was the year with the best games in giant bomb history.

Thanks for doing this again Marino, always interesting to read. Alex doing work as usual.

Mmmmmmm, data.

Neat. Thanks for throwing this together.

@Marino said:

@spankingaddict said:

Ryan's gotten lazy about reviews , I see . Though , quick looks are the main focus.

Nah, not lazy. Just has other duties now.

Plus he has always had the duty of editing the podcast which takes a lot of work, and when you really think about it is the most important thing on the site.

I didn't realize Ryan only wrote 5 reviews this year. That's crazy to think about, but whatever he is doing instead of writing reviews is obviously important. I guess when I listen to the Bombcast and they all discuss the games they played, I kind of feel like any of them could write a review for any of these games. I sometimes forget who wrote which ones.

I get a lot more of out quick looks and bombcast discussions than I do out of reviews.

@hollitz said:

I get a lot more of out quick looks and bombcast discussions than I do out of reviews.

Yeah man, for me the reviews suck pretty much a dick. After listening to them talk about the game on the podcast and in the Quick Look, the review becomes really obsolete. It doesn't fit in on the site at all, and it makes me think of all the crazy stuff they could have done on video instead.

Nice job.

@Grissefar said:

@hollitz said:

I get a lot more of out quick looks and bombcast discussions than I do out of reviews.

Yeah man, for me the reviews suck pretty much a dick. After listening to them talk about the game on the podcast and in the Quick Look, the review becomes really obsolete. It doesn't fit in on the site at all, and it makes me think of all the crazy stuff they could have done on video instead.

I remember someone mentioned in a podcast or a jar time that the reviews get a lot of hits, so it's probably still worth doing them.

These are the best graphs I've ever seen.

@Marino: Great work as always gathering an insane amount of information. If I can offer one piece of advice however, try and use a 2D pie chart instead of a 3D one because the sections at the back seem considerably smaller then the ones at the front, and for the Alex one it initially looks like the 3 star section is bigger than the 4 star section.

The fuck's wrong with you Ryan.

Wonderful graphs man!

Nice job man!

Man, I miss Vinnie doing reviews.

What a way for Alex to start a year of reviews than with a copy of Never Dead, still waiting on that QL.

Bravo on doing this. Super interesting.

I feel Ryan is pulling double duty (heh, duty) as Giant Bomb's PR person now, basically, so I can understand his low number of reviews. I wonder how the stacked early release schedule next year and the new consoles at the end will effect review numbers (aka, the normal distribution). Will it look kinda like a double bell curve? Will overall number be up from this year, or about the same? Guess I have to wait a year to find out.

Thanks for sharing all this data in this neat format, nice job!

So since he does most of the reviews now, can we finally get Alex some proper review score cartoons? The smirky commando for all 1-5 star games just isn't cutting it.

So since he does most of the reviews now, can we finally get Alex some proper review score cartoons? The smirky commando for all 1-5 star games just isn't cutting it.

@Marino: No cartoons on the new site? Well... shit.

@24thDoor: It's been a long time coming.

@Marino said:

@24thDoor

So since he does most of the reviews now, can we finally get Alex some proper review score cartoons? The smirky commando for all 1-5 star games just isn't cutting it.

1. The cartoons are going away with the new site.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I like the art. Where can I find more?

Alex is a reviewing motherfucker.