By the Numbers: 500 Reviews on Giant Bomb
By Marino 104 Comments
From Poker Smash to Steel Battalion, it's been over four years of reviewing games for the staff at Giant Bomb. To celebrate this milestone, I've compiled a bunch of colorful pie charts, bar graphs, and grids to break it all down. But, it's not just about the staff in this set of data porn! Of the 500 games that the staff has reviewed, users have written over 10,000 reviews on those same games. So, I've included all of that info as well, which, among other things, allows us to see which staff members the community agrees with most. Spoiler Alert: There's one staff member that users agree with 100% of the time!
On a side note, user reviews allow for half-stars while staff reviews do not. So, to make things easier to compare, I've rounded off the user review scores. For example, seventy users reviewed Burnout Paradise, which resulted in an overall 4.2. I round that down to a 4 in order to compare it to Jeff's 5-star review. Also, if you added up the percentages in the system section of each staff members reviews, it will be over 100%. That's because some reviews include more than one system. Got it? Good. Let's get started!
Alex
Mr. Navarro got a late start compared to most of the other staff members, but he's catching up fast. Over half the time (55.3%), users reviewing the same game as Alex agree with him. The real crazy stat here is that 23.4% of the games Alex reviews, no one else has.
Brad
Mr. Shoemaker's first review was Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which earned a stellar five stars. His latest review, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, was one of the worst games ever reviewed on Giant Bomb. Brad also just passed the century mark with his review of Diablo III. Brad is also tied with Jeff for the most DS reviews (7).
Dave
Mr. Snider has chipped in with nine reviews including some top-tier blockbusters such as Battlefield 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. Even with just nine reviews, he has the 4th most PC game reviews. And, at 66.7%, Dave is tied for 2nd place for the average user reviews that agree with his.
Drew
It's no secret that Mr. Scanlon loves DiRT. Unfortunately, two reviews doesn't make for a very pretty pie chart. If you're wondering why users "disagree" with Drew, both DiRT 2 and DiRT 3 got a 4.2 from users, so it was pretty close to being 100% agreement.
Jeff
It should be no surprise to anyone that Mr. Gerstmann has reviewed more games than anyone on Giant Bomb. With over 200 total reviews, Jeff has reviewed more 3DS, DSiWare, PC, PS2, PS3, PS3N, PSP, Vita, Xbox 360, and XBLA games than anyone else.
Matt
During his reign as Whiskey Media King-tern, Mr. Kessler reviewed several games. I think the percentages "vs Users" are a bit skewed on this one since he only reviewed a few games. So, I wouldn't pay attention to those numbers much.
Patrick
Despite being the newest staff member, Mr. Klepek is tied for second place in terms of users agreeing with his reviews. The only game that users actually disagreed with him on was Dragon's Dogma, which users liked more than Patrick did.
Ryan
From Bully: Scholarship Edition to Max Payne 3, Mr. Davis has reviewed over 100 games so far here at Giant Bomb. Also, did you know Ryan has reviewed more Wii Shop titles than Jeff? I think he's trying to derail the train. He's also reviewed more Wii and Mac games than anyone else.
Vinny
Sadly, Mr. Caravella has not reviewed a game since October 2009. Although we haven't seen an official review from Vinny in nearly three years, user reviews agree with him ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE TIME! It's clear that the community is more in tune with Vinny's opinions than any other staff member.
Also, Vinny has never given a game a 1-star review, which makes that cartoon header the only one that's never officially been used on the site.
Andy
You thought I would forget Mr. McCurdy's review? Or maybe you didn't know he did one. The Bomb Squad guild knows about it, for sure.
Staff Totals
Now that you've seen each staff member individually, here's all of them smashed together. And some user review info below.
Platform Totals and Staff vs Users
Here's a breakdown of the reviews by platform. Keep in mind that the reason the total is 700 reviews is because some games' reviews count towards multiple systems.
The top chart here is simply a breakdown of each staff members' totals per platform.
The bottom chart is a condensed version of how much user reviews agree or disagree with staff reviews. In this chart, I have combined the "Higher" and "Lower" totals to make one "Disagree" percentage. So, whether the user reviews liked the game more or less is irrelevant. "None" means no users reviewed the game that the staff did.
This one is just a simple breakdown of Total Stars by Staff and Total Stars by Users.
Yearly Breakdown
2009 must've been a hell of a year. Aside from that one, we're on pace for roughly 100 reviews per year.
Top 25 Most Reviewed Games by Users
Random Stuff
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