–> “It might be new for console games, but if you look at any Microsoft product from the past 10 years or so you’ll notice you have the option to “opt-in to detailed reporting” in several products, including Messenger, Security Essentials, and Windows (“Send error report”). ”

True, but that’s exactly my point: all of those things are just functional tools designed to achieve specific things: e.g., it makes sense for Messenger to keep track of how users communicate through it because allowing us to communicate is the entire point of its existence! But videogames don’t have such a clear-cut purpose. Games can be a mode of expression, entertainment, art, all of the above, etc. Since these are all subjective aspirations, there is no way to empirically determine whether a game has achieved them.

I have no problem with tracking data geared towards the technical side of game development. If the point is simply to uncover and report bugs then I’m fine with it….my problem is with collecting data from in-game events. These events are always experienced subjectively, and are the result of Bioware’s (also subjective) design choices.

Speaking of which:

–> “you pull a neat trick by saying metrics can’t be objective, but we can somehow agree if games have or have not gotten “better” or “worse”.”

No trick intended! Of course people can disagree with my take on Meatboy and Bubsy. They’re games, after all, not tools or operating systems!

I was actually talking about Bubsy for the SNES, which was bland but at least playable. Didn’t mention Bubsy 3D because that game was so broken on a technical level that using it felt like creating a straw man. Still, people have the right to like and defend that game as well….who cares if Seanbaby called it the 17th Worst Game of All Time ( http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm17.htm ).

–> I don’t believe in “magic design intuition,” but I do believe in earthly design intuition. You don’t?

–> “NOBODY thinks metrics are some objective truth handed down from on high (once again, that’s the strawman argument)”

Here is EA’s president talking about Metacritic: “Our core game titles are accurately measured and summarized by these assessments, and that is a very big deal.” http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.54796-EA-CEO-Upset-by-Poor-Review-Scores

–> The growth of stats tracking is all but inevitable, I’m perfectly aware of that. Which is why I was advocating a careful, critical approach in the way we interpret it. Statistical analysis is fine, but not when it discourages creative risks. As Mman said, we must guard against becoming ‘slaves to analysis,’ whether it comes from Metacritic or in-game statistics.

One final note: making the data public is better than collecting it and keeping it a secret, as at least the latter allows us to challenge its ostensible meaning and expose its blind spots (which is what Robyrt did in his comment.) So kudos on that front to Bioware.

P.S., Can you please tell those $50 million Farmville players to stop spamming me?

I think you’re right to suspect that the game’s marketing and official screenshots had a lot to do with the dominance of male-soldier Shepard. I’ve never understood why they do this (they did it again in the ME3 reveal!) after spending the time and effort to create a female protagonist. The fact that Jennifer Hale’s voice acting is so good adds insult to injury…

Mass Effect is not the only series guilty of this….this post over at the Border House criticizes Fable 3 for doing the same thing http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2321

However I’m interested in the exact figures of the 2 statistics you posted above. I’m willing to bet a lot of people picked the default Shepard who is in the game’s marketing which is a shame as the 2 other pure breed classes are far more interesting to play. Personally I hope that the only result of these 2 statistics is that Bioware give the soldier class a bit more depth but that may be asking a bit much.

I did, and I know various other people who did, so this is wrong. I’m sure your actual point is that the vast majority did not, but that’s kind of the thing; I don’t necessarily have any problems with stat-tracking, but the idea that developers can be slave to the analysis such that outliers literally aren’t even acknowledged is one of the things that potentially worries me about it.

Games are really, really shitty pieces of software. They crash, they need specific drivers, they can’t handle hardware combinations, they aren’t performant, they have terrible UI. And yes, I would argue that as game rules get more complex, the software containing those rules aren’t always able to keep up – although you pull a neat trick by saying metrics can’t be objective, but we can somehow agree if games have or have not gotten “better” or “worse”. (I can find at least one dude who thinks Bubsy 3d is the greatest game ever made, and I personally didn’t enjoy Super Meat Boy in the slightest – and i think the 50 million people who play the metrics poster-child farmville, primarily made of entirely new demographics who never played videogames before, would think this is certainly a golden age of gaming)

There is no magic “design intuition” that would ever let you consistently spot all those problems metrics find. You can only put it in the hands of as many users as possible to get as many data points as possible. And once you get those results, there is certainly no magic “design persuasion” power that could convince a bunch of your type-A data-oriented coworkers that there’s a problem with THEIR code/design/interface, without some pretty solid numbers to back it up. NOBODY thinks metrics are some objective truth handed down from on high (once again, that’s the strawman argument), and you can bet your ass that the Bioware guys are trying just as hard to understand the reason 80% of people play Soldiers as you are, because they all have varying degrees of investment in that statistic.The guys who worked on the Soldier class are probably bragging while the Engineer guys are insisting it’s a problem with how the metrics collect data. And without those metrics, Bioware wouldn’t have any incentive whatsoever to improve the soldier experience (dumb, boring, repetitive) and to try to find ways to convince players to look for other experiences besides Soldier (for replay value, to accomodate larger audiences, whatever). Not to mention knowing the exact number of people who bought the game new and used the DLC codes versus the number who bought used and purchased the DLC by hand versus the number who never bothered with any sort of DLC whatsoever has incredible implications for EA’s “$10 Project”…

As a community, it’s kind of important to recognize that metrics reveal things about ourselves: Nobody plays the single player campaign in CoD to completion (important when we’re all arguing if “No Russian” crossed a line and it turns out only 1% of the people who play the game actually got that far). There’s an almost perfectly even distribution of race preference in Starcraft 2, except at higher levels where Terrans are slightly underrepresented (balance & metagaming are 2 incredibly important parts of online play). 100% of people who played the Avatar: Last Airbender game got 100% gamerscore (in case you wanted to know how to boost gamerscore). I like knowing what other people in the community do, because it helps me understand the diversity of my experience vs the community at large, it forces me to understand the varied kinds of playstyles in the ecosphere, and it helps me stay relevant to the new kinds of gamers constantly coming on board. I don’t see how any of that is counteracted by a fake conversation, with a fake studio, that you made up on the spot, in order to prove a rhetorical point in lieu of any actual evidence that metrics are harmful. I don’t see how advocating for ignorance of the data is helpful for anything except a purely philosophical stance.