What’s the best game of all time? The answer is, of course, subjective, but one Redditor has tried to figure it out with some simple maths.
U/Scdsco used 14 different best games of all time lists to collect enough data to create their own list of 200 titles. Using lists made by journalists at sites such as USA Today, Empire, and IGN, critic and fan sites Metacritic and IMDB, and some popular user polls, they assigned every game a score. No. 1 got 100 points, two got 99, three got 98, and so on until the end. This enabled them to produce a list that offers an insight into a decent chunk of what the gaming world deems the best games ever, but, as Scdsco notes, only 17 games on the list have female protagonists, and only three have explicitly queer characters.
Due to the sheer number of games made over the decades that favored male protagonists, I think we all expected the number to skew toward the blokes, but maybe not by this much. That’s just 8.5 percent having female protagonists, pretty abysmal. One issue could be the industry at large. PC Gamer recently came under fire for an edition celebrating the publication’s 30-year history. Not a single woman was included in the celebration, a damning indictment of the lack of women’s voices in the industry. If all the best gaming lists are created by the same type of guy, inevitably, we’ll end up with the same kinds of lists time and time again.
Other interesting stats about the list were provided by Scdsco. The top franchise was Mario, not Zelda, despite the latter claiming both the gold and silver medals. The top developer was Nintendo, and the top indie game was Journey, a tale that deeply touched my heart when I first played it.
