R Project: Exploring 20 years of games
by Joanna Cohen
Data introduction:
In 20 years, the gaming industry has evolved immenstly both in quantity and in quality. This dataset, available in Kaggle (https://www.kaggle.com/egrinstein/20-years-of-games), provides information and overall online scoring of various platform games fromthe past two decades.
By exploring this dataset, I’m looking to find trends about the industry, compare consoles, search through the most popular genres and more.
Data Structure:
## 'data.frame': 18625 obs. of 11 variables:
## $ X : int 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ...
## $ score_phrase : Factor w/ 11 levels "Amazing","Awful",..: 1 1 6 6 6 5 2 1 2 5 ...
## $ title : Factor w/ 12589 levels "'Splosion Man",..: 5702 5703 9767 7249 7249 11406 2908 4446 2908 11406 ...
## $ url : Factor w/ 18577 levels "/games/0-d-beat-drop/xbox-360-14342395",..: 8390 8387 14319 10813 10812 16931 4271 6526 4270 16932 ...
## $ platform : Factor w/ 59 levels "Android","Arcade",..: 39 39 15 58 36 20 58 33 36 33 ...
## $ score : num 9 9 8.5 8.5 8.5 7 3 9 3 7 ...
## $ genre : Factor w/ 112 levels "Action","Action, Adventure",..: 64 64 69 94 94 105 38 82 38 105 ...
## $ editors_choice: Factor w/ 2 levels "N","Y": 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 ...
## $ release_year : int 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 ...
## $ release_month : int 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 ...
## $ release_day : int 12 12 12 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 ...This data consists of 18625 lines, with a few missing values (only in one column) which were converted to “NA” and dropped.
## X score_phrase title url platform
## 0 0 0 0 0
## score genre editors_choice release_year release_month
## 0 36 0 0 0
## release_day
## 0## X score_phrase title url platform
## 0 0 0 0 0
## score genre editors_choice release_year release_month
## 0 0 0 0 0
## release_day
## 0It contains game information, including genre, release date (since 1970 until 2016), game platform (PC, Xbox, etc.) and IGN’s (Imagine Games Network) scoring.
The main focus of the data is the IGN scoring. Other game feautures (such as release date, platform) can be used in order to review best/worst scored games’ parameters as well as to check correlations between these parameters and a gamings score.
Initial data review:
## X score_phrase
## Min. : 0 Great :4765
## 1st Qu.: 4651 Good :4725
## Median : 9298 Okay :2940
## Mean : 9306 Mediocre:1957
## 3rd Qu.:13959 Amazing :1803
## Max. :18624 Bad :1268
## (Other) :1131
## title
## Cars : 10
## Madden NFL 07 : 10
## Open Season : 10
## Brain Challenge : 9
## LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy: 9
## Madden NFL 08 : 9
## (Other) :18532
## url
## /games/aladdin/gba-566703 : 2
## /games/big-league-sports/wii-14275098 : 2
## /games/blur/xbox-360-14222096 : 2
## /games/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2/ps3-2550: 2
## /games/crash-twinsanity/ps2-667247 : 2
## /games/defiance/pc-71832 : 2
## (Other) :18577
## platform score genre editors_choice
## PC :3367 Min. : 0.500 Action :3797 N:15074
## PlayStation 2:1684 1st Qu.: 6.000 Sports :1916 Y: 3515
## Xbox 360 :1631 Median : 7.300 Shooter :1610
## Wii :1362 Mean : 6.951 Racing :1228
## PlayStation 3:1355 3rd Qu.: 8.200 Adventure:1175
## Nintendo DS :1044 Max. :10.000 Strategy :1071
## (Other) :8146 (Other) :7792
## release_year release_month release_day
## Min. :1970 Min. : 1.00 Min. : 1.0
## 1st Qu.:2003 1st Qu.: 4.00 1st Qu.: 8.0
## Median :2007 Median : 8.00 Median :16.0
## Mean :2007 Mean : 7.14 Mean :15.6
## 3rd Qu.:2010 3rd Qu.:10.00 3rd Qu.:23.0
## Max. :2016 Max. :12.00 Max. :31.0
## My analysis:
The main game features I’ll focus on in this analysis are platform, release year and genre. These will serve as the explanatory variables for the scoring.
Game release years:
The “oldest” game in the data set was from 1970, but this was the only release until the 90s, so the data for that game was dropped from the data set. We will focus on games released from 1996 onward. We can see that amount of games peaks in 2008. However, I don’t know if this data set includes all games ever released, so i cannot use this data to conclude about game release trends, since this might just be the distribution of the games chosen for this data set. 
Game genres:
There is a large amount of genres: In some games, the genres seems to include a sub genre in addition to the main one. For example, there is a an “Action” genre and an “Action, Adventure” genre.I decided to narrow down the genres to show only the main value, without the sub category. For this i created a new column named “Main Genre”. This narrowed down the genres from 112 to 30.
## Action Sports
## 3797 1916
## Shooter Racing
## 1610 1228
## Adventure Strategy
## 1174 1071
## RPG Platformer
## 980 823
## Puzzle Action, Adventure
## 776 765
## Simulation Fighting
## 567 547
## Music Action, RPG
## 371 330
## Racing, Action Puzzle, Action
## 210 200
## Sports, Action Party
## 196 141
## Wrestling Flight, Action
## 134 125
## Trivia Board
## 119 116
## Hunting Card
## 112 108
## Action, Compilation Virtual Pet
## 89 82
## Fighting, Action Pinball
## 77 77
## Strategy, RPG Card, Battle
## 77 54
## Compilation Puzzle, Adventure
## 54 47
## Sports, Simulation Music, Action
## 44 39
## Productivity Flight, Simulation
## 39 37
## Action, Simulation Battle
## 32 32
## Casino Educational, Puzzle
## 31 25
## Racing, Simulation Flight
## 25 24
## Shooter, RPG Educational
## 22 20
## Other Sports, Compilation
## 20 14
## Fighting, Compilation Adventure, Compilation
## 13 11
## Educational, Action Platformer, Action
## 11 11
## Card, RPG Puzzle, Compilation
## 9 9
## Platformer, Adventure RPG, Simulation
## 8 8
## Board, Compilation Music, Editor
## 7 6
## Puzzle, Word Game Adventure, Adventure
## 6 5
## Educational, Productivity Fighting, Adventure
## 5 5
## Sports, Racing Adventure, Episodic
## 5 4
## Music, Compilation RPG, Compilation
## 4 4
## Shooter, First-Person Action, Platformer
## 4 3
## Adventure, RPG Card, Compilation
## 3 3
## Educational, Adventure Fighting, Simulation
## 3 3
## Flight, Racing Racing, Editor
## 3 3
## Shooter, Platformer Sports, Baseball
## 3 3
## Adult, Card Compilation, RPG
## 2 2
## Educational, Simulation Educational, Trivia
## 2 2
## Fighting, RPG Hardware
## 2 2
## Hunting, Action Productivity, Action
## 2 2
## Racing, Compilation Racing, Shooter
## 2 2
## RPG, Editor Action, Editor
## 2 1
## Action, Puzzle Action, Strategy
## 1 1
## Adventure, Adult Adventure, Platformer
## 1 1
## Baseball Compilation, Compilation
## 1 1
## Educational, Card Hunting, Simulation
## 1 1
## Music, Adventure Music, RPG
## 1 1
## Other, Action Other, Adventure
## 1 1
## Pinball, Compilation (Other)
## 1 13## Action Adult Adventure Baseball Battle
## 5019 2 1199 1 32
## Board Card Casino Compilation Educational
## 123 174 31 57 69
## Fighting Flight Hardware Hunting Music
## 647 189 2 115 422
## Other Party Pinball Platformer Productivity
## 22 141 78 842 41
## Puzzle Racing RPG Shooter Simulation
## 1040 1470 995 1640 568
## Sports Strategy Trivia Virtual Pet Wrestling
## 2183 1150 119 82 135
This confirmed that most games reviewed are from the Action genre.
Game platforms:
I also narrowed down the platforms, in the same way I narrowed down the genres (since we are not looking into specific version of the platform, but the main platform generally). This way we reduced the amount of platforms significantly.
Note: Some of the names are slightly altered (for example: “Game Boy”" is now “Game”), but we’ll disregard that since it’s not that significant.
## Android Arcade Atari 2600
## 39 11 5
## Atari 5200 Commodore 64/128 Dreamcast
## 2 5 286
## Dreamcast VMU DVD / HD Video Game Game Boy
## 1 1 22
## Game Boy Advance Game Boy Color Game.Com
## 623 356 3
## GameCube Genesis iPad
## 509 58 99
## iPhone iPod Linux
## 828 17 10
## Lynx Macintosh Master System
## 82 81 13
## N-Gage NeoGeo NeoGeo Pocket Color
## 30 10 31
## NES New Nintendo 3DS Nintendo 3DS
## 49 2 222
## Nintendo 64 Nintendo 64DD Nintendo DS
## 302 7 1044
## Nintendo DSi Ouya PC
## 252 1 3367
## PlayStation PlayStation 2 PlayStation 3
## 952 1684 1355
## PlayStation 4 PlayStation Portable PlayStation Vita
## 277 632 155
## Pocket PC Saturn Sega 32X
## 1 6 16
## Sega CD SteamOS Super NES
## 1 1 33
## TurboGrafx-16 TurboGrafx-CD Vectrex
## 40 3 2
## Web Games Wii Wii U
## 1 1362 114
## Windows Phone Windows Surface Wireless
## 14 1 906
## WonderSwan WonderSwan Color Xbox
## 4 1 821
## Xbox 360 Xbox One
## 1630 208## Android Arcade Atari Commodore Dreamcast DVD
## 39 11 7 5 287 1
## Game Game.Com GameCube Genesis iPad iPhone
## 1001 3 509 58 99 828
## iPod Linux Lynx Macintosh Master N-Gage
## 17 10 82 81 13 30
## NeoGeo NES New Nintendo Ouya PC
## 41 49 2 1827 1 3367
## PlayStation Pocket Saturn Sega SteamOS Super
## 5055 1 6 17 1 33
## TurboGraf Vectrex Web Wii Windows Wireless
## 43 2 1 1476 15 906
## WonderSwan Xbox
## 5 2659
This showed that most games reviewed are from the Playstation platform.
Note: at first there seemed to be duplicate games (repeated game titles), but after reviewing the data i found that the titles are the same, but the platform differs. This means that these are the same games but on different platforms. This means that no additional “data cleaning” is needed at this point.
Scoring:
A preliminary review of the data, revealed that the average scoring of all games in this data set is 6.95, while the median is 7.3- by which we can learn that most of the scoring are >7 (above the average).
I also created scoring ranges and show their frequencies by platform, genre and release year:
Bivariate Analysis
I’d like to see if there is a correlation between the scoring of a game and XXX In order to do so XXX
Bivariate Plots Section
Average scoring per platform and per genre:
## genre AVG_Score
## 13 Hardware 9.2
## 23 RPG 7.6
## 27 Strategy 7.3
## 19 Platformer 7.2
## 9 Compilation 7.2
## 24 Shooter 7.1
## 21 Puzzle 7.1
## 30 Wrestling 7.1
## 26 Sports 7.0
## 11 Fighting 7.0
## 15 Music 7.0
## 7 Card 6.9
## 3 Adventure 6.9
## 25 Simulation 6.9
## 12 Flight 6.8
## 1 Action 6.8
## 22 Racing 6.7
## 6 Board 6.6
## 18 Pinball 6.5
## 10 Educational 6.3
## 5 Battle 6.2
## 28 Trivia 6.2
## 2 Adult 6.1
## 20 Productivity 6.0
## 29 Virtual Pet 6.0
## 17 Party 5.8
## 14 Hunting 5.7
## 16 Other 5.6
## 8 Casino 5.1
## 4 Baseball 4.5## platform AVG_Score
## 29 SteamOS 8.9
## 26 Pocket 8.5
## 16 Macintosh 8.1
## 23 Ouya 8.0
## 33 Web 8.0
## 21 New 7.8
## 30 Super 7.7
## 11 iPad 7.7
## 14 Linux 7.6
## 1 Android 7.5
## 5 Dreamcast 7.4
## 12 iPhone 7.3
## 27 Saturn 7.3
## 38 Xbox 7.2
## 36 Wireless 7.2
## 24 PC 7.1
## 15 Lynx 7.1
## 19 NeoGeo 7.1
## 9 GameCube 7.0
## 13 iPod 7.0
## 25 PlayStation 6.9
## 37 WonderSwan 6.9
## 17 Master 6.8
## 35 Windows 6.8
## 18 N-Gage 6.7
## 31 TurboGraf 6.7
## 20 NES 6.6
## 10 Genesis 6.6
## 22 Nintendo 6.5
## 3 Atari 6.5
## 4 Commodore 6.5
## 7 Game 6.5
## 34 Wii 6.4
## 32 Vectrex 6.2
## 2 Arcade 6.0
## 28 Sega 5.5
## 8 Game.Com 5.3
## 6 DVD 1.0I attempted to create a new column that combines platforms and genres. But this created too many combinations for a proper analysis:
