Bias and its effect on the March Mayhem competitions.

[Bags159]

I have no idea how mojang beat nintendo. Even if you're a PC gamer I'm pretty sure you've played more Nintendo games for longer than Mojang's single game.

EDIT: You had HAL going almost all the way up?

What do you smoke?

I had it making it to round three... SSB is like 300x as popular as Assassin's Creed.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It would seem that we have a jumble of problems to deal with. First, the voting process is inherently based upon a bias. As each voting segment comes up we are forced to choose between two different companies and choose a winner based on nothing more than our past (and hoped for future) experiences with products produced by a company. In the event that, for any particular match up some portion of the population has no useful information to go on, their votes will be random enough to have no impact on the voting process.

That the voting process might ultimately yield a particular winner is no great surprise either. The single elimination tournament structure does serve the purpose of getting some developers deeper than they might otherwise and does a great deal to water down any inherent bias of the individual. Still, that a particular kind of developer would make it deep in the tournament because of the average bias of the voting population is not unexpected in much the same way that it won't be a surprise when, in the next US Presidential election California votes for the Democratic candidate and Texas votes for the Republican.

 

[Nedoras]

The only thing I found odd was Firaxis beating Level 5. In addition to Professor Layton and White Knight Chronicles, they also made the Dark Cloud games and Dragon Quest 8. I may sound a bit foolish, but I didn't really know the Civilization games were that popular.

 

[Exocet]

Yes,PC gamers are biased and voted for Epic games,a developper whose current main franchise is xbox360 exclusive.
Also,want to know why Mojang beat Nintendo?It's not because PC gamers are defending their tiny posterchild of a developper,it's because Notch and his team made a damn fine game,and they're constantly working to improve it,while Nintendo has been releasing the same franchise year after year.

Finally,I personally am a PC gamer and I voted for Bungie.They're a damn fine studio.So,do you still think there's a massive PC conspiracy working to eliminate the console playing peasants,or do you see that,like you,we vote for the studio we think is better?

 

[ProfessorLayton]

My... less... angry rebuttal to this slander:

<quote=lacktheknack, paraphrased>
<spoiler=Average votes per match-up: 12262>
Blizzard/Team Meat: 16629 (Outlier, not counted in average)
Mojang/Nintendo: 14247 (Outlier, not counted in average)
Bioware/TellTale: 13028
Bethesda/CCP: 12758
Insomniac/Guerilla: 12711
Valve/Double Fine: 12679
Treyarch/Popcap: 12647
Bungie/Lucasarts: 12635
Squeenix/Rovio: 12596
Irrational/Creative Assembly: 12580
Konami/Criterion: 12512
DICE/Silicon Knights: 12488
Turbine/Visceral: 12372
Zynga/Cryptic: 12370
Naughty Dog/devCAT: 12340
Ubisoft Montreal/ HAL Laboratory: 12259
Gearbox/Volition: 12248
Epic/ICO: 12247
Lionhead/Platinum: 12198
Quantic Dream/Namco Bandai: 12144
Rockstar North/Behemoth: 12143
Obsidian/Media Molecule: 12118
Rocksteady/Polyphony Digital: 12117
Santa Monica/Crytek: 12006
Relic/SOE: 11998
Capcom/Rare: 11951
Disney/Remedy: 11854
EA Tiburon/Neversoft: 11828
Game Freak/CD Projekt: 11799
Harmonix/EA Canada: 11777
2K Marin/Rockstar San Diego: 11754
Firaxis/Level-5: 11703

Total votes (no outliers): 367855

Total Matchups (no outliers): 30

Average Total per Matchup (no outliers): ~12262

Now, let's assume that every person above the average vote that was alerted by the Facebook alert/forum posts voted Mojang (<link=http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=225116>It's not true.)

Mojang beat Nintendo by 2095 votes. Now, let's remove the excess votes (theoretically all for Mojang):

14247 - 12262 = 1985

Huh!

2095 - 1985 = 110

So even IF all the extra votes were for Mojang, Mojang still won by 110 votes.

So no, Mojang did not win via Zynga Tactics.

(Times I've posted this: Three)

Not only that, I checked Notch's twitter feed. He did NOT tweet about it. The only alert people got was a low-profile mention on the Facebook page.

Anyways, it's a popularity contest. User bias is REQUIRED.

I follow Notch on Twitter, and he Tweeted about it at least twice. Once before voting started and once after. And obviously I'm not saying that only outsiders voted for them. In fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of Escapists (including myself) voted for them as well.

Either way, like I said before, this doesn't matter at all. Like seriously. It's a silly contest where people choose their favorite developers and the winning dev gets absolutely nothing.