I maintain a small game review site called Byte Sized Reviews, where I attempt to review games in a concise and objective manner. I designed and built the front-end that visitors see along with an admin panel where I manage the reviews. Technically speaking, BSR is a small React app that uses Firebase to store its data. It's a project I'm proud of, so I'm celebrating its birthday with a retrospective that includes a selection of project details and insights.

Project level metadata

• The first sketches and mentions of the project seem to appear in my notes around mid June of 2018
• The actual project build started on July 8th, 2018 and the site went live on August 22nd, 2018
• The admin panel wasn't complete on release and was brought to a more usable state on November 27th, 2018

BSR has 24 total reviews written as of this writing

• 7 published in 2018
• 8 published in 2019
• 9 published in 2020

That averages out to less than one review a month, which feels like a sustainable pace, but it hides the fact that reviews tend to be published in bunches.

You can see several "clumps" of reviews, the biggest one in May of this year (2020) with five reviews published on the same date. Right before that, three reviews were published on the same date at the end of the previous year. It's not because I beat them all at the same time. Instead, it reveals that my reviews tend to sit in a semi-complete state for much longer than they should. What's the lesson here? I need to finish a review before I move onto the next title.

The average BSR score is 19.625

• 2018's average is 19
• 2019's average is 19
• 2020's average is 20.667

Wow, I must be an easy reviewer. I was surprised my average score was so high, but that number doesn't tell the whole story. There's a huge amount of selection bias here; I have limited time to play and write about games so I gravitate to ones I think I'll enjoy. That doesn't mean I don't pick up bad games—rather, I tend not to finish them and can't write their reviews.

BSR scores vs aggregators

BSR scoring slant

If my average score is so high, what does that mean for me as a reviewer compared to other reviewers? I compared matching scores for games I've reviewed against Metacritic and Open Critic.

• BSR scores are 8.3% lower than Metacritic scores
• BSR scores are 6.5% lower than Open Critic scores
• Curiously, BSR scores are 12.8% higher than Metacritic's user scores

My assumption at the start of this project was that my scores would be lower than critics and it's nice to be able to validate that concretely.

Notable divergences

Some of the biggest differentials in my scores vs Metacritic/Open Critic came from the following games:

• NBA 2k19 (16/25)

  • ~28% lower than MC (82/100)
  • ~27% lower than OC (81/100)

• Far Cry 5 (16/25)

  • ~27% lower than MC (81/100)
  • ~28% lower than OC (82/100)

• Death Stranding (17/25)

  • ~21% lower than MC (82/100)
  • ~22% lower than OC (83/100)

• Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition (17/25)

  • ~22% lower than MC (83/100)
  • ~24% lower than OC (84/100)

• Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (19/25)

  • ~16% lower than MC (88/100)
  • ~13% lower than OC (86/100)

There's only one title I've reviewed that has a notable positive difference:

• Control (23/25)

  • ~8% higher than MC (85/100)
  • ~9% higher than OC (84/100)

There's no such thing as perfection

I haven't given out a perfect score of 25 and I'm hesitant to do so. Once scores hit 21 or 22, I get stricter with my evaluation. The highest score that's been given out is a 24 and that has happened twice—for Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us Part II. Rockstar and Naughty Dog happen to be a couple of the most consistent studios producing high quality games at the moment.

Hardest games to score

• The Last of Us Part II

  • This is one of the most polarizing games I've played and I'm still not even sure that I'd describe it as "fun." Despite that, it's one of the most impressive games I've completed.

• Nier: Automata

  • Nier's not a game that falls into my typical sphere of interest; reviewing it forced me to lean heavily on the objectivity I tried to build into the scoring system. The final score was my first review surprise.

• NBA 2K19

  • It's hard to review a single entry in a franchise I play yearly and know intimately, but this review forced me to scrutinize the flaws I had been slowly accepting over time.

---

What have I learned?

• unsurprisingly, writing anything you'd call concise is hard
• being objective is a continual challenge
• the Quality and Experience scores are harder to keep separate than I originally anticipated
• while the scoring system has held up well, I'm starting to question it
• editing is hard, naturally
• I like video games

What's next for BSR?

• MORE REVIEWS

  • this is the highest priority here and the one thing I'm confident I'll deliver

• improved mobile design

  • I never finished implementing the mobile design
  • in fact, the smaller screen layout is broken (and has been for a while)—should be 2 columns instead of one

• better image loading

  • lazy loading for game cover images is needed. They're loaded in full which is particularly problematic for mobile

Whether or not folks read BSR, I've enjoyed tending to my garden. I'll continue to maintain it as I finish games and am looking forward to it evolving over the next couple of years.