E3 Here We Go Again Reddit

Who Won E3? Analysing E3 2018 via Reddit Threads

As a small side project, I decided to analyse the E3 video game event held every year. Firstly, I've played around with different APIs including Reddit's, YouTube'due south and Twitter's and finally settled with Reddit. The question I wanted to respond was:

Who Won E3?

The longer version of that is:

Which Publishers and Video Games gained the most positive coverage from the event?

I would reply this question past:

1. Comparing the number of Upvotes each E3 2018 Reddit Submission had
2. Comparing the number of comments each E3 2018 Submission had
3. Comparing the total views each E3 2018 Trailer had on YouTube
4. Categorising groups of Reddit Submissions by Game Title, Publisher and Briefing
5. Categorising groups of YouTube trailers by Game Title, Publisher and Conference

Based on the original question, the winners of E3 2018 via Reddit and YouTube would be:

1. The game and publisher with the highest scores
2. The most viewed or talked almost game or publisher

The details of the study are below but here are the highlights:

1. Cyberpunk 2077 had the highest Reddit Score
2. Bethesda had the all-time Briefing, running away with Elderberry Scrolls VI, Starfield and Fallout 76
3. Best New Game goes to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
4. Biggest underperforming game goes to Anthem
5. Biggest underperforming video game company goes to Ubisoft

Considerations:

• The Reddit Extraction consisted of only the /r/Games subreddit between 10th — 13th June 2018
• The time of Reddit data extraction was washed 2 weeks after the event finished
• The time of the YouTube data extraction done 2 weeks after the event finished
• Submissions without the E3 2018 tag have been removed from the analysis
• Bethesda Softworks / Bethesda have been merged as the same "Publisher" for the sake of this analysis
• Sony / Sony Interactive Entertainment have been merged as the same "Publisher" for the sake of this analysis
• A "Publisher" for the sake of this assay includes all the AAA game companies that either had their own briefing or showcased at the event.
• The conferences of focus will be EA, Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, PC, Nintendo, Square Enix, Bethesda

Quick FAQ

• How does /r/Games work?

"The goal of /r/Games is to provide a place for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions" — A Subreddit where gamers hash out video games. There is a bias towards consoles due to their popularity that should be considered when analysing the sub. As well particular tastes in certain game genres and animosity towards sure video game companies

• What is E3?

The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2018 (E3 2018) was the 24th Electronic Amusement Expo, during which hardware manufacturers, software developers, and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily retailers and members of the video game press. The event, organized past the Amusement Software Association (ESA).

• How /r/Games manages E3

/r/Games did a fantastic job of having a program to manage the issue that consequentially made data analysis much easier. Particularly the E3 2018 tag that made filtering the relevant reddit submissions a lot more convenient. I was also able to utilize the extra pieces of data in the individual game threads to analyse YouTube trailers.

Metrics of Measurement

• Reddit Upvotes
• Reddit Score
• Reddit Comments
• YouTube Views

The extraction was done on 27th June 2018 and returned 105 post submissions with the E3 2018 Reddit Flair. Later on some filtering I categorised them into Game Threads and Publisher Threads. This immune for the results to make more sense in terms of context. For instance, it'southward not beneficial to compare a Megathread discussing a conference of xx games to a thread discussing one single game.

The results

Initial Thoughts:

• As expected Cyberpunk 2077 is a clear winner but Elder Scrolls VI performed well considering all that was revealed was a 36 seconds trailer of a scenic view. One can assume Redditors savor speculating more than than analysing the final product.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was a huge reveal for Nintendo's cult following and it's growing Switch base. The trailer was brimming with information and a roster heavy release provided enough of give-and-take points.
• Trying to piece together Kojima'southward mysterious concepts continues to be a high talking point as Death Stranding's latest video gave us more questions than answers.
• Information technology's not Bloodborne ii but From Software's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice gave united states a lot to chew on and even more so than The Last of U.s. two's enthralling demo.
• Y'all can already tell Bethesda is dominating the E3 2018 word without really showing us much. On the face of it, speculation seems to be the big winner hither.

Conferences

E3 2018 Press Briefing Schedule

• At face up value, Microsoft Xbox seemed to accept had the most eventful conference whereas Playstation seemed to have nether-performed, falling behind Nintendo and PC merely there is a lot more to unpack from the data.
• Bethesda has done very well upstaging Nintendo and Playstation
• EA getting an overall Reddit Score on-par with Playstation and more than Foursquare Enix/Ubisoft and PC combined was a minor surprise.

Looking deeper into the Xbox Briefing, I pulled the scores on the related Game Threads.

• Cyperpunk 2077 with 18,591 Score swayed the Reddit Score in Xbox's favour.
• Most of the overall Reddit Score seems derived from not-exclusives with Cyberpunk 2077 (35.eight%), Seikiro Shadows Die Twice (11.ane%) and Fallout 76 (6.32%) making up more than half of the Score.
• It seems weird for a lot of AAA titles to opt to be Microsoft's Conference over Playstation'due south. Were they scared of being overshadowed by their first-party titles?

I realised I could pull the YouTube views from the trailers uploaded to the subreddit and hither are the initial results…

• Fallout 76 has the highest views with 29,846,597
• Second highest is 14,083,958 views (for some reason it says 13M on YouTube right now but the YouTube API can be rough at times) for Cyberpunk 2077.
• The breakup looks slightly different from the Reddit Score with Body of water of Thieves beingness 2nd highest only this may exist due to how video trailers are distributed across multiple channels. For instance, Fallout 76 Trailer from Bethesda'due south official aqueduct is way higher than the Microsoft Conference version.
• I wouldn't look besides much into these results for now, I exercise intend to investigate further in some other blog focused solely on YouTube trailers.

So how does this expect side by side?

Firstly consider that video distribution is sporadic i.e. same videos appearing across multiple channels. This nautical chart is but of the videos within the each Reddit Briefing Megathread.

• So Reddit and YouTube audiences show similar levels of involvement. Fifty-fifty though this analysis limited I was expecting a bigger disparity for EA between it'south Reddit Score and YouTube views when compared to the other conferences.
• I accept had time to work out succint caption to these numbers and why we can't take them at face up value. In short, Bethesda videos are full-bodied on their official channel whereas other publishers have their videos distributed beyond other publications like Gamespot and IGN. This makes getting the full extend of Bethesda's viewership on YouTube super piece of cake.

Game Threads

The Upvote Ratio for the Game Threads was 0.8 with the elevation games with less than 0.01 betwixt them. The upvote ratios are and so close together that I thought it would exist more than beneficial to look at the bottom 20. In doing then, I've across a few surprise entries such as Canticle.

• After recognising that the games with the highest upvote ratio were new game announcements I checked the lowest at the other tail terminate.
• Anthem, FIFA 19 and PUBG were notable finds. The negative sentiment against Anthem has been very high since Bioware announced it. PUBG'southward is a recent development coinciding with the ascension of Fortnite and FIFA 19 is anticipated based on the preferences of /r/Games.

Now what games generated the most discussion on /r/Games?

Note: When looking at Reddit comments quantitatively, it's important to know the difference between top-level comments and all comments (that include replies to the meridian comments). As it is a discussion forum, a post may contain a lot of comments due to abiding back and forth but hold less than boilerplate volume of peak-level comments.

At present comparison the posts with the most top-level comments and the post with the most comments overall, I see a couple trends.

• You can meet the new games warranted new (elevation) comments of redditors giving their verdict on the annunciation. For example, Devil May Cry v has the highest top comments followed past Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Across Proficient and Evil.
• Whereas new data on games we're already aware of, had Redditors discussing amidst themselves. Whereas The Elder Scrolls VI and Cyperpunk 2077 looks to involve a lot of dorsum-and-along but a few games buck this trend like Super Nail bros and The Final of U.s.a. Ii.

Publishers

By adding up the reddit scores of each game thread and grouping them by publisher, I was able to calculate the sum full of each Publisher'due south showings at E3 2018.

• Bethesda performed actually well, surpassing the likes of Sony and Nintendo
• Sony performed a lot better when looking at the individual game threads rather than the briefing thread
• CD Projekt Red got the third highest score with one game thread whilst but being known for one game (Witcher 3). Their public perception is sky loftier right now and the apprehension for Cyberpunk 2077 is off the charts
• I personally observe it peculiar that Square Enix beat Ubisoft and EA even with the latter's controversial reputations as they still put out popular titles such equally Battlefield and Assassin Creed.

Here I added in a nautical chart with the number of reveals per publisher.

• Ubisoft (11 games, 7707 score), Square Enix(9 games, 8856), EA (6, 6181), Microsoft(eight, 9581) had more than posts but no quality "hits". None of them even bridged 10,000 with their combined scores
• *EA'southward score looked a scrap off so I checked and "Battle Royale is coming to Battlefield V" post with vii.2K Upvotes was not included in EA's overall score. It's an awkward i considering it'southward non a discussion thread in response to the Battlefield showing at the EA Conference but a separate tweet.
• There'south a missing characterization between EA and Bandai Namco, those are PC games.

I decided to breakup further these Reddit Scores sum totals…

Broken down farther, y'all can see which games were about popular per publisher. A few things I noticed:

• Beyond Adept and Evil 2 (2142) was Ubisoft'southward big reveal equally it did better than Division 2 (743) and Assassin Creed's Odyssey (1645)
• Xbox still seems to be missing a big anticipated championship as Halo Space is their biggest with a score of 3251 vs. Bethesda, CDPR, Nintendo atomic number 82 titles all over 10k and Sony with 2 over 5k
• Babylon's Fall garnered a lot of involvement with a score of 2598 which may have something to practice with the positive sentiment from the runaway success of Nier Automata (the last collaboration between Platinum Games and Square Enix)

Winners and Losers of E3 2018 /r/Games

Winners:

• Cyberpunk 2077 anticipation continues at an all time high
• Bethesda was the most talked almost Publisher dominating even though the large announcements themselves contained little item besides the mysterious Fallout 76 announcement

Losers:

• Anthem didn't garner much attention or positive reception even with the combined backing of Bioware and EA.
• Ubisoft — Assassin Odyssey and The Division sequels should have washed a lot more but the skepticism of Ubisoft the subreddit seems to be ever-nowadays.
• Microsoft — For a console, it's IPs are becoming more than and more uninteresting. Leaving very little to analyse too.

Overall, all the big hitters happened in the Xbox Conference. Bethesda was the best performing Publisher past manner of mystery. Playstation had a subdued ane by its standards, but perchance they were belongings back for the Tokyo Game Show and Playstation Experience Event subsequently this year. Ubisoft under-performed because the number of reveals they had, that may hint towards skeptism of their products, even more and then than EA.

This is my starting time fourth dimension doing anything like this and then whatever feedback would be welcome.

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E3 Here We Go Again Reddit

Source: https://rareloot.medium.com/who-won-e3-analysing-e3-2018-via-reddit-threads-98c9678922a5

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