About

How it works

This website calculates the "cultural evaluation score" for a user based on the games available in their Steam library and the scores that were given to each game, along with the comparison with the 100k Steam user profiles I have collected and anlaysed. It is a result of my Bachelor Thesis and the exact details of how the scores were calculated are in the process of publication. The code for the website, along with the scores for the websites and the percentiles for the users are available here.

What is Cultural Evaluation?

Cultural evaluation is the estimation of the value we as a society give to a given piece of art. Not all pieces of art are treated equally, for example classical music is valued more highly by society and the overall culture than for example country music. The same is true for video games. The Witcher 3 is considered a "better game" and is valued more highly than for example FIFA 2020. Estimating which game is valued more highly is difficult, and this project utilises the fact that different cultural intermediaries have a different impact on how each game is perceived and thus the scores from metacritic on which this estimation is based on is additionally weighted by how much each critical outlet is aligned with the critical consensus on the best games.