1. Platinum Trophy… Get Off His Lawn Kids

There’s a few ways to objectively determine which game is the best. They’re all wrong, but let’s jump in and see if we can learn something anyway.

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REFERENCES
Horizon Zero Dawn
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Super Mario Bros.
The Last of Us
Undertale
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
South Park: The Fractured but Whole
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
Super Mario Odyssey
No Man’s Sky
Rocket League

CREDITS

Tony, Dan, Alex, Sydney

POST-CREDITS SCENE

Welcome back to Alex’s Super Show Notes Show!

...Skyrim...

...Horizon Zero Dawn...

...Breath of the Wild...

    There’s a few ways to objectively determine which game is the best. They’re all wrong, but let’s jump in and see if we can learn something anyway.

    As of Summer 2018, Skyrim is the 12th best-selling video game of ALL-TIME, beating out popular titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (16th) and Sonic the Hedgehog (47th).

    Horizon Zero Dawn, available only on PlayStation 4, is just the 2nd-best selling game for that console, behind Uncharted 4. Breath of the Wild, despite winning game of the year in the Switch’s launch year, sold fewer copies than both Mario’s Odyssey, and Mario’s Kart Race ‘14.

    These numbers really make it sound like Skyrim holds an incomparable lead over Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild, but unfortunately those numbers don’t tell the whole story. For starters, Skyrim was initially released in 2011(!). That’s a whole six years of sales opportunities more than the other two. Also, as I mentioned, Horizon Zero Dawn was only released for the PlayStation 4. Breath of the Wild is available for Nintendo Switch and apparently the Wii U as well. Skyrim, on the other hand, is available on...

*deep breath*

PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PC
PlayStation 4
Xbox 1
Nintendo Switch
...plus additional versions for virtual reality devices and amazon home devices.

    Breath of the Wild also faced stunted sales because it released on launch day for the Nintendo Switch. There were only about 4 million Nintendo Switch consoles available worldwide at launch. Considering a game’s most successful selling period is immediately after release, there was literally an arbitrary cap on how many copies of Breath of the Wild could be sold after it’s release. Now, this may have stunted potential sales for Breath of the Wild, but it did set the ground work for one of the most successful marketing campaigns in gaming history (see: Super Mario Odyssey sold 10 million copies in two months).

    Back to comparing subjective works, there was literally a whole committee and ceremony comparing Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild. It was called The Game Awards 2017. The two were nominated for Game of the Year 2017 alongside Super Mario Odyssey, Persona V, and Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (henceforth PUBG).

    Personally, I thought Super Mario Odyssey would take the crown, even though I was secretly rooting for PUBG. Ultimately, Breath of the Wild was named Game of the Year 2017, and the earth kept spinning.

    For the record, PUBG is the 5th best-selling game of all time, beating out popular titles such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. For more info on PUBG’s not-entirely-unprecedented success, you can check this short article over at Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/06/20/despite-fortnites-rise-pubg-is-the-fifth-best-selling-video-game-ever/#94a2a6a1df61) for more info.

    The last thing I want to look at is an idea called ‘crowd wisdom’. I got this term from NPR’s Planet Money Podcast, episode 644: “How much does this cow weigh?” (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/07/430372183/episode-644-how-much-does-this-cow-weigh) where they also offer a pretty nice description of the concept.
    
    Basically, ask enough people a question, and the average of their answer will be pretty darn close to the correct answer. So I took to scrolling through some “best video games of all-time” lists...

    Wikipedia has a nice list of games, in no particular order, that commonly appear in well-known groups’ rankings. On this list are Skyrim and Breath of the Wild, but no Horizon Zero Dawn. To unpack that with the smallest of sample sizes, IGN has a top 100 list that places Breath of the Wild at 26th, Skyrim at 76th, and no Horizon Zero Dawn. Metacritic has a much lengthier list that places Breath of the Wild at 12th, Skyrim at 34th, and Horizon Zero Dawn... at 632nd (disclaimer: this list differentiates versions, so there are multiple repeats all over this list). Ranker’s list is also quite lengthy, placing Skyrim at 2nd, Breath of the Wild at... 357th, and Horizon Zero Dawn at 367th.

    Personally, I believe Skyrim’s ability to remain relevant after all these years is telling of its quality. Breath of the Wild enjoyed some recency bias, as well as a lack of competition for a while, so I think it’ll be interesting to see if it retains its success. Horizon Zero Dawn, one of the best-selling games on the best-selling console, stood toe-toe with juggernauts Zelda and Elder Scrolls, but has yet to earn it’s place in the “best-of all-time” conversation from the industry.

    That’s all the time I have for today. Feel free to leave your thoughts over at the reddit, if we set that up by now. If not try... our email? Which should be somewhere around here...