Project: When Was the Golden Era of Video Games?

Video games are big business: the global gaming market is projected to be worth more than $300 billion by 2027 according to Mordor Intelligence. With so much money at stake, the major game publishers are hugely incentivized to create the next big hit. But are games getting better, or has the golden age of video games already passed?

In this project, you'll analyze video game critic and user scores as well as sales data for the top 400 video games released since 1977. You'll search for a golden age of video games by identifying release years that users and critics liked best, and you'll explore the business side of gaming by looking at game sales data.

Your search will involve joining datasets and comparing results with set theory. You'll also filter, group, and order data. Make sure you brush up on these skills before trying this project! The database contains two tables. Each table has been limited to 400 rows for this project, but you can find the complete dataset with over 13,000 games on Kaggle.

`game_sales` table

Column	Definition	Data Type
name	Name of the video game	`varchar`
platform	Gaming platform	`varchar`
publisher	Game publisher	`varchar`
developer	Game developer	`varchar`
games_sold	Number of copies sold (millions)	`float`
year	Release year	`int`

`reviews` table

Column	Definition	Data Type
name	Name of the video game	`varchar`
critic_score	Critic score according to Metacritic	`float`
user_score	User score according to Metacritic	`float`

`users_avg_year_rating` table

Column	Definition	Data Type
year	Release year of the games reviewed	`int`
num_games	Number of games released that year	`int`
avg_user_score	Average score of all the games ratings for the year	`float`

`critics_avg_year_rating` table

Column	Definition	Data Type
year	Release year of the games reviewed	`int`
num_games	Number of games released that year	`int`
avg_critic_score	Average score of all the games ratings for the year	`float`

DataFrameas

best_selling_games

variable

Select
	*
From
	game_sales
order by games_sold desc
Limit 10

DataFrameas

critics_top_ten_years

variable

Select
	gs.year,
	num_games,
	round(avg(critic_score),2) as avg_critic_score
from game_sales gs
join reviews r on gs.name = r.name
join users_avg_year_rating usyr on gs.year = usyr.year
where num_games >= 4
group by 1,2
order by avg_critic_score desc
limit 10

DataFrameas

golden_years

variable

Select
	ua.year, 
	ca.num_games, 
	avg_critic_score, 
	avg_user_score,
	avg_critic_score - avg_user_score as diff
from
	users_avg_year_rating ua
join
	critics_avg_year_rating ca using (year)
where
	avg_user_score > 9 or avg_critic_score > 9
order by 
	year

Project: When Was the Golden Era of Video Games?

reviews table

users_avg_year_rating table

critics_avg_year_rating table

`reviews` table

`users_avg_year_rating` table

`critics_avg_year_rating` table