For those of us that play a lot of video games, a question has been lingering in our minds for months now… “Is this the greatest video game year of all time?”. It seems like just about every AAA game has delivered. And especially in the past few months, we’ve had some incredibly strong indie games getting serious attention as well.
I’ve seen the 2023 discussion many times on twitter, and have heard it on many podcasts. For the most part, it has been all vibes. I’ve been in the camp of feeling like this might be the best video game year ever, but it has bugged me that there wasn’t any real data to help parse through any potential recency bias. Finally, I decided it was time to go to Metacritic. Going off critic reviews isn’t a flawless methodology, but I think it is at least a helpful data point in the discussion as a whole.
This research only starts from the year 2000 on. Metacritic has very limited data from the years before that. 1997 only had 26 games listed, and 1998 only had 46. Metacritic was founded in 2001, so that may have something to do with it. As someone who got broadband internet in the year 2000, it’s possible we only really had the occasional gaming magazine for reviews before then. This is sad, as 1998 had Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Starcraft, and other classics, so I would like more data on how a year like that stacks up.
Additionally, I did not spend time figuring out if a game listed was just a re-release from a different year. I also didn’t ask any philosophical questions on if a game like Persona 5 Royale deserves to count for the 2019 video games list, when it was mostly a re-release with some extra DLC. It simply would have taken too long otherwise, and my motto was that things would probably roughly even out from year to year. With that, let’s get to the research.
2023 Was The Deepest Year In Gaming History
We will get into whether 2023 was the “best” gaming year of all time in a moment, but one reason I’ve felt so strongly about 2023 being awesome, is that many of the games not on my top 10 list this year, would have easily made the list in many recent years. The data backs this up. 2023 has the most games in recorded history with a Metacritic score at 80 or above, with 148. That is six more than the runner up years, 2019 and 2021. Those years had some of the lowest number of 90+ games though, while 2023 made a strong showing there.
This follows a general trend from the past six years or so that can be seen in the chart. Most of the best years of games scoring 80+ are from very recent history. Developers are better than ever at creating games that get strong (but not overwhelmingly spectacular) reviews. To go with that, we also have way less games scoring 90+ in general. 2023 actually bucked that trend with the most 90+ games since 2011.
2023 Is Probably Not The “Best” Gaming Year Of All Time, But It is The Best In A Long Time
In order to assign a value to each year, I used a very simple formula. Any game that scored a 90+ was worth 10 points, 85-89 games were worth 4, and 80-84 were worth 1. There are other ways I could have done this, but I wanted to put a lot of weight on games that scored a 90 or above, as this is very hard to do, and the vast majority of games people consider classics have a score in this range.
If we look at things this way, a few things quickly stand out. First off, 2001-2003 clearly looks like a golden age of video games. My theory there is that video games were rapidly evolving, and were able to wow people in a way they can’t these days as advancement of graphics has slowed. The PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube all launched in 2000 and 2001. If you weren’t there, it might be tough to believe that the graphics of this era absolutely blew peoples minds. I heard multiple stories of parents being fooled, thinking real football was on when it was just their kid playing Madden. This also plays into another reason this era seems to be way higher rated than today. If you go through the 2003 Metacritic for example, thirteen different sports games rated an 85 or higher. Madden 2004 is actually the fourth highest rated game of 2003. This is all unthinkable today, where game development is slower, and we generally have only minor additions from year to year in any of these games, and thus they do not rate particularly well.
The graph also shows that 2019-2022 was one of the weakest eras in all of modern video games. Covid is an explanation for at least some of that, but this is why 2023 also stands out even more. With my formula, 2023 is the biggest year over year score improvement in gaming history. 2023 has the highest score since 2009 as well. So I don’t think the “2023 is the best gaming year ever” narratives have come out of nowhere. We just haven’t had a year like this in a long time, and it stands out even more after the Covid gaming years.
My Main Takeaways
Doing this little research project had me reflecting on gaming in general, and I think this project backs up how I feel about video games today. I feel like I have more video games that I “need” to play than ever before. But also, less games are blowing my mind in the same way they once did. While I absolutely loved 2023, no game from this year makes my personal top 10 of all time. Maybe even my top 20. I think developers are better than ever at taking feedback, and using it to get better at future projects. But the limits of technology and so much innovation already being done make it difficult for any game to do something we have never seen before. As someone who prefers gaming over watching TV or movies, I don’t mind this trade off, as I like having a lot of games to play. But I can also understand how some people are more disillusioned with modern video games.
Either way, however unlikely, I’m hopeful that 2024 can come out just as strongly as 2023. Perhaps we are unknowingly entering a new golden era of video games, and we just don’t realize it yet.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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