“The most popular female videogame character in the world right now, apparently, is Bayonetta. That’s the deeply cool, self-assured, ass-kicking Bayonetta that should by rights appear at the top of any game character list”
TheEditor
Search me! Second issue in and I’m already having a rant
I
n the run-up to Christmas there wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t receive an email citing the latest report into what the most popular trends were in tech and games. Each press release, almost without exception, mentioned that the attached study was based on
search data. In other words – to my mind, at least – they were trash. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with search data. It can of course be very useful to know what terms people are using to find stuff, perhaps so you can cram a few more of them into your product page. My problem is in appropriating search data to highlight barely related trends or claim some sort of spurious fact. For example, I received notice of a study one cold, winter morning (apparently commissioned by a certain nationwide electrical goods retailer), that suggested that VR headsets were the most popular gaming accessory of 2021. This was based on the term “VR headsets” coming top in more searches compared to the likes of “gaming keyboard” and “gaming chair”. This intrigued me, so I had a quick look at ahrefs, as you do, and lo and behold, the numbers checked out, but only if you bundled up various related terms and included global search data from across the entire span of recorded search history. “VR headset” is more sought out than that “gaming headset” right now, sure, but only just. Go back to December 2016, however, and the search volume for “VR headset” was three times higher, while for “gaming headset” it was 50 per cent less. Received on a less cold but equally wintery morning was a study that listed the most popular female characters in games, based on, you guessed it, search data. The most popular female videogame character in the world right now, apparently, is Bayonetta. That’s the deeply cool, self-assured, ass-kicking Bayonetta that should by rights appear at the top of any game character list, but also the character who’s not appeared in a game since 2012 on the Wii U (unless you count Smash Bros, anyway) and who also shares her name with a much anticipated sequel that’s coming out next year. The top Bayonetta-related search term that isn’t simply “Bayonetta” is “Bayonetta 3” (due 2022). Next comes “Bayonetta 2” (2012, Wii U). As you might forlornly expect, the most popular search terms relating to Bayonetta’s character are less than savoury. Internet search data is no measure of popularity, except for what is being sought for on the
internet, and the broader the terms, the geography and the time frame, the more useless the data is at facilitating conclusions for anything other than vapid search-based studies. If you’re a retailer who sells gaming accessories and you want to know what the most popular gaming accessories of the year are, you’re clearly doing something wrong if you’re having to canvas the sum of all global brain farts since digital records began. And if you want to know who the most popular female video games characters are, unless you ask people directly and unambiguously, the eponymous ones will top the list without fail, especially those with a game to promote.
Richie Shoemaker
richie.shoemaker@
biz-media.co.uk January 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 03
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
