Temporal Review Discrepancy: Relationship Between Video Game Age and User Ratings

This study analyses the temporal relationship between professional critic and general user scores for video games with respect to the age of the title. By aggregating and linking over 12,000 unique records from Metacritic and IMDb, this research creates a "Delta Score" to quantify this discrepancy. It aims to identify macroscopic patterns and aid developers and studios in identifying useful long-term user trends. Correlation analysis reveals a positive relationship (ρ = 0.2714) between a game’s age and its Delta Score, demonstrating that user ratings reliably inflate over time relative to static critic ratings. The study also investigates this correlation across specific genres and ESRB certificates. Consistent positive biases were found within mature and thriller titles. Finally, it concludes by explaining these emergent patterns to factors such as "Nostalgia Bias" and economic depreciation.