Abstract
Problem: How do we determine whether a game is "good"? People online often state their opinions as objective fact — but is there any defensible, objective metric for game quality?
Approach: Tim Cain walks through five commonly cited metrics — popularity, sales, review scores, play length, and originality — applying each to his own games to test whether any single metric can crown a definitive "best game."
Findings: Every metric produces a different winner. Popularity picks Fallout, sales pick The Outer Worlds, review scores pick Fallout and Pillars of Eternity (tied at 89), length picks Arcanum, and originality arguably picks Arcanum or Fallout. Trying to identify "bad" games and eliminating them doesn't work either — every game has flaws someone can point to.
Key insight: A good game is simply one you like. No metric is a universal arbiter of quality; enjoyment is personal, and no one's opinion is the final word.
The Common Metrics
Tim identifies five metrics people commonly use to argue a game is good, and tests each against his own catalogue.
Popularity
Popularity means cultural presence — articles, playthrough videos, online discussion, concurrent players. By this measure, Fallout is Tim's best game. Even before Bethesda acquired the franchise and before Fallout 2 shipped, the original Fallout "hit some kind of gaming nerve" and became widely discussed. Some team members claimed they always knew it would be big; others were genuinely surprised.
Sales
Sales are more quantifiable than popularity, but Tim points out a critical flaw: the market has grown by orders of magnitude over four decades. The Outer Worlds is his best-selling game "by a huge order of magnitude" — even accounting for Xbox Game Pass players who never purchased it. But is it fair to compare sales across a 20-year gap when the gaming audience has exploded in size?
Tim also notes that people use sales inconsistently: high sales prove a game is good when they like it, but prove it's "casual" or "for Muppets" (borrowing Eric DeMilt's term) when they don't.
Review Scores
Metacritic aggregates give another numerical benchmark. Tim's highest-rated games are Fallout and Pillars of Eternity, tied at 89. Fallout 2 follows at 86, then South Park: The Stick of Truth and The Outer Worlds at 85. Notably absent: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Arcanum, which scored lower despite passionate fanbases.
Tim's advice on using reviews: find a reviewer who has already reviewed games you love and hate, and who agrees with your scores and reasons. That reviewer becomes a useful predictor for future purchases. Aggregate scores are unreliable — he recalls one of his games being reviewed by someone who opened with "I don't really play RPGs. I don't like them."
Length
Play time is at least numerical, but Tim questions its value as a quality signal. Technically, Bard's Tale Construction Set is his "longest" game since it's an endless level-building tool. Among complete shipped games, Arcanum wins easily — players routinely hit 80+ hours, especially when pursuing all side quests and skill mastery chains (some of which are mutually exclusive, as two masters require you to kill each other).
Originality
Originality is "itself subjective" despite attempts to count novel features. Arcanum arguably wins on sheer volume of never-before-seen CRPG features — "we threw everything in there but the kitchen sink." But Fallout has a case too: when it launched, it wasn't really like anything else on the market. Isometric RPGs were being phased out in favor of real-time 3D, and Fallout carved its own path.
Can We Just Identify Bad Games Instead?
Tim considers the inverse approach: if we can't define "good," maybe we can agree on "bad" and whatever's left must be good. But this fails too. Fallout, Arcanum, and Vampire: Bloodlines are all beloved and notoriously buggy. Temple of Elemental Evil had bugs plus bad dialogue, inconsistent questing, and poor pacing. Every game has something someone can criticize — this method leaves you with nothing.
The Conclusion
Tim's answer is deliberately simple: a good game is one you like. If you enjoy it, it's good — for you. If you don't, it's bad — for you. This extends to books, movies, and all media.
He pushes back against the culture of ranting about disliked games as a "public service." The things you hate may be irrelevant to someone else. People who love games you despise aren't wrong — the game is good for them.
No one is the final arbiter of quality. Even professional reviewers can only say "I didn't like this because of these reasons" and leave the reader to decide whether those reasons matter. Tim's own opinion, he insists, shouldn't matter either: "If you liked it, it's a good game."
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1jZuasGDn8