Yesterday I introduced the data I've been looking at for the International Game Developers Association from the open nominations for the Game Developers Choice Awards. I gave an overview about which countries voted most similarly during the process for three categories: Visual Arts, Best Game and Game Design. Today, I'm looking in more detail at the games the countries have in common in the category "Visual Arts".
The image above is a social network diagram of an affiliation network. The dots are the countries and the lines between them indicate that there's a connection of one or more common games. This is all of the data smooshed into a lovely visual format (for those who like charts), which shows all of the countries that voted.
The first thing you can see from the sociogram (for that is what it's called) is that there is a bunch of countries interconnected by similar nominations. They're the folks in the top left. The Netherlands seems like an outsider simply because it's only got commonalities with Japan, Spain, Canada, the UK and the US.
You can also immediately see that there are two countries which voted completely unlike the other countries: Denmark and Hong Kong. They're isolated - no connections between each other or the rest of the group. For the record, the people in Denmark voted most for Hitman: Blood Money (developed by the Danish IO Interactive) and the people of Hong Kong voted most for Photo Club (Gamey Studio).
As I mentioned, the moosh in the upper left corner represents a tightly-knit group who all voted for at least one of the same games. With the software I used to create this image (Pajek, for those keeping tabs), I can also identify which countries voted for the most games in common. There are three sets I'm going to focus on: Canada and the USA, Japan and the USA and Germany and the USA.
Canada and the USA The games these land mass neighbours voted for in common (in no particular order) were: Viva Pinata Splinter Cell: Double Agent LocoRoco Gears of War Final Fantasy XII Company of Heroes
Japan and the USA 100% of the games which the Japanese IGDA members nominated were also voted for by folks in the USA. Out of the three categories (Visual Arts, Best Game and Game Design), this was the strongest alliance between these two countries. The games were: Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Okami Lost Planet Gears of War Final Fantasy XII
Germany and the USA Finally, the German IGDA members only nominated two games, but both were also voted for by people in the USA: Final Fantasy XII Gears of War
Anyone have any theories? Go on, throw your hat into the ring.
