How is rarity calculated?
Is the rarity in the database of games calculated by how many members have posted that they have it? Cause that would be a cool way to actually mark it if its not. Or did someone just go in and assign numbers based on some formula?
Comments
(And be able to adjust it later if they need to.)
That way there is a sort of consensus among multiple people.
I always wondered how the rarity was calculated, but never got around to ask. Thanks for the topic Lucas
Perhaps who ever created the database was able to find out how many carts where produced and thats how rarety is measured. Not buy the demand and price of the game.
So that being said, I like the idea that the rarity is hand-checked by the experienced guys, but I think that probably happens anyway. I also like the idea of basing an item's rarity on how many members own it, but it would be difficult to establish true rarity from that because it's not a good sample - collectors are more likely than the rest of the public to have the rare items. Also, would you include new collectors who only have a handful of games? There's a good chance they don't have things that are easily a 1, for example I didn't have Blades of Steel or Tetris for a few months when I started collecting, and I went quickly for the NES at that time getting about 50 carts in the first month or two.
Even if xxx,xxx copies of a game were produced, how would you judge how many get thrown away and are lost forever? It's impossible, so even if all production numbers were known (they aren't, not by a longshot), this would still just be an estimate.
You can poll collectors, but there's an obvious conflict of interest there. Let's say I own 10 sealed SEs and we're doing a poll to figure out the true rarity of SE. Of course I'm not going to openly give out that information, otherwise collectors would think "Oh it's not as rare as I thought" and my collection will be worth substantially less. Many collectors, especially the high-end variety, do not want their collections to be public information. So the poll would just be another estimate.
Going by eBay / amazon / etc. data is inaccurate too because it only represents a snapshot of the market today. What if a game doesn't appear on eBay for over a year and then two copies happen to appear in a week? To a new collector, the game might not appear to be that rare, but someone with more experience would know that's a potential time to buy one for cheaper than market value. So now your eBay data is just another estimate.
So as you can see, no matter what approach you take, all you're getting is an estimate. Believe me that as a fairly experienced collector, I think our NES rarity guide is basically spot on.
Of course a rarity guide is a changing animal though, as shown in Caltron. That game has definitely fallen off of it's high status with the market saturation that has occurred. But there's no way to see something like that coming either.
But to me, the 5 aren't descriptive enough. 10 is a lot more needed to get a better idea of rarity. Now 100 would be too insane. 10, no.
it would be easy to write the database queries to do such a thing as i suggested, it just wouldnt be accurate until lots of ppl uploaded their data. but maybe it could be a temporary field in the db until enuff info was collected. could also even make a separate column for these fields to show up when u looked at the game database
Aggregating rarity data isn't rocket science, but you're missing the single most important aspect here: people are lazy.
We've offered many times in the past to have members vote on rarity, but it always ends with people realizing it's a ton of work
The current rarity is based on experienced members' contributions, but there's always room for improvement -- it should just be treated as a general guide, not a definitive standard.
So as you can see, no matter what approach you take, all you're getting is an estimate. Believe me that as a fairly experienced collector, I think our NES rarity guide is basically spot on.
This is good news for me, i've been surfing that thing and studying it quite a bit lately. Almost got all my R7's knocked out
One thing I see a huge difference in, is Power Blade 2 is an R7, and then Miracle Piano is an R7...obviously a huge difference in base prices for it. Is it just the demand of what a certain person will pay for a certain cart?
^ THIS is fucking CLASSIC, thanks for the laugh Kate you rock!