[carom]

I'm not sure the take away for the first point that user standards are rising is correct. Could that also be the number of people making games is increasing? I say this because more highly rated games and a trending down of the average (more slop) could explain that as well. I think the idea that standards are rising would hold constant the number of games.

[lazyasciiart]

It could also be that game standards are dropping, no?

[greentec]

Maybe on other platforms? Armorgames curates pretty heavily, but you're right that AI-generated games could be flooding less selective platforms. Would be interesting to run this same analysis on Steam or itch.io where the barriers are lower.

[greentec]

Fair point, but here's the thing - Armorgames is actually way pickier now about which games they accept. They're letting fewer games through their gates. So if the average rating is still dropping even with higher curation standards, that pretty much confirms users have gotten more critical over time.