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Polygon retracts its ridiculous Mario Kart pie chart, hopes you didn't notice.

J

jholmes

Member
Courtesy the sharp gaugebozo, in the Worst "Games Journalism" article of 2014? thread:

gaugebozo said:
I was reading all of the Mariokart pie chart comments thinking, "What pie chart?" and realized Polygon took it down without a notice of retraction! This in itself is bad journalism.
Click to expand...

Right he is. Polygon needs to own up to baffling errors like this, but there's no trace of the pie chart or its removal. There are several comments criticizing the use of the pie chart still intact, though.

See for yourself: http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/15/5718168/mario-kart-series-sales

The archived version is here: https://web.archive.org/web/2014051...com/2014/5/15/5718168/mario-kart-series-sales

And the pie chart itself, for those curious:

mario_kart_pie_chart.jpg
 
K

Kazerei

Banned
They should retract the area chart too, it's also illogical. There's no meaning to the area under the curve. Just use a fucking bar graph.
 
D

Dylan

Member
Seems like someone was working really late.

I don't see any need for outrage though. CNN has done worse.
 
S

ShockingAlberto

Member
The whole thing was just weird.

Like, first of all, was MK8 not selling as well as predecessors big news to anyone? It was on the Wii U. Of course it wasn't going to do as well. I don't think a third party candidate is going to win the next presidential election, I don't need an Anderson Cooper editorial telling me that as if it's shocking news.

Secondly, the article was weirdly gleeful. Like in a "This is what you get, Nintendo" sort of way. Yeah, Nintendo, if your systems don't sell well, your games won't sell as well! How about that! I feel like they know this and you look dumb pointing it out.

Then there was the pie chart nonsense and all the bullshit Kuchera kept dodging when it turned out to do surprisingly okay - not up to recent standards in the series, but far from the 1.2 million lifetime sales he predicted.
 
J

JDizzv

Member
So what were they trying to do there? I missed when this initially happened. Are they trying to compare lifetime MK series sales to lifetime Nintendo hardware sales? Kinda confused.
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
At least Polygon serves one useful purpose and that is to aggregate most of the worst video game writers in the one place.
 
G

GekigangerV

Member
ShockingAlberto said:
The whole thing was just weird.

Then there was the pie chart nonsense and all the bullshit Kuchera kept dodging when it turned out to do surprisingly okay - not up to recent standards in the series, but far from the 1.2 million lifetime sales he predicted.
Click to expand...

To Kucheras credit, (ugh, I feel dirty typing that) he didn't write the actual article, but defended the content vigorously. Much like the old penny arcade report kof xiii review.
 
N30RYU

N30RYU

Member
I don't really see the problem with this chart...

Could be interesting see some with the Halo series or Uncharted tho.
 
T

thefro

Member
JDizzv said:
So what were they trying to do there? I missed when this initially happened. Are they trying to compare lifetime MK series sales to lifetime Nintendo hardware sales? Kinda confused.
Click to expand...

They basically predicted that Mario Kart 8 would sell less lifetime than what it sold in 2 months.
 
T

Tripon

Member
ShockingAlberto said:
The whole thing was just weird.

Like, first of all, was MK8 not selling as well as predecessors big news to anyone? It was on the Wii U. Of course it wasn't going to do as well. I don't think a third party candidate is going to win the next presidential election, I don't need an Anderson Cooper editorial telling me that as if it's shocking news.

Secondly, the article was weirdly gleeful. Like in a "This is what you get, Nintendo" sort of way. Yeah, Nintendo, if your systems don't sell well, your games won't sell as well! How about that! I feel like they know this and you look dumb pointing it out.

Then there was the pie chart nonsense and all the bullshit Kuchera kept dodging when it turned out to do surprisingly okay - not up to recent standards in the series, but far from the 1.2 million lifetime sales he predicted.
Click to expand...

I think that was the weirdest thing about this to me. I am assuming Kuchera was the editor for this opinion piece. The fact that he didn't force the author to rewrite the article, or okayed that pie chart makes me wonder what the heck happened when Polygon commissioned this article.
 
G

gaugebozo

Member
This is something that's always pissed me off about internet news in general. If someone makes a mistake in print media, there's always a retraction printed, but some sites try to get away with just changing the original.

Thanks jholmes!
 
P

Palculator

Unconfirmed Member
gaugebozo said:
This is something that's always pissed me off about internet news in general. If someone makes a mistake in print media, there's always a retraction printed, but some sites try to get away with just changing the original.

Thanks jholmes!
Click to expand...

Even Polygon usually has an "UPDATE: Here's what we fucked up." paragraph leading an updated article. I guess in this case there was no real way to not look super dumb for having the pie chart in the first place.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
ShockingAlberto said:
That MK8 wasn't going to sell well but they didn't understand how pie charts work.
Click to expand...

But that is telling me that Mario Kart as a series has sold 1/5 the amount of total hardware Nintendo has sold in 3.5 generations now, which includes their monster Wii generation. That, to me, sounds like Mario Kart sells a metric shitload.
 
S

Salsa

Member
only thing this threads tells me is that a lot of the people complaining about this "journalism" still visit Polygon enough to notice it gone?

gg
 
S

ShockingAlberto

Member
N30RYU said:
How many hardware sold nintendo since the Snes ~500M or ~600M

Given the chart I asumed 600M, and that 500M consoles never player a MK.
Click to expand...

Think more fundamentally

How do pie charts work? 100% of that pie is A, and whatever is cut out is A minus B. A Minus B needs a relationship to A, that is inherent to the fundamental idea of a pie chart. You can not just have two separate numbers with no real relationship to each other and put them in a circle.
 
I

III-V

Member
jholmes said:
Courtesy the sharp gaugebozo, in the Worst "Games Journalism" article of 2014? thread:



Right he is. Polygon needs to own up to baffling errors like this, but there's no trace of the pie chart or its removal. There are several comments criticizing the use of the pie chart still intact, though.

See for yourself: http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/15/5718168/mario-kart-series-sales

The archived version is here: https://web.archive.org/web/2014051...com/2014/5/15/5718168/mario-kart-series-sales

And the pie chart itself, for those curious:

mario_kart_pie_chart.jpg
Click to expand...

Please post the actual chart.
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
ShockingAlberto said:
did

did you have math class as a kid
Click to expand...

It's actually possible for a chart similar to this to make sense, in this sort of format:

gAxpt5o.jpg


Basically saying, here is Mario Kart as a percentage of hardware units sold, assuming that only one unit is sold per hardware unit. Sort of an illustrated attach rate across all platforms.

We hear stuff like "one in every five Wii owners has Mario Kart Wii" and such, so you could combine all the platforms and all the iterations of the game for a sort of glance at how much Kart is on all Nintendo platforms.

But it still wouldn't make any sense in the context of what they were trying to discuss, and it doesn't make sense as a normal pie chart. Showing Kart as a subset of consoles sold, sure, that could work.
 
N

Nekofrog

Banned
to the people who are confused by the chart

you're supposed to be confused

the data that they're trying to put across (data that is wholly irrelevant to begin with) is not data that even can be presented in a pie chart

like at all

that's why it was so bad
 
S

Spring-Loaded

Member
ShockingAlberto said:
Think more fundamentally

How do pie charts work? 100% of that pie is A, and whatever is cut out is A minus B. A Minus B needs a relationship to A, that is inherent to the fundamental idea of a pie chart. You can not just have two separate numbers with no real relationship to each other and put them in a circle.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but a pie chart isn't really useful with only two values to compare.
 
M

Mihael Mello Keehl

Banned
TheFurizzlyBear said:
Eh there are some good people there too. Like most sites they have good staffers and bad ones.
Click to expand...
Probably but their articles give them a clownish image and thats all i really see. If you follow them in facebook (which I do for the laughs) there will be an article almost every hour or so that is titled so wacky and unnessecary that all you can do is laugh
 
N30RYU

N30RYU

Member
ShockingAlberto said:
Think more fundamentally

How do pie charts work? 100% of that pie is A, and whatever is cut out is A minus B. A Minus B needs a relationship to A, that is inherent to the fundamental idea of a pie chart. You can not just have two separate numbers with no real relationship to each other and put them in a circle.
Click to expand...
Why not... With the game sale numbers you can tell how many nintendo consoles can and can't have a Mario Kart game in it...
 
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