Having opinions that are easier to justify isn't a virtue.
Having opinions that
are justified is a virtue. The alternative is magical thinking, where things are true regardless of the reality. If you hold beliefs without justification, I'd consider that an anti-virtue, at least (a sin, perhaps?).
Metacritic scores are bad because of score inflation. I wouldn't accept that as evidence.
Is there any metric you would accept?
As far as making some titles that don't suck, I would like to see the % of games made that are bad vs not be higher, as well as a control for the amount of money spent vs total titles as well as quality titles. I would accept a % value of good vs bad that was 5% lower now than then, merely because I don't consider that likely. I'd also suggest that we don't consider graphics. Which of course screws over most modern games that rely heavily on graphics for appeal. That might be hard to score though.
Okay, so this reveals a significant underlying problem, and is why I'm glad I didn't go right to evidence. Why does "% good vs % bad" matter, to you or to me? We're not going to be playing every game that comes out every year, I imagine we're only going to be playing the good ones, why does it matter how many bad ones get released as long as "enough" good ones are?
If only 3 video games were made last year, and all of them were pretty good, but 100 were made this year, of which 10 were pretty good and 5 were absolutely amazing and mind-blowing, and the rest were pretty bad, you'd honestly consider this years game industry to "suck" compared to the year before? Because if so, this is a fundamental difference in assumptions that we will have to address before we can make any progress, and takes priority over questions of what evidence you would accept, since a mismatch here would blatantly render any evidence irrelevant since it would be based on my own priorities and not yours.
From my point of view, I would consider the second year significantly better -
Assuming I want to play more than three games in a year:
-In the first year, only three games were made, which wasn't nearly enough to meet my yearly and consumption, and the first year outright sucks, for me, since it can't keep up with my rate of consumption
Assuming I only want to play three games in a year:
-If I limited myself to this, the second year would still be better, since I'd end up playing three absolutely amazing games instead of 3 pretty good ones
If you think we should go with another criteria for a "sucky" year, please explain what it is and why.
Nobody's going to convince anybody of anything related to identity, under any circumstances.
FTFY.
If you consider "modern video games suck" to be a part of your
identity, I... err... I might decide to back out of this conversation after all. I was under the impression we were arguing about reality, not religion, and I'd rather stay out of debates on the second. It suddenly makes a lot of the stuff you've said so far make a helluva a lot more sense, though.
Because I was getting quite excited about the possibility of finding a solid nook within an acceptable shared context, lying out the evidence, and discovering which of us was most likely to be correct based on those assumptions after analyzing the evidence, but if you consider this belief to be a part of your identity, I honestly don't see that happening.