Q&A

Frequently asked questions about True Game Metrics, our scoring methodology, data operations, and access portals.

Method & Philosophy

True Game Metrics is a benchmarking platform designed to replace single, subjective review scores with an objective engineering model. Inspired by Olympic diving, we separate how hard a game was to build from how cleanly the finished game runs. This ensures that massive technical risk and small-scope polish are evaluated fairly on their own merits.

  • Degree of Difficulty (DD): Measures the architectural scope, world structure, simulation density, and operational lifecycle of the project before anyone plays it.
  • Game Execution (GE): Measures the final player experience—framerate stability, bug frequency, control responsiveness, and mechanical polish.
  • Raw Game Execution (GE): An individual 1.00 to 10.00 judgment submitted by a verified Judge based on their own gameplay experience.
  • Synthesized Game Execution (sGE): The verified Judge consensus score on a 30-point scale. Instead of taking a simple average, our Quantile Synthesis Engine sorts Judge ratings into a 7-judge Virtual Panel, drops the two highest and two lowest percentile ratings to eliminate review-bombing and blind hype, and sums the middle three scores.

Just like a competitive diver's final event score, the TGM Foundation Score is the mathematical product of both factors:

Benchmark = DD × sGE

Using Degree of Difficulty as a multiplier creates a level playing field. A contained, flawlessly polished 10-hour platformer and a massive, complex 150-hour open-world simulation are evaluated accurately without penalizing ambition or inflating simple designs.

Data Operations & Calculations

As TGM expands its architectural audit categories, the headline metric changes to reflect the deeper systems being measured:

  • Phase 1: TGM Foundation Score (Current: World Structure + Lifecycle Model)
  • Phase 2: TGM Visionary Score (+ Visual Pipeline & Narrative Systems)
  • Phase 3: TGM Architecture Score (+ UI/UX & Audio Architecture)
  • Phase 4: The TGM Benchmark (All 8 Core Engineering Pillars)
  • TGM Estimate (Analytical Baseline): Indicates that the Degree of Difficulty (DD) is an internal analytical baseline established by TGM auditors prior to verified developer survey calibration.
  • Provisional: Indicates that the game is actively collecting community evaluations but has fewer than 100 verified player submissions (N < 100). The Synthesized Game Execution (sGE) score updates dynamically as new ratings arrive.
  • Official: Certified benchmark status locked in once the title reaches 100 or more verified player submissions (N ≥ 100) and the studio has completed verified Developer Calibration. At this threshold, the 7-judge virtual panel has sufficient data density to filter outliers and lock in a certified rating.

Traditional review averages are easily distorted by coordinated 0/10 review bombs or 10/10 fanboy ratings. TGM sorts all user evaluations into percentiles and samples 7 distinct points across the distribution. Discarding the two highest and two lowest scores ensures that bad-faith extremes are dropped, isolating the true execution signal in the center.

Access & Portals

Verified developers and technical leads can submit architectural metrics directly through our Devs & Publishers portal. Submitting verified production data updates the game's baseline and helps transition its Degree of Difficulty from Provisional to Official.

You can view membership tiers on our Get Access page. Pro and Statistician members unlock the full Data Matrix, advanced scatter-plot diagnostics, and unfiltered CSV exports.

No. TGM is built for everyone, from systems engineers and game directors to casual players who want honest, objective data about how games perform. The global leaderboards and game profiles are free to browse for all gamers.

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