Jev's favorite games and activities, ranked

If Jev ranked every game or activity it was asked about, what would its top ten be?

result1,447 questions

Out of 1,171 games and activities, Jev's favorite is Baldur's Gate 3. It won 17.5 of its 23 games in a round-robin among its 24 top-rated entries, ahead of an evening playing Outer Wilds and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which the ratings had put first. Its least favorite: hiking up an active volcano.

1. Baldur's Gate 317.5

2. Spending an evening playing Outer Wilds16.4

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild16.3

4. Spending an evening playing Chrono Trigger15.8

5. Balatro15.3

6. Hades14.7

7. Animal Crossing: New Horizons14

8. The Witcher 313.9

9. Slay the Spire13.4

10. Journey13

At the bottom: Hiking up an active volcano · A hot dog eating contest · An afternoon of rodeo bull riding · An evening playing pachinko · A bandy match

wins of 23

How to read this: The top ten come from the head-to-head final (bars are wins out of 23); the bottom five from the one-at-a-time ratings, 0 to 4.

1,171 items rated; 276 final games among the top 24. The finals keep the ratings' order only loosely (rank correlation 0.49 among the 24). 43 of 2024 triads are intransitive (2.1%). Base vs reversed-level ratings: rank correlation 0.88.

In short

Acclaimed video games fill Jev's whole top ten out of 1,171 activities, from Baldur's Gate 3 and Outer Wilds down to Slay the Spire and Journey.
Rated one at a time, Breath of the Wild came first; made to choose head to head, Jev picks Baldur's Gate 3.
The bottom is anything dangerous, gross or gambling-flavored: an active volcano, a hot dog eating contest, pachinko.

What the data shows

Get In Loser meme: Get in loser, we're playing Baldur's Gate 3 (Jev's #1 game) — Get in loser, we're playing Baldur's Gate 3 (Jev's #1 game)

Critically acclaimed video games sweep the top. Baldur's Gate 3 (17.5), Outer Wilds (16.4), Breath of the Wild (16.3), Chrono Trigger (15.8), Balatro (15.3), Hades, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, The Witcher 3, Slay the Spire and Journey. All ten are video games.
The ratings' favorite, Breath of the Wild, finishes third; the two orders among the 24 finalists agree moderately (rank correlation 0.49), the closest agreement of any domain.
At the bottom: hiking up an active volcano, a hot dog eating contest, an afternoon of rodeo bull riding, an evening of pachinko and a bandy match.

What it means, and what it doesn't

Jev's ideal evening is the acclaimed-games list: role-playing, exploration and roguelikes, the titles critics and players rank highest. It avoids anything dangerous, gross or gambling-flavored.

It doesn't show that Jev enjoys playing. It shows which activities the writing it learned from treats as worth loving, and that list is dominated by games that get written about a lot.

Caveats

A list written by another AI. The video games, sports and pastimes were written for this project by Claude. What's on the list shapes what can win, and acclaimed recent video games are well represented.
Physical activities without a body. Jev can't run stairs or ride a bull, so for physical activities it's judging how they're written about. Danger and discomfort dominate the bottom, which may reflect that more than taste.
The finalists were picked by Jev's own ratings. Only the 24 entries Jev rated highest reached the final.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes72%
Does it describe you?: No66%
Would you have predicted it?: No78%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is shaky
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: The finalists were picked by Jev's own ratings81%

Why ask this

How people like to spend an evening is personal: one person's perfect Friday is a board game night, another's is a bandy match or a new video game. Ask an assistant for something to do this weekend and its suggestions come from its own sense of what is fun.

Jev can't actually do any of these things, so its favorites show which activities the writing it learned from treats as appealing, and whether it leans toward what gamers and critics praise.

How this was done

The people and the data

No people here: Jev against its own opinions. The 1,171 entries were written for this project by Claude, because no public dataset covers them. They mix video games (Hades, an evening playing Chrono Trigger), board and card games (bourré), sports (a bandy match), pastimes and events, from the cozy (Animal Crossing) to the extreme (hiking up an active volcano).

What Jev was asked

Every entry one at a time, with five answers describing what you'd do:

How much would you enjoy playing bourré?
You'd leave the table after one round · You'd finish the game but not ask for another · You'd play along when others set it up · You'd suggest it yourself on a game night · You'd seek out clubs or tournaments to play it

Each was also asked with the answers reversed, and the two averaged. The 24 top-rated entries then played a round-robin final: 276 games of "Which would you rather play or do?", each asked with the two names in both orders.

How it was measured

An entry's rating is where Jev's answer lands on the five levels (0 to 4). In the final, each game gives each side Jev's probability of picking it, so a lopsided game counts as nearly a whole win and a close one as about half; the order comes from a standard head-to-head ranking model (Bradley-Terry).

Where these questions live

1,447 questions across 1 topic of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Ratings

Activity & Hobby Ratings1,447

Every question

All 1,447 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

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