There was an insightful digression of flame's that I had cut from the curated clips in my recent Overwatch post. In the cut clip, flame shares his thinking on why the recent harsh criticisms levied against Genji-player Ahran may be unfair, with critics looking only at scoreboard performance while missing important context. With some reservations, I ultimately removed the bit from my write-up as it did not fit the theme or flow of the post. However, I recently came across this article by Australian LoL analyst VolSig that caused me to reevaluate the clip's relevance. VolSig's discussion of the limitations of blindly analyzing with statistics brought to mind flame's worthy critique of Ahran-critics. Ultimately, I feel the point made in the clip merits a highlight:
The power and limitations of statistics is a theme that I expect will crop up again, as analysts in gaming and other fields increasingly turn to big data to make decisions. In this particular case, Ahran's performance needs to be understood through more than just the lens of scoreboard results. Performance statistics are aggregated from specific instances of play, and to really understand their meaning one must take the time to understand the component instances. By directly comparing Ahran to other top Genji players, critics fail to account for important differences in context, including differing personal playstyle, support quality, and team strategy.