I. How does the realistic ceiling for each genre compare at the international level?
(This question applies for competitive tournaments as well as world-record speedruns, where there may be clear gaps among even top-ranked players and several orders of magnitude in "domination" between subsequent tiers.)
Lowest skill cap:
https://www.strawpoll.me/18152626
Highest skill cap:
https://www.strawpoll.me/18152623
Please do vote in both surveys above, so that we can examine each end of the spectrum.
II. For reference - here are some arbitrary examples, based on my attempt at a rough classification:
adventure & VN: Ace Attorney, Dear Esther, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Myst
board: Backgammon, Catan, Chess, Diplomacy, Go, Othello, Scrabble, Risk, Shogi
card: Baccarat, Blackjack, Bridge, Magic: The Gathering, Mahjong, Poker, Yu-Gi-Oh!
fighting: Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros., Street Fighter, Tekken
fight-person shooter: BioShock, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Doom, OverWatch, Quake
logic & puzzle: Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Minesweeper, Portal, Sokoban, Sudoku, Tetris
open-world: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Grand Theft Auto, Legend of Zelda, Minecraft
programming: AtCoder, Codeforces, Google Code Jam, Project Euler, SPOJ, TopCoder
racing & sports: FIFA, Madden NFL, Mario Kart, Need for Speed, NBA, Wii Sports
rhythm: Cytus, Dance Dance Revolution, osu!, O2Jam, Rock Band, StepMania, Taiko
RPG: Diablo, Fallout, Final Fantasy, Persona, Pokémon, Runescape, World of Warcraft
simulation: Europa, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Roller Coaster Tycoon, The Sims
strategy: Age of Empires, Civilization, Dota, League of Legends, Red Alert, StarCraft
third-person shooter: Fortnite, Gears of War, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Touhou
III. Aggregate ranking methodology:
I deliberately made two separate polls for statistical reasons (which are slightly subtle, as simply reversing the order in one won't necessarily match the other's results). Essentially, there is bound to be representation bias, since more popular genres that people are familiar with will tend to receive more superlative nominations. There is a way to control for the varying sample sizes, and I will reveal it with an updated ranking once more data is collected. Thanks!
