How SpriteCell Came To Be
The Geek Critique is a video game YouTuber who highlighted another video game YouTuber in mid 2018 named Vince19. Vince did videos where he analyzed various video game subjects through statistics. I was immediately hooked. I had worked on a huge data-driven project for the Guild Wars Wiki and had made a few statistical Reddit posts related to video games so this was right up my alley.
I was showering one morning in 2019 and wondered just what percent of games made in Japan never leave Japan. Surely someone has figured this out, right? After some googling it seemed the answer was no. I decided to look into it and came up with the idea to study every game ever officially released for a Nintendo system. I worked for months and eventually posted the Nintendo Game Project to /r/Games on Reddit and was overwhelmed with the response. At least one person said it should exist somewhere outside of Reddit.
I’m not sure when exactly I decided I was going to make a website for my future statistical projects, but I started brainstorming name ideas in early 2020. I wanted a compound word where each part had something to do with what the site was going to be about. Something that was essentially unused on the internet so there would be no confusion. Something alliterative would be a plus. I wanted a .com just because it’s what people are most used to hearing. Something that you would immediately know how to spell if you heard it out loud. I didn’t quite succeed with that one.
I registered the domain name on PorkBun on January 26, 2020 and first paid DreamHost for hosting on April 4, 2020. SpriteCell was launched on May 16, 2020. I very slowly figured out how to use WordPress.
I wanted to do the research no one else was doing to learn the answers to the questions I had and to make that information easy to digest, to share it with others. That’s why I made this website. Over time I have become more interested in video game history as a whole and more interested in preserving it, which has led to me creating archives of various media.
Contacting me
You can contact me on Bluesky. You can try contacting me on Twitter or Mastodon, but I might not see it.
If you’d prefer to e-mail me you can do so at thespritecell@gmail.com.
If you want to contact me on Reddit specifically for some reason my username is Ebon_Praetor.
Frequently Asked Questions
None of these questions have actually been asked yet. You can ask me something.
Q: What’s the general process of making a project?
A: I have a big list of projects I want to make, so phase 1 is looking through it and deciding what I want to do next.
Phase 2 is looking into how plausible making it is, seeing what data is out there, planning how I’ll record it and what the project will eventually look like and what graphs will be included. Lately I’ve been more organized and I make a text document at this stage and jot down notes about how I’m going to explain everything, links to sources to credit, what superlatives could be interesting, and what kind of graphs I eventually make. Several projects have died here.
Phase 3 is gathering the data. I do this by hand because I’ve never been able to figure out how to get any web scraper to work or how to make my own, or they cost a lot of money. This usually takes several months and I listen to podcasts while I do it.
Phase 4 is data validation. I make plenty of typos and there’s always odd outliers so I do things like check the minimum and maximum values and fix all the mistakes I can.
Phase 5 is assembling the data I’ll use for graphs, making tables and charts. I often make copies of spreadsheets with different sorting, calculate averages, divide the data up by publisher or year or whatever is called for. If I’m being more organized I’ll make a list of exactly what graphs to make. This part is really fun because I’m the first person to see something, I have knowledge no one else does.
Phase 6 is making the graphs. After pasting the data from my spreadsheets into Google Sheets I make all kinds of tweaks to them to make them more readable. If I’m being organized I plan exactly what order they will appear in the final product. When I’m done I save them into a folder which I then copy and apply the SpriteCell.com text in the corner of the copies.
Phase 7 is writing the post and adding the graphs. I inevitably find mistakes and have to re-do graphs and realize I need to find some interesting tidbits about superlatives and such. I refer to my notes and delete things as they are added.
Phase 8 is copy editing. I de-clunk sentences, reword things, rearrange things, and find more mistakes in my graphs. When I think it’s done I hit Publish and look it over and inevitably find typos I missed. I usually forget to add it to my Project List until the next day. I post about the project on social media and get 3 likes.
Q: What games/series/systems/developers do you like?
A: I play Nintendo and Sony systems and sometimes PC. I play lots of JRPG, visual novel, puzzle, and strategy games. I like a lot of Nintendo, Atlus and Square Enix’s work. I enjoy handheld systems quite a bit. Some of my favorite series include Shin Megami Tensei/Persona, Final Fantasy, Zero Escape, Danganronpa, Bravely Default, and The Legend of Zelda. I mostly play games developed in Japan. I am an avid player of Guild Wars 2, having one of the highest amounts of achievement points. Other than Guild Wars 2 the games I have put the most time into are Guild Wars and Diablo II, and I remain a big fan of both.
Q: What tools do you use?
A: I use LibreOffice for spreadsheets. Graphs are made with Google Sheets. Pictures and infographics are made with Visme.co or Paint.NET.
Q: What kinds of topics are you going to be covering in the future?
A: There are many things I plan to get to. I prefer not to announce anything until it’s almost done, but think about what kind of large video game related data sets are out there. Aside from general video game statistics I enjoy compiling interesting and useful archives of media.
Q: Can I use your data/graphs/charts in a video/article/project?
A: You’re welcome to use a handful of my images in something if you credit SpriteCell.com. Please do not copy an entire project. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss this further.
Q: Will you send me your spreadsheets/other resources you use?
A: If you ask me personally, I would probably be willing to send you something for a specific purpose. I’m a bit sensitive with some things because they are messy or I did things in odd inefficient ways, or there are errors that I didn’t spot until much later. Some of these spreadsheets took over 100 hours of work to make, and I made them specifically for a project and not to be seen. As for selling my resources, I don’t really feel right doing so, some of my sources have specific language in their policies about not using their data for commercial purposes. I’m always up front about my sources.
Q: How can I help the site?
A: Tell others about the site! Link to projects you find interesting.
Q: Why is there so much orange on this site?
A: Orange is my favorite color.