Valve released some totally awesome statistics for their game Team Fortress 2, which was part of the Orange Box package. The game is a team based FPS kinda like Counterstrike, but with classes that have different abilities and roles. Instead of buying a sniper rifle or a machine gun you choose to play as a sniper or a heavy weapons based character. There are also healers, demolition guys, and classes like assassins and engineers with insane abilities. Check out the detailed info provided here to see what I'm talking about

The breakdown is really comprehensive and cool. A lot of suspicions are confimed, for example Snipers get the highest average points per hour and medics totally dominate the assist category. There are also some really suprising tidbits to find in there. The scout class for example is the most played of all the classes, which is something I never would have expected. The win/loss ratios for both sides are shown broken down by map. Apparently some maps like dustbowl are clearly imbalanced in one sides favor; red wins about 65% of dustbowl games.

My favorite element of this data are the level maps at the bottom. These show the locations where people have died and it's color coded. The red areas are ones where deaths are extremely frequently and the blue areas are spots where it isn't. This information actually has tactical uses in the game, so a lot of the "pro" players out there are probably studying them carefully and altering their strategies accordingly.

Changes to the game could very well result from this data. It aught to happen, considering some problems are shown and there is really no excuse to not fix them after you have released the proof they exist. It would be really refreshing to see this type of behavior from more game companies as it shows a real dedication to game integrity and improvement. I personally would love to know exactly how many battlegrounds horde and alliance win, or which classes are really dominating kills and damage across the entire playerbase. It sucks that Blizzard is too embarrassed to release something like this.