Valve has more than a few nifty stats pages going now, including the very revealing HL2 Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 stats.

Bragging rights for the above-average player aside, the Episode Two stats are particularly interesting and fall inline with Valve's commentary on the page: "striving to make our products better". Indeed.

The death maps are an amazing visualization of the bottlenecks in single-player play. It's not hard to imagine the usefulness in a game design sense: Are players stuck on intended puzzles, or are they dying repeatedly somewhere unexpected?

It's refreshing to see statistics applied without a marketing push. Or at least the marketing is a secondary attribute, because Valve does gain significant respect from their audience, plus press attention when they publish these goodies. Other game companies, especially in online gaming (MMOs, hello!), should stand up and pay attention here: you don't need to scream your own accolades directly when you can create them by just being damn smart.

An important distinction is Valve doesn't harp on the popularity of any game features when they present these stats and graphs. They obey that old rule: Statistics do not demonstrate intent, just direction. Let the reader decide how player direction meshes with game design intent.

In other words, don't try to measure fun, but use the tools to maximize it.