compare_cohorts
Media vs Gaming: the publishers beat the game studios
Media providers outscore gaming by 6.9 points and are nearly twice as agent-ready. Much of the gap is our coverage.
Media
Gaming & Interactive
Each sun is drawn from the cohort's averages: six facet rings, the mean Kin Score and mean agent readiness.
The 597 scored media providers average 24.4, against 17.5 for 644 gaming and interactive companies. Agent readiness splits the same way, 14.6 against 7.7, and media is twice as likely to ship a first-party MCP server (13% against 6%). Media holds 44 strong providers to gaming’s 19.
The facets show it across the board: contract quality (20.7 against 10.4), access clarity (26.4 against 18.5) and operational transparency (14.4 against 9.5). Gaming’s best facet is developer ergonomics at 20.4, against media’s 25.2. Game studios publish SDKs and engine plugins more than they publish HTTP contracts, and the rubric reads contracts.
This is one of the most depth-confounded pairs on the page: 5.7 points less catalog gap and six more artifact directories on the median media member. Gaming companies often document in engine portals and SDK repositories our crawl reaches less well. Read the 6.9 points as a coverage gap as much as a market one.
The distributions
| Media | Gaming & Interactive | Delta | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kin Score, mean | 24.4 | 17.5 | +6.9 |
| Kin Score, median | 20.4 | 10.9 | +9.5 |
| Kin Score, highest | 72.1 | 67.7 | |
| Kin Score, std dev | 18.1 | 15.3 | |
| Agent readiness, mean | 14.6 | 7.7 | +6.9 |
| Agent readiness, highest | 65.3 | 60.4 |
Delta is Media minus Gaming & Interactive, as the tool returns it.
Where the providers sit
Media
Gaming & Interactive
Facet averages
| Facet | Media | Gaming & Interactive | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discoverability | 58.5 | 55.8 | +2.7 |
| Contract Quality | 20.7 | 10.4 | +10.3 |
| Contract Governance | 7.3 | 4.1 | +3.2 |
| Operational Transparency | 14.4 | 9.5 | +4.9 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 25.2 | 20.4 | +4.8 |
| Access Clarity | 26.4 | 18.5 | +7.9 |
What they publish
Share of each cohort's providers publishing each artifact. mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.
| Artifact | Media | Gaming & Interactive | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| First-party MCP server | 13% | 6% | +7 |
| Any MCP artifact (incl. derived) | 14% | 7% | +7 |
| OAuth scopes | 14% | 7% | +7 |
| Spectral rules | 19% | 10% | +9 |
| Arazzo workflows | 2% | 1% | +1 |
| Agent skills | 0% | 0% | 0 |
| Security artifact | 99% | 99% | 0 |
How well we know each cohort
The coverage behind the averages. A cohort with a higher catalog gap and fewer artifact directories has been enriched less, so part of any difference is our coverage rather than the market.
| Media | Gaming & Interactive | |
|---|---|---|
| Declared members | 666 | 751 |
| Scored (in the averages) | 597 (90%) | 644 (86%) |
| Thinly covered | 514 | 601 |
| Median artifact directories | 12 | 6 |
| Mean catalog gap (points we could add) | 75.7 | 81.4 |
The full compare_cohorts response
{"a":{"kind":"industry","slug":"media","name":"Media","members":666,"stats":{"kind":"industry","slug":"media","name":"Media","tier":"report","coverage":{"declared_members":666,"resolved_members":666,"scored_members":597,"agent_scored_members":597,"scored_share_pct":90,"unexamined_members":67,"enrichment_depth":{"mean_catalog_gap":75.7,"median_artifact_dirs":12,"n":597,"thinly_covered":514,"thinly_covered_of":597,"thin_coverage_note":"514 of 597 scored members had under half their catalog-attributable points satisfied at all (catalog_earned / catalog_max < 0.5). They are INCLUDED in the mean above. A large share here means the cohort mean is partly a measurement of how far our enrichment reached, not only of how these providers publish.","note":"Rubric points API Evangelist could add to the average member with no action by the providers, and the median count of artifact directories we hold on them. A cohort with a higher gap and thinner artifacts has been enriched less, so part of any difference between its mean and another cohort's is our coverage rather than the market. Compare two cohorts only when this figure is comparable. It is an upper bound on our backlog: it says who CAN close a gap, not who did."},"unexamined_note":"Excluded from the distribution: these carry a catalog-owned needs_work flag (never enriched, or no resolvable host). They are listed as members and keep their own page and score; they do not vote in the averages, because their score measures our coverage rather than their posture."},"sufficient":true,"kin_score":{"mean":24.4,"median":20.4,"min":0,"max":72.1,"stdev":18.1},"agent_readiness":{"mean":14.6,"median":6.3,"min":0,"max":65.3,"stdev":16.5},"band_distribution":{"exemplar":6,"strong":44,"developing":92,"thin":114,"emerging":151,"minimal":190},"facet_averages":{"discoverability":{"mean":58.5,"n":597},"contract_quality":{"mean":20.7,"n":597},"contract_governance":{"mean":7.3,"n":597},"operational_transparency":{"mean":14.4,"n":597},"developer_ergonomics":{"mean":25.2,"n":597},"access_clarity":{"mean":26.4,"n":597}},"adoption":{"mcp_pct":14,"mcp_first_party_pct":13,"mcp_note":"mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.","skills_pct":0,"scopes_pct":14,"security_pct":99,"arazzo_pct":2,"rules_pct":19}}},"b":{"kind":"industry","slug":"gaming","name":"Gaming & Interactive","members":751,"stats":{"kind":"industry","slug":"gaming","name":"Gaming & Interactive","tier":"report","coverage":{"declared_members":751,"resolved_members":751,"scored_members":644,"agent_scored_members":644,"scored_share_pct":86,"unexamined_members":101,"enrichment_depth":{"mean_catalog_gap":81.4,"median_artifact_dirs":6,"n":644,"thinly_covered":601,"thinly_covered_of":644,"thin_coverage_note":"601 of 644 scored members had under half their catalog-attributable points satisfied at all (catalog_earned / catalog_max < 0.5). They are INCLUDED in the mean above. A large share here means the cohort mean is partly a measurement of how far our enrichment reached, not only of how these providers publish.","note":"Rubric points API Evangelist could add to the average member with no action by the providers, and the median count of artifact directories we hold on them. A cohort with a higher gap and thinner artifacts has been enriched less, so part of any difference between its mean and another cohort's is our coverage rather than the market. Compare two cohorts only when this figure is comparable. It is an upper bound on our backlog: it says who CAN close a gap, not who did."},"unexamined_note":"Excluded from the distribution: these carry a catalog-owned needs_work flag (never enriched, or no resolvable host). They are listed as members and keep their own page and score; they do not vote in the averages, because their score measures our coverage rather than their posture."},"sufficient":true,"kin_score":{"mean":17.5,"median":10.9,"min":0,"max":67.7,"stdev":15.3},"agent_readiness":{"mean":7.7,"median":0,"min":0,"max":60.4,"stdev":13},"band_distribution":{"exemplar":1,"strong":19,"developing":56,"thin":93,"emerging":151,"minimal":324},"facet_averages":{"discoverability":{"mean":55.8,"n":644},"contract_quality":{"mean":10.4,"n":644},"contract_governance":{"mean":4.1,"n":644},"operational_transparency":{"mean":9.5,"n":644},"developer_ergonomics":{"mean":20.4,"n":644},"access_clarity":{"mean":18.5,"n":644}},"adoption":{"mcp_pct":7,"mcp_first_party_pct":6,"mcp_note":"mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.","skills_pct":0,"scopes_pct":7,"security_pct":99,"arazzo_pct":1,"rules_pct":10}}},"comparable":true,"delta":{"kin_score_mean":6.9,"kin_score_median":9.5,"agent_readiness_mean":6.9,"facets":{"discoverability":2.7,"contract_quality":10.3,"contract_governance":3.2,"operational_transparency":4.9,"developer_ergonomics":4.8,"access_clarity":7.9},"adoption":{"mcp_pct":7,"mcp_first_party_pct":7,"mcp_note":null,"skills_pct":0,"scopes_pct":7,"security_pct":0,"arazzo_pct":1,"rules_pct":9},"enrichment_depth":{"mean_catalog_gap":-5.7,"median_artifact_dirs":6}},"depth_confounded":true,"depth_note":"Media scores 6.9 points higher than Gaming & Interactive AND is the better-enriched cohort: 5.7 points less catalog_gap and 6 more artifact directories on the median member. The market difference and our coverage difference point the same way, so this delta cannot be attributed to the markets on its own. Close the enrichment gap, or report both figures together."}
Result read 2026-10-27. Media and Gaming & Interactive each have their own page with the full roster and leaderboard.
Run this comparison yourself
Everything above came from one call to compare_cohorts. Swap in any two tags, industries, regions, areas or VC portfolios and you get the same answer for your own shortlist. It is an Understanding tool, included in the Understanding and Influence plans, or pay per call.
https://apis.io/mcp:
{"name": "compare_cohorts", "arguments": {"a": "industry:media", "b": "industry:gaming"}}
Over the REST API:
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/cohorts/compare?a=industry:media&b=industry:gaming" \
-H "X-API-Key: $APIS_IO_KEY"
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