Meta Analysis: How popular IS civ 5?

A lot of discussion has been had on whether civ 5 is popular? We can't answer that question in its entirety, but we can look at the various responses that we've seen so far.

Here then, is a list of Civ Fanatics polls that relate to this question:


8-28
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=377051

9-23
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=381961&highlight=poll

9-24
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382765&highlight=poll

10-13
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=391287

10-17
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392325
(Also on another forum: http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95176&page=2)

10-17
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392244&highlight=poll

August 28th
First poll I found is a simple, PRE RELEASE question: How many people want the option to turn off the GDR. I included it because the GDR is a 'major' component to the game. That is, the most powerful unit, had a feature specifically for it, and the Deluxe edition comes with a model of it.

The poll shows 540 results, and that 55% wanted the option to turn it off.

Sept 23rd
Second Poll is a somewhat infamous one now. It asked a direct and negatively skewed question: "Who else agrees that Civ 5 has been dumbed down?". Of those who voted, 50% agreed, 40% disagreed, the rest were neutral. Not particularly well worded, but it is what we have. The Original Poster has a log claiming that the numbers for 'agree' went up over time, though I obviously can't check that myself.

Sept 24th
Third Poll is "Civ 5: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?" but is actually a three option poll as it has a 'meh' or neutral option, and also asks if you have played the game. about 57% (54% that had played) gave thumbs up. Only about 7% of the people voting had not played the game.

Oct 13th
Fourth poll is "At the current state (1.0.0.20) out of 10 pts Civ5 gets...." with 10 options 1 to 10. This is nice since it gives a more granular look. The average score by users here is 5.90, the most common rating being a 7.

Oct 17th
Fifth poll is "Who is disappointed that they bought Civ5?", a short poll with only 33 votes, so take with a grain of salt. 60% of responders check the option "I think Civ5 is good enough and think I got my money's worth."

Oct 17th
The last Poll (or polls) is a nice 5 point poll, excellent, good, average, below average, total failure. It shows about 40% of people combined in Excellent/Good, which goes up to 60% if you include people who think it is average. I also included another poll by the same person but on a different forum (So different people voting!) that shows an almost identical distribution.


My method: I searched Civ fanatics for 'polls' and opened tabs for each one that rated civ. I do not think I missed any relevant ones (If I did, please post a link).

It is interesting how consistent these numbers actually are. We are seeing about 60% of people are neutral or better in their appreciation of the game. The last poll is taken about a month after release, and shows a fairly close to even distribution between general approval and disapproval.

I think this really states, better than words, the reason why there is so much discussion. 60% is really the sweet spot of controversy. Enough people on both sides of things so that arguments aren't just one sided bash fests.

Anyhow, for those who make claims that the game is clearly loved, or clearly hated, I would hope this makes you realize... it isn't quite that clean cut.

I think that's the best way of putting it. The majority (of CFC posters who vote in these polls) aren't in love with the game, but still enjoy it.

I personally truly enjoy Civ 5 over Civ 4, though the AI could be better, but there are certain things I do miss about Civ 4. Overall I think I got a good game for my $60 or so. Your statistics were interesting and I give you credit for looking them up.

I don't think those polls have anything to do with how popular the game is. "Popular" doesn't mean "good". It just means a lot of people are following it. So sure it's going to be very popular in a Civ fansite like this.

Steam Top Ten Most Played Games: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Civ 5 has maintained the top 10 since release. Roughly a month, so I would say it's pretty popular. This has nothing to do about whether people are happy with it or not. A lot of people might just be playing to finish the achievements before moving on or they are using tons of mods.

Thander said:

I don't think those polls have anything to do with how popular the game is. "Popular" doesn't mean "good".

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Apply whatever word you wish. Popularity reflects consensus of a population. Whether or not that consensus is 'how much they buy' 'how much they play' or 'how much they enjoy' it is still an issue of popularity.

I am showing results from multiple polls that are all a little different in the particular consensus they are trying to represent, so no one word will truly suffice. This is why I summed up with the word 'approval'.

I was thinking this thread would be about sales.

Anyone know how much Civ5 is selling? I'm curious if making it more "accessible" to average gamers has worked for them.

Disgustipated said:

I was thinking this thread would be about sales.

Anyone know how much Civ5 is selling? I'm curious if making it more "accessible" to average gamers has worked for them.

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Well, civ 4 has sold pretty well too, so we'd need to compare the sales of 5 to 4, and adjust for time.

I do know that civ 5 has been a top seller on steam for the past couple weeks, though I think recent triple A titles have pushed it down a few rankings. Doesn't really give me a good idea of sales though since it has been beaten by most big new releases since it came out.

Note: The steam 'top sellers' figures are based off dollar amounts, not units shipped. So notice it is right above: Left4Dead2 (released on mac) which costs 20 bucks, while civ 5 costs 40. Of course, we don't actually know the disparity between them.

Both major releases (Medal of Honor and Fallout: New Vegas) that came out since it did have outsold it.

Thander said:

I don't think those polls have anything to do with how popular the game is. "Popular" doesn't mean "good". It just means a lot of people are following it. So sure it's going to be very popular in a Civ fansite like this.

Steam Top Ten Most Played Games: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Civ 5 has maintained the top 10 since release. Roughly a month, so I would say it's pretty popular. This has nothing to do about whether people are happy with it or not. A lot of people might just be playing to finish the achievements before moving on or they are using tons of mods.

Click to expand...

If they don't like it, why is it so popular still?

IIRC steam numbers show the game being played by a lot of players, probably duo to good sales, I believe.

All this analysis is bunkum.
The only people who have any hope of telling us how this pseudo Civ game is going is Steam, who could provide figures as to how many hours were played per game registered, on a weekly basis. This would show how the game gets decreasing use over time and how many (like me) have abandoned it.

I'm mostly amazed at how many people vote but don't post a single word.

Louis XXIV said:

I think that's the best way of putting it. The majority (of CFC posters who vote in these polls) aren't in love with the game, but still enjoy it.

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Acceptable analysis but all these polls will likely have a degree of negative bias as people are generally more likely to complain than praise.

Thander said:

I don't think those polls have anything to do with how popular the game is. "Popular" doesn't mean "good". It just means a lot of people are following it. So sure it's going to be very popular in a Civ fansite like this.

Steam Top Ten Most Played Games: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Civ 5 has maintained the top 10 since release. Roughly a month, so I would say it's pretty popular. This has nothing to do about whether people are happy with it or not. A lot of people might just be playing to finish the achievements before moving on or they are using tons of mods.

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You have such a complete misunderstanding of sociology it baffles me. Why would people continue to play a game they're unhappy with? You're just scrambling for reasons to say it's a sham.

Remarkable.

cf_nz said:

Acceptable analysis but all these polls will likely have a degree of negative bias as people are generally more likely to complain than praise.

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This.

I've found over the years that users will generally complain as soon as they find something wrong, but you'll rarely hear from the happy people, or from the people that have a bunch of little things they don't like but aren't "big enough to bother anyone with".

Zechnophobe said:

It is interesting how consistent these numbers actually are. We are seeing about 60% of people are neutral or better in their appreciation of the game. The last poll is taken about a month after release, and shows a fairly close to even distribution between general approval and disapproval.

I think this really states, better than words, the reason why there is so much discussion. 60% is really the sweet spot of controversy. Enough people on both sides of things so that arguments aren't just one sided bash fests.

Click to expand...

Thanks for an unbiased analysis (that even took care to mention potential flaws and weaknesses of the polls included). I think the split is more 50:50 than 60:40 (and I think remember some other polls that showed a similar split even across age groups and fans of different previous Civ games, let's see if I can find them later), but the important message is that wherever the split is exactly, there's a substantial number of people on both sides of the fence, i.e. none of the two perspectives can simply be discarded (and die out) as a minority opinion.

Zechnophobe said:

Anyhow, for those who make claims that the game is clearly loved, or clearly hated, I would hope this makes you realize... it isn't quite that clean cut.

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Indeed.

Not one of you guys has paused to consider that this is not a random sample of Civ V players we're dealing with here. This is a special group of Civ V players who:

• Visit the CivFanatics forums
• Take the time to vote in a Civ V poll
• Visit the Civ V subforums
• [Possibly] Played past Civs

It's not a random example nor is it representative and therefore not scientific. No conclusion can be drawn here except that CivFanatics members are moreorless approving of the game on a consistent level. We are not representative of all, no matter how much our CivFanatic Elitist nature entitles us to think so.

Crezth said:

Not one of you guys has paused to consider that this is not a random sample of Civ V players we're dealing with here.

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Well, of course we haven't, because the OP wasn't even trying to generalize the collected polls to a bigger population. He collected polls of the CivFanatics population (which you define correctly) and arrived at a valid conclusion for said population.

You're interpreting something into the OP that isn't there and then try to tell us that we didn't address this non-existent issue. Perhaps we just realized that the issue wasn't even there?

(As a side note: if you really believe that only randomly and representatively selected saples are scientific, then I can only conclude that you never worked in research. the majority of research is done one samples that are neither, often one takes whatever sample one can get, because the budget doesn't permit a better sample. That's okay as long as you acknowledge the potential weaknesses of your sample, other scientists can then reproduce your findings with the samples available to them. Science is not an ideal world were the best tools are always available. We have to make do with what's available, just like people who try to estimate Civ5's popularity among CivFanatics voters.)

Skwink Caesar said:

If they don't like it, why is it so popular still?

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After only a month and with 300k sales only 30k as avarage playing it... I can't say it is so popular right now... MW2 have a lot more players after an year....

And a majority of the so called new fanbase is playing it for the achievements for sure(so consolish, it's a pity, when i play most of the time offlline)...

Zechnophobe said:

It is interesting how consistent these numbers actually are. We are seeing about 60% of people are neutral or better in their appreciation of the game. The last poll is taken about a month after release, and shows a fairly close to even distribution between general approval and disapproval.

I think this really states, better than words, the reason why there is so much discussion. 60% is really the sweet spot of controversy. Enough people on both sides of things so that arguments aren't just one sided bash fests.

Anyhow, for those who make claims that the game is clearly loved, or clearly hated, I would hope this makes you realize... it isn't quite that clean cut.

Click to expand...

My take on the net message from the polls is more of a 40% like, 40% dislike, and 20% are somewhere in between. That 20% group may vote differently in different polls depending on how the question is asked, which explains why sometimes pro or con may rise to somewhere between 40 and 60 in a particular poll.

You might also consider this poll of mine: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=390297.

The useful items here are that about 40% are unhappy over the loss of beloved features from Civ IV, only 2% like it as is (bugs and dumb AI being the offenders). That is consistent with my 40/20/40 impression of the polls in general.

As well as http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392070. In this one, clear negatives run about 45%, clear positives just under 30% with 25% saying "other". Striking is the lack of support for "Civ improved": less than 4%.

So not disagreeing with your 60/40 interpretation, just that 40/20/40 may be a more precise fit to the information, explaining some of the differences poll to poll.

The key message is that neither the positive view or the negative view are outlier opinions. Each is a substantial proportion of the voting membership.

dV

Crezth said:

Not one of you guys has paused to consider that this is not a random sample of Civ V players we're dealing with here. This is a special group of Civ V players who:

• Visit the CivFanatics forums
• Take the time to vote in a Civ V poll
• Visit the Civ V subforums
• [Possibly] Played past Civs

Click to expand...

This should go without saying. I'm not sure if your population description is entirely correct, but yes, we are clearly only discussing this population and no other.

It's not a random example nor is it representative and therefore not scientific. No conclusion can be drawn here except that CivFanatics members are moreorless approving of the game on a consistent level. We are not representative of all, no matter how much our CivFanatic Elitist nature entitles us to think so.

Click to expand...

Put the straw man down, my good friend. No conclusions HAVE been drawn (from the original post) other than exactly the opinions of Civ Fanatics Members.