Steam Charts: some statistics of interest

And other people had a game they weren't that fond of that the patch might have improved. Firaxis cannot balance a game based on "fun". You literally cannot.

On that note, the game is 40% off on Steam.

Gorb said:

And other people had a game they weren't that fond of that the patch might have improved. Firaxis cannot balance a game based on "fun". You literally cannot.

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You literally can.

educate yourself before it's too late

apart from the academia, a game dev can (should) play his own game constantly asking himself - "am I bored?"

I am seriously bored in the lategame.

according to steamcharts, for civ:be:
-64% of the player base in October
-48% of the player base in November
-36% of the player base in December (prediction)



NB
excellent thread alpaca!
I just could not let it sink beyond the first page

Anomandaris said:

On that note, the game is 40% off on Steam.

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Expect a permanent price drop soon. They suckered as many players as they could into spending 49.99 now it's time to drop the price to a more reasonable 29.99. It IS a stand-alone expansion after all.

DutchJob said:

But I had something I liked and 5 weeks later it's gone.

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It's not gone, it's just hidden. But I, as a being of ultimate wisdom and power, can give it back to you. Here's how it works: Rightclick the game in your steam library, click on properties -> betas. Enter legacyplease, choose the beta that gets unlocked, wait for the game to downgrade - your game is back to what it was prepatch.

I like what the OP is getting at, yet using Steam data is tricky:

Civ V released at a different time of year than Civ:BE, did it not? How do you take that into account?

Civ V - Sept 21, 2010 (according to the store page)

Civ:BE - Oct 23, 2014 (again according to the store page)

While roughly just a one month difference in timing during the year, that alone could have some unexpected impact on why one peaks and the other doesn't peak as much.

Further, what games came out around Civ V and what games came out around Civ:BE? Civ:BE now exists in a world where Endless Legend, Age of Wonders 3, and a couple others are available that serve as an alternative if someone doesn't like BE, whereas Civ V had fewer alternatives. Which could mean Civ:BE simply had more competitors for people who had a mixed opinion on it, while Civ V felt comparably better given that there were fewer decent alternatives.

So, while I tend to agree that the peaking for Civ:BE indicates a lower level of long-term fandom for it, I also think that the statistics perhaps overstate the issue a bit if taken solely on their own and without considering a much larger context.

Hail said:

You literally can.

educate yourself before it's too late

apart from the academia, a game dev can (should) play his own game constantly asking himself - "am I bored?"

I am seriously bored in the lategame.

according to steamcharts, for civ:be:
-64% of the player base in October
-48% of the player base in November
-36% of the player base in December (prediction)



NB
excellent thread alpaca!
I just could not let it sink beyond the first page

Click to expand...

Boring is subjective. Don't link me to a book; books exist to be sold. Find me research papers, find me sourced material.

What is boring to one person isn't boring to someone else.

Ryika said:

It's not gone, it's just hidden. But I, as a being of ultimate wisdom and power, can give it back to you. Here's how it works: Rightclick the game in your steam library, click on properties -> betas. Enter legacyplease, choose the beta that gets unlocked, wait for the game to downgrade - your game is back to what it was prepatch.

Click to expand...

I think I love you.

Gorb said:

Don't link me to a book; books exist to be sold. Find me research papers, find me sourced material.

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Oh my God... what then? "Research papers only exist to sell subs to academic journals/databases"? Do you even have access to the kinds of psychology/anthropology journals that take an interest in this sort of thing? Well, if you do - plug the title of the book into a database search engine and read the very positive reviews - I just put his name into JSTOR and came up with dozens of published papers, and hundreds more that cite his work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Check the references in Wikipedia if you're genuinely serious in your request.

Research papers by themselves generally exist to provide proof for research grants, in turn promoting the ability to invest further within that field of research. Regardless of that, an Amazon catalogue proves absolutely nothing in a forum debate.

That said, the subject defines nothing the game doesn't have. Flow in gaming is different from considering it in games design, and the lengths each gamer will be absorbed in a particular game will differ from player to player, from game to game.

Prove the game doesn't have flow, and then prove that flow is in any way at all linked to "fun". Fun, for me, is different from an enjoyable experience. Fun is greater than enjoyment. Enjoyment is greater than satisfaction. Semantic complaints aside, what do you actually want to say on the subject?

Prove to me that the game I enjoy playing isn't fun . . . for me. You might be onto a loser there.

I've had the steamgraph bookmarked ever since I saw this thread. Civbe activity is picking up, thanks to improved MP stability and other stuff in the patch. Like its predecessor civ 5, I am now certain this game has survived the negativity it received on release.

I didn't really get into CiV until after G&K was released. Likewise CIV didn't really come into its own until BtS. BE is still a baby civ game right now. Give it time, patches, EPs and mods and I'm sure it will be great.

Velvet Elvis said:

I didn't really get into CiV until after G&K was released. Likewise CIV didn't really come into its own until BtS. BE is still a baby civ game right now. Give it time, patches, EPs and mods and I'm sure it will be great.

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I think most folks will agree with you, but the lingering question is will there be expansions? With this being a spin off title, we have no way of knowing if Firaxis will deem it worth saving. I'm confident we'll get at least one more patch, but that won't fix some of the larger issues.