Facebook as an indicator of popularity of Civ V

[Menzies]

Definitely not bad for a "broken" game. Maybe that ratio of Civ 5 lovers to Civ 4 [1.04] has some truth after all. It would have been interesting to see Civ IV player numbers at its peak...

 

[SpearMan153]

Definitely not bad for a "broken" game. Maybe that ratio of Civ 5 lovers to Civ 4 [1.04] has some truth after all. It would have been interesting to see Civ IV player numbers at its peak...

do you need to factor players who "like" both civ4 and civ5?

 

[Menzies]

do you need to factor players who "like" both civ4 and civ5?

Well, the way I set it up they are not mutually exclusive, though I assumed that the fact that someone liked Civ IV had no effect on whether or not they liked Civ V. It's a very simplistic model of what is happening there, and in fact I'd be far more concerned that at t=0 (the instance that facebook was founded) that according to P(t)=(2*10^6)*Exp(0.0024t) there would have been 2 million users. Or infact if we just assume the World Population to be a flat 7 billion (as it should be by the end of the year) then if we make:

P(t)=(2*10^6)*Exp(0.0024t)=7*10^9
Exp(0.0024t)=3.5*10^3
t=(1/0.0024)Ln(3.5*10^3)
t=3400=23/4/2013

So it believes that by early to mid 2013 the entire population of the World, Man, Woman, Child and Newborn in the Cambodia will have a Facebook account... Assuming that it works for the past though (as the data I got to make that function is over the 2008-2011 time range) it should be fine though. I could have defined that P_4 and P_5 were functions of t though, but that would have made it a bit of a harder problem to solve. Especially with no knowladge of the evolution of the number of likes per day. It'd have to be solved in a non-algebraic way, or at least there is no way to my knowladge without knowing what Likes[t] is or at least Likes'[t]. Not to get off point though...

Anyhow, to answer your question the set of people who like Civ V may contain a subset of the set that like Civ IV and vice versa.

 

[Ddude97]

Cambodia? Do you mean world or literally Cambodia?

 

[Menzies]

Cambodia? Do you mean world or literally Cambodia?

I was just pointing out that literally anyone and everyone that you could possibly think of would have an account according to that relation by mid 2013, showing how rediculous it really is. Who knows, maybe the World will end in 2012 to prevent the equation's prediction from coming true..?



Rereading I can see it being a tad confusing though. Interestingly though:

P'(t)=(4.8*10^4)*Exp(0.0024t)

Which means that the number of people joing facebook per day according to this equation on that day is:

P'(3400)=16.8*10^6

Cambodias current population is around 15 mil and predicted to be around 17 million by 2013-14... So a Cambodia per day will be joing facebook. Coincidence, I think not!

 

[Krall]

The thing with Steam is you can tell how many people are playing Civ V:

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/?snr=1_5_9__10

Civ V has consistently been one of the top games on Steam since release.

Now of course we don't know how many people still play Civ IV since many play without Steam, but Civ V's numbers can't be dismissed.

Civ V has been right up there with the Call of Duty games and Football Manager. The fact that it is up there with popular games at all is pretty telling. (Even if the COD numbers are split between two games).

23,000+ players right now on a Sunday morning Eastern US time is quite a lot for a game people don't "like".

"Now of course we don't know how many people still play Civ IV since many play without Steam"

That just invalidated your whole point about Civ V's numbers not being able to be dismissed. Your comparing it to a game released 5+ years ago to retail and then on Steam many years later. There's no track record to compare it to.

The phenomenon likely going on here is what Firaxis wanted, to draw in people who never played Civ before.

Just imagine Farmville. Millions of people play that right? Well if Simfarm which is superior were released today those Facebook users would still miss it because it wouldn't get the exposure that Steam & Facebook offer compared to how a game like that and Civ IV released to retail.

 

[ohioastronomy]

And the explanation for as many people browsing the "old' obsolete" game forums over the "shiny, new, improved" game forums is....

nah, it can't be any problems with the new game. In every successful release, all of the energy and attention is with the new game. So therefore any evidence to the contrary has to be dismissed.

 

[Menzies]

"Now of course we don't know how many people still play Civ IV since many play without Steam"

That just invalidated your whole point about Civ V's numbers not being able to be dismissed. Your comparing it to a game released 5+ years ago to retail and then on Steam many years later. There's no track record to compare it to.

The phenomenon likely going on here is what Firaxis wanted, to draw in people who never played Civ before.

Just imagine Farmville. Millions of people play that right? Well if Simfarm which is superior were released today those Facebook users would still miss it because it wouldn't get the exposure that Steam & Facebook offer compared to how a game like that and Civ IV released to retail.

...well with proper analysis of the data it seems Facebook supports the idea that Civ V is as popular as Civ IV and more importantly Civ V competes on with the most popular games in the World on their native turf, steam... So I guess they've done something right. I know they have a lot of work to do to make Civ V live upto being the successor of Civ IV, but really, give the hate a break until the shininess of this latest patch at least wears off would ya mate?

 

[alaric1112]

The only thing Facebook is an indicator of is how many people crave for attention.

This is my baby. This is my baby 2.5 minutes later. This is my baby upside down. This is my baby eaten by a tiger. This is me holing my baby's gnawed leg.

This is so true about facebook my wife is on it and she does not post that stuff but her freinds are always like look how great my kid is lol!!

 

[Menzies]

This is so true about facebook my wife is on it and she does not post that stuff but her freinds are always like look how great my kid is lol!!

Or the people who go out on the town for a night and post things like:

"i jst drunk 2 mach and fll dun the steirs lol!

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: The discussion has obviously left the realms of Civ5, and i don't see how it could come back with a good discussion.
Thread closed.