Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Kwami]

I mean you can sugarcoat it or label it whatever way you like, but the pure fact of the matter is that the game is unpopular.
There is no point in nitpicking the terminology, that's like detracting from the main point of the conversation.
I thought we all collectively agreed that the game was unpopular maybe 200 pages back.

Like even if we ignore all other factors, 'Mixed' is not good by Steam standards. 41% positive is quite poor. That's barely a passing mark on an exam.
The peak was on the day of release, which was 51%. That's still quite poor.

The main point of the thread was to discuss how the reception could be improved, right? Denying that the reception is bad, is pointless.
I'm not trying to hate FYI, I'm just saying that the discussion is best lead by pursuing ways to improve the reception.

There's a massive gap between "universal dislike" and 50/50. That's all I'm saying. You can keep moving the goalposts, but I'm not going to follow along.

 

[Gorbles]

Since I never made the original post , you best ask the poster .

Bottom line re the most or majority , unlike the distortion of post I replied to, the current reviews are 59 % negative .

You're the one who questioned it. You posted, stressing the importance of "almost". It's your reply I was interested in!

Talking about the current reviews is moving the goalposts, nor is it something I care about defending. The reviews are what they are. People making them seem worse to push a narrative? Now that's worth pushing back on.

 

[Nikolai II]

I am having a blast still with 7. Total hours played now is a little less than 600 hours. Got some 2-3 hours tonight alone.

 

[GeneralZift]

There's a massive gap between "universal dislike" and 50/50. That's all I'm saying. You can keep moving the goalposts, but I'm not going to follow along.

I agree with you in this case, don't worry, universally dislike is hyperbole. 50/50 is still bad. We really want something like 80/20 in positivity to be in the clear

 

[tman2000]

I made the same argument a while back and the response was some absurd nonsense about how all of the other people who don't like the game didn't buy it and didn't leave a review.

Some of the posters here don't seem to understand that their opinions aren't universal and that a lot of players actually like this game, even if we think that it could be improved in some ways.

About 3000 daily players seem to like the game, which is not evidence of universal interest.

 

[tman2000]

It's somewhat puzzling to me why some have a hard time accepting Civ7 is a flop, when there's plenty of hard evidence for this assertion. From layoffs at Firaxis at a time when they're working around the clock to turn around the game's fortunes, to "mixed" reviews, to very poor community engagement. I mean... It's Friday afternoon in the Americas and Friday evening in Europe. You know how many streams/views Civ7 has on Twitch at the moment? Four (4) streams and two (2) viewers. Three of the four streams are streaming to nobody. The lucky fourth one has 2 viewers. On Youtube, Ursa Ryan's Civ7 videos only get 10-13k views. His Civ6 videos? Over 40k.

Yes, Civ7 has a small following and that's great. But the key word here is "small". Far too small to make the game economically viable long term. The game is selling far too few copies (3.3k/week according to Gamalytic) to be profitable and the future for DLC revenues is bleak. For the good of the franchise, Firaxis should take the L and start working on Civ8 in my opinion. If they insist in pushing this poorly received installment with its murky at best reputation for the next few years thought its planned life cycle, they will endanger the IP itself and leave themselves vulnerable to competitors. Some things you just can't fix.

The discourse should be, what's wrong with the game, what would fix it, how did this happen, what needs to be done so that it never happens again.

Not that, "actually the game is really well received." Which is a very suspicious argument. You can understand why a corporate agenda would want to disrupt critical discourse so we can make massive forced errors in developing a product but then manage social media to sustain hype cycles for new DLC drops.

I don't begrudge anyone who likes the game. I've probed opinions I don't understand, but with sufficient explanation, I'm interested to hear people's opinions even if mine isn't the same.

 

[tman2000]

When I read "almost universally disliked", I was thinking that it could not mean disliked by almost everyone because that would be an exaggeration, and that it perhaps meant "disliked by almost every demographic" or something like that.

Almost no one is playing it and it's nearly a dead game. That's pretty consistent with "universally disliked". I don't understand the need for semantic hair splitting on whether I used the exact right words or not. I suppose the discussion can occur, but the material point remains unchanged. The game is basically a flop.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I made the same argument a while back and the response was some absurd nonsense about how all of the other people who don't like the game didn't buy it and didn't leave a review.

Some of the posters here don't seem to understand that their opinions aren't universal and that a lot of players actually like this game, even if we think that it could be improved in some ways.

What, exactly is absud about it? 7’s sales numbers are low compared to 6. The most likely assumption is that a LOT of the playerbase looked at the new mechanics and NOPE and didn’t buy it.

It's somewhat puzzling to me why some have a hard time accepting Civ7 is a flop, when there's plenty of hard evidence for this assertion. From layoffs at Firaxis at a time when they're working around the clock to turn around the game's fortunes, to "mixed" reviews, to very poor community engagement. I mean... It's Friday afternoon in the Americas and Friday evening in Europe. You know how many streams/views Civ7 has on Twitch at the moment? Four (4) streams and two (2) viewers. Three of the four streams are streaming to nobody. The lucky fourth one has 2 viewers. On Youtube, Ursa Ryan's Civ7 videos only get 10-13k views. His Civ6 videos? Over 40k.

Yes, Civ7 has a small following and that's great. But the key word here is "small". Far too small to make the game economically viable long term. The game is selling far too few copies (3.3k/week according to Gamalytic) to be profitable and the future for DLC revenues is bleak. For the good of the franchise, Firaxis should take the L and start working on Civ8 in my opinion. If they insist in pushing this poorly received installment with its murky at best reputation for the next few years thought its planned life cycle, they will endanger the IP itself and leave themselves vulnerable to competitors. Some things you just can't fix.

The strength of the denial is amazing. A large fraction of the playerbase disliked it enough not to even bother with it. Of those that did, half disliked the game enough to leave a negative review

It’s a debacle.

 

[Siddorm]

I have not seen "denial" or a "corporate agenda" in this thread. The it's-not-as-bad-as-you-say comments have been valid.

 

[Kwami]

About 3000 daily players seem to like the game, which is not evidence of universal interest.

No, the peak player counts usually hit more than 6,000 and far, far more than 6,000 play every day.

 

[Kev1916]

You're the one who questioned it. You posted, stressing the importance of "almost". It's your reply I was interested in!

Talking about the current reviews is moving the goalposts, nor is it something I care about defending. The reviews are what they are. People making them seem worse to push a narrative? Now that's worth pushing backl

“almost universally disliked game ”

When current player numbers playing the latest/newest “civ” are less than 10% of the Older games being played.

That close enough to come close to almost?

Anyway serves no purpose debating a word, my bad and apologies to your teeth

 

[Siptah]

No, the peak player counts usually hit more than 6,000 and far, far more than 6,000 play every day.

To be fair, the estimated number of active players on playtracker sank from around 120k (basically stable June-August) to 87k this week. But the poster you quoted apparently doesn‘t know what hyperbole is or how to avoid it.

Let‘s hope the September patch with new map scripts brings more players in.

 

[mbbcam]

I haven't been following this thread closely, so apologies if I'm repeating something posted earlier, but I just noticed that @Marbozir put out a video a couple of weeks ago commenting on the fact that Firaxis were looking to recruit a new head of product:

I also noticed that @Marbozir is presently making videos of games with Civ 5. Make of that what you will!

 

[Gorbles]

“almost universally disliked game ”

When current player numbers playing the latest/newest “civ” are less than 10% of the Older games being played.

That close enough to come close to almost?

Not really, no. But if you don't want to discuss it, I respect that. The less semantics, the better

I also noticed that @Marbozir is presently making videos of games with Civ 5. Make of that what you will!

Civ VI is dead?!?

(sorry)

 

[kotpeter]

I believe we'll reach above 40% positive reviews again soon. A significant portion of negative reviews arrived during the sale, and Civ 7 is still not easy for casual players to get going and enjoy.

In fact, I just started a series of posts on reddit to explain civ 7's mechanics in order to help new and learning players understand the game better. The first post is about expansion and happiness.

By the way, we currently have 42% positive reviews on steam. The game didn't get better; but the spike of negative reviews that we had during the sale is more than 30 days ago now, so the current score better reflects the perception of the game against those who bought it and played it long enough. Like many people emphasized, it obviously doesn't take into account those who didn't purchase the game at all.

 

[Smegger213]

By the way, we currently have 42% positive reviews on steam. The game didn't get better; but the spike of negative reviews that we had during the sale is more than 30 days ago now, so the current score better reflects the perception of the game against those who bought it and played it long enough. Like many people emphasized, it obviously doesn't take into account those who didn't purchase the game at all.

Where does the 42% positive review figure come from? Because on my Steam, that number is different.
If I select English language reviews, I get 49% positive reviews out of 29275 reviews. But if I select all languages, it goes down to 47% positive reviews out of 46911 reviews.

Edit. Never mind. I just noticed that the 42% figure is positive reviews over the last 30 days.
I suppose that makes it look far worse, if over the last 30 days, only 42% said it was any good.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

It's somewhat puzzling to me why some have a hard time accepting Civ7 is a flop, when there's plenty of hard evidence for this assertion. From layoffs at Firaxis at a time when they're working around the clock to turn around the game's fortunes, to "mixed" reviews, to very poor community engagement. I mean... It's Friday afternoon in the Americas and Friday evening in Europe. You know how many streams/views Civ7 has on Twitch at the moment? Four (4) streams and two (2) viewers. Three of the four streams are streaming to nobody. The lucky fourth one has 2 viewers. On Youtube, Ursa Ryan's Civ7 videos only get 10-13k views. His Civ6 videos? Over 40k.

Yes, Civ7 has a small following and that's great. But the key word here is "small". Far too small to make the game economically viable long term. The game is selling far too few copies (3.3k/week according to Gamalytic) to be profitable and the future for DLC revenues is bleak. For the good of the franchise, Firaxis should take the L and start working on Civ8 in my opinion. If they insist in pushing this poorly received installment with its murky at best reputation for the next few years thought its planned life cycle, they will endanger the IP itself and leave themselves vulnerable to competitors. Some things you just can't fix.

A flop would be a total failure; a dead game. Civ VII is neither a total failure nor a dead game. Firaxis would not be releasing monthly updates for a flop. Being rated mixed on Steam is not a flop. Civ VI was rated mixed for a very long time, did that make Civ VI a flop? How do you figure it has very poor community engagement? There is constant engagement about Civ VII on here, Discord, Reddit, YouTube & even Facebook. Average view count Ursa Ryan's his past 15 Civ VII videos: 18.9k. Average view count of his past 15 Civ VI videos: 27.1k. Not as bad as you're making out.

 

[Krajzen]

Gotta say that I have been reading on the history of Southeast Asia in the recent weeks, and in this particular region civ switching and insistence on lack of persistent cultures and identities across history feels unconvicing as hell to me... Premodern Vietnamese, Khmer, Chams, Burmese, Mon, Malays or Tai peoples (okay, as a whole in this case) sure as hell seem to have had pretty damn long continuity of cultural practices and some sense of "their" people and land, and distinction from other groups, and claims of legacy of older dynasties. The more I read of the academic history of the region the LESS positive I am about civ switching in terms of historicity, whereas I suppose it "should" be the opposite. Sure it was not modern 20th century nationalism but there is something deeply suspicipus for me in this anti essentialist revisionism going all the way into the opposite direction (as oft happens with revisionisms).

18th century Burmese and Vietnamese had strong enough identities to frame their kingdoms as those "of Burmese/Vietnamese race", invoking glory of past centuries and writing chronicles "of Burmese/Vietnamese race" and consciously embarking on campaigns of cultural assimilation (or basically ethnic cleansing) of Mon or Cham or Khmer or whoever, and both of them fought wars against Siam who totally were mass mobilized in the name of "Tai race". All this sure as hell won't make it any easier for me to feel emotional connection and an intuitive narrative with Khmer casually becoming Vietnamese and then Siamese.

By the way, there is a massive degree of archeological continuity between neolithic Cambodia, bronze age Cambodia, Funan, Chenla and Angkor; and of anthropological continuity of customs of post-Angkor Khmer people between 16th century and modern era. So why exactly can't I play as Khmer from ancient to the modern era, if it's pretty much their history IRL? Sure, not every culture has such long continuity, but also not every culture has a melting pot nature of say English.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Gotta say that I have been reading on the history of Southeast Asia in the recent weeks.

What are you reading here? There's a fair degree of recasting of Southeast Asian history in the 1920s, with Luang Wichit and the desire to 'build' a Thai racial identity out of a more diverse (Lanna, Shan, Isan) group, a unity that is then deployed against claims in Cambodia and Malaysia. Earlier sources (the Chiang Mai Chronicle, the Camadevivamsa) posit a religious, not racial/ethnic split. In fact, if we look at ethnonyms in the area, from "khonmeuang" to "thai" to "kinh", it's often "city" people or "free farmers" versus "lawa," "kha". In island Southeast Asia, there's a similar tension between Europeans and locals over racial identification.

I might point you to Thongchai Winichakul, Anthony Reid, David Chandler, Charles Hirschmann (Anderson uses H and Thongchai in his chapter on the region in Imagined Communities). Emmerson as well on the naming of the region.

 

[Crashdummy]

It's somewhat puzzling to me why some have a hard time accepting Civ7 is a flop, when there's plenty of hard evidence for this assertion. From layoffs at Firaxis at a time when they're working around the clock to turn around the game's fortunes, to "mixed" reviews, to very poor community engagement. I mean... It's Friday afternoon in the Americas and Friday evening in Europe. You know how many streams/views Civ7 has on Twitch at the moment? Four (4) streams and two (2) viewers. Three of the four streams are streaming to nobody. The lucky fourth one has 2 viewers. On Youtube, Ursa Ryan's Civ7 videos only get 10-13k views. His Civ6 videos? Over 40k.

Yes, Civ7 has a small following and that's great. But the key word here is "small". Far too small to make the game economically viable long term. The game is selling far too few copies (3.3k/week according to Gamalytic) to be profitable and the future for DLC revenues is bleak. For the good of the franchise, Firaxis should take the L and start working on Civ8 in my opinion. If they insist in pushing this poorly received installment with its murky at best reputation for the next few years through its planned life cycle, they will endanger the IP itself and leave themselves vulnerable to competitors. Some things you just can't fix.

I honestly think some people dont want to see the reality because they are too involved in a sentimental way. They WANT Civ 7 to be a huge success and cant accept that it was the opposite