King Flevance
Deity
I hope this upcoming patch is a good one. Hopefully, we see some big updates soon.
IntelligentDisk
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2025
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The data certainly reflects the age demographics well!
The fact that nothing has really been said about it so far makes me think it'll be on the smaller side again.
GeneralZift
Professional
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- 1,351
Children will be a factor but I'm not sure how large. Many years ago kids were like 90% of the gaming market, so if you looked at something like Civilization, it probably still had a good portion of kids.
Nowadays child audience has concentrated themselves in multiplayer and competitive games, or AAA single player titles. 12 year old Timmy is probably playing Fortnite and not Civilization VII.
The internet and playing with friends has shifted the dynamics for younger audiences and video games. This is why we see such a big focus on co-op and online aspects coming into games - Minecraft recently rebranded themselves to "Minecraft Play With Friends!" on mobile, or something to that effect.
Children also heavily prefer free games. Civ7 falls under a £70 category, and probably won't top a lot of kids' wishlists if we're talking AAA titles, from their parents.
With school season you might see teachers and students shift back to work. But I think the effect is not so drastic, because a lot of people will work and study during the day, the still go home and play their game for a couple of hours.
The proportion of Civilization VII players who are also students who completely put their game down on the start of school season and don't pick it up at all until the holidays is probably pretty small.
The biggest factor for these types of things is Holiday play. Now this one is more considerable because it affects the majority of the population - you should be seeing a rise in players as we come towards the Christmas season.
Nowadays child audience has concentrated themselves in multiplayer and competitive games, or AAA single player titles. 12 year old Timmy is probably playing Fortnite and not Civilization VII.
The internet and playing with friends has shifted the dynamics for younger audiences and video games. This is why we see such a big focus on co-op and online aspects coming into games - Minecraft recently rebranded themselves to "Minecraft Play With Friends!" on mobile, or something to that effect.
Children also heavily prefer free games. Civ7 falls under a £70 category, and probably won't top a lot of kids' wishlists if we're talking AAA titles, from their parents.
With school season you might see teachers and students shift back to work. But I think the effect is not so drastic, because a lot of people will work and study during the day, the still go home and play their game for a couple of hours.
The proportion of Civilization VII players who are also students who completely put their game down on the start of school season and don't pick it up at all until the holidays is probably pretty small.
The biggest factor for these types of things is Holiday play. Now this one is more considerable because it affects the majority of the population - you should be seeing a rise in players as we come towards the Christmas season.
Trav'ling Canuck
Deity
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- Feb 7, 2018
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- 3,506
You can see the number of positive and negative reviews left by day over however many days you want to look. You need to calculate the % by hand, though.
Schools started do seem to show in player counts.
Civilization was always an "ADD version" of wargames where players attention span was enough only for an video game adaptation, I myself got into the series as an youngling with original Civilization.
Civilization was always an "ADD version" of wargames where players attention span was enough only for an video game adaptation, I myself got into the series as an youngling with original Civilization.
Kaan Boztepe
Prince
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2018
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- 442
all the civilization releases we have steam charts to follow have a similar life pattern. granted civ7 is a little bit worse off but then again it was a multiple platform release with a triple-A price tag. we will not know whether it is a success or not until the major expansions are out. all the little patches and leader content releases are just band-aids
Around the time Civ5 was released, industry data was showing that the average gamer was over 30, with PC gamers being a few years older than gamers across all platforms. It's been a pretty consistent trend and now it's no more surprising to see a 45 year old gamer than to see a 15 year old gamer.
With the core audience of Civ, children are probably mainly a factor in the sense that many Civ players are parents, which limits available gaming time!
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
This is interesting, because about 20 years earlier, the organizations concerned with miniatures gaming (HMGS, GAMA) noted that the average historical miniatures player was approaching 40 years' average age, but the overall miniatures hobby had a much lower average age for a single reason: the advent of fantasy miniatures players who were all much younger and much more numerous: Warhammer, D&D and their ilk had changed a hobby that since the 1970s had been largely purely historical gamers and manufacturers into a much more diverse (and larger) group. One result was that the biggest historical miniatures convention, HISTORICON, started running games for children based on fantasy or science fantasy scenarios, partly to keep the kids busy while their parents were playing historical games, and partly to introduce new younger gamers to the delights of historical gaming.
queenpea
Emperor
Last night, Sunday, September 21, peaked at 8791 players. This is the first time (I believe) that the weekly peak has been below 9k on Steam. Reviews have ticked slightly more negative overall, standing at 47.20% positive.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I think a lot of players don't start new game waiting for the patch.
I think for a game that has the feel of „still being in development“, the current rate of patches isn’t motivating to play at all - especially if there are minor patches in between. It basically means to wait a few days after a major patch (once mods are updated), then play a few games to see the changes, then wait for the next one or two months. I know beta patches are probably out of the question for FXS if they want to keep up multiplatform (and they should, as they committed to it). So, maybe have small patches more often in between the bigger ones? It’s probably more work logistics-wise to have a patch every two weeks, but it would project the idea that civ 7 is a game that is worked on heavily much better.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I think they need some checkpoint to mark the game as complete and the second part of RtR is a good one. But I don't think this patch will be able to deliver both big items promised earlier - age-specific victories and hotseat, providing this patch is going to include significant map generation changes.
After this checkpoint they could change the patches frequency.
Steam still shows 49% for me.
queenpea
Emperor
I use SteamDB--not sure what the discrepancy is about.
Has a patch date been announced? I think the drop off in players is just an extension of an overall trend -- declining concurrent players over time, and as we move into the school year and fall, people have less time to play as they did during the summer months.
stealth_nsk
Deity
No, but everyone expect it tomorrow, especially considering RtR was promised to be released till the end of September.
Kmart_Elvis
King
I feel seen. Yes, this is pretty much me since April. FXS releases patch with a lot of changes, then start up a new game and then abandon it. FXS releases new patch, start a new game then abandon it. I'm actually pretty happy with a lot of the changes, but i don't feel the game is "there" yet.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Given that Tuesdays and Thursdays are favorite days for releases of everything game-related, they've only got three dates left in September to get RtR out 'on time'.
queenpea
Emperor
I don’t think there is any realistic way to estimate the number of players who are aware of a patch that hasn’t yet been announced or publicized but assume a patch is coming out because they remember the September date from an old road map and are therefore waiting to start a new game.
stealth_nsk
Deity
Yes, but we're in a thread for baseless speculations. It's a totally normal statement here.
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