Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Gorbles]

Individuals do not have a direct perverse incentive to deliberatly inflate review scores the way game critics do

It’s not remotely comparable

Individuals have all sorts of perverse incentives. Politics can inspire a good few examples here. But, off-topic.

Individuals don't have the same incentives, and the standards a publication is (or should be) held to should be greater than any single individual. But they exist.

(though it's also not impossible for a user to be "bought" - this is why Steam factors both gifts and refunds into review status)

Ironically, discrediting any publication based on allegations that surround one, or even a handful, is also itself an off-topic tangent. So it's difficult to explore constructively in this subforum, which is why I'm happy simply making the point that "trust" is a subjective metric that applies to both critical and user reviews.

 

[aelf]

Which makes ditching the core identity of the game even dumber in retrospect, especially with the example of Fallout and Halo in front of you

The point is many among this group would've dropped off (at least at the start) even if there wasn't civ-switching.

Also, to beat the dead horse into the ground, hindsight and all that.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It might be worth repeating (since the discussion here seems to have its own version of the solar and lunar cycles) that my theory is Civ 6 managed to capture a majority of the 4x player population, and to the many who entered the series at that point, it cemented itself as what Civilization is. This group would probably find it even more difficult to stomach any changes than the population who had seen at least a few iterations of Civ.

Well, since Civ6 has the most owners, it clearly took more players than any other game. But I believe setting strict border of 4X games is not working well here. Most of the people are not stick to a particular genre. A lot of people who own Civ6 didn't have any 4X games before it and still enjoyed it.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

The core thing here is what to count as active player (if we consider drop in players, we need to define what we mean by this number). From commercial point of view Firaxis should be interested in metric, which shows players who are ready to buy DLC or expansions. I believe this should be something like "players who played at least once in the last 30 calendar days". And I think in this definition, number of active players is much higher than on launch.

So you believe there have been more unique active players who have played the game in the past 30 days than the first 30/in February? I find that it hard to believe. Wouldn't the peaks each day be much higher than what they are?

I don't have stats, but I'd guess most of the active players on launch had the game on daily, for like 2-3 hours, more on weekends. Let's say that's 20 hours per week (could be much more, but we're looking for average). But after some time, a lot of people dropped to much slower mode, probably not launching game for weeks and playing with large gaps, so this could be like 2 hours per week. Of course, those numbers are totally off the top of my head, but they are within possible, so 10x drop could be caused by reduced play time alone.

That makes sense with those numbers, I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are though. I think the average number of hours played per player each week is closer. It makes sense to me that the first 30 days would've had more unique players due to all the first time players. Let's say the game sold 750,000 in the first 30 days, that would be 750,000 unique players for certain. I don't think there has been more than 750,000 unique players in the past 30 days.

 

[stealth_nsk]

So you believe there have been more unique active players who have played the game in the past 30 days than the first 30/in February? I find that it hard to believe. Wouldn't the peaks each day be much higher than what they are?

As usual, I say we don't have enough information, but that's surely possible. The game has constant flow of sales, so probably we now have 2-3 times more game owners than initially. With a lot of players returning to try patch 1.3.0 and pirate DLC, that wouldn't surprise me at all. But as I said, it's impossible to measure with the data we have.

That makes sense with those numbers, I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are though. I think the average number of hours played per player each week is closer. It makes sense to me that the first 30 days would've had more unique players due to all the first time players. Let's say the game sold 750,000 in the first 30 days, that would be 750,000 unique players for certain. I don't think there has been more than 750,000 unique players in the past 30 days.

We have 7115 average players in the last 30 days (today's data from SteamDB). 30 days are 720 hours. Which means that if average playtime is 2 hours during this period, that's 2.5M players.

The problem is that we don't know whether the average is 2 hours, 20 hours, or 30 minutes. If we look at active players like people on this forum, they clearly play more, but usually there's a "long tail" of users who smash average to the ground.

 

[aelf]

Well, since Civ6 has the most owners, it clearly took more players than any other game. But I believe setting strict border of 4X games is not working well here. Most of the people are not stick to a particular genre. A lot of people who own Civ6 didn't have any 4X games before it and still enjoyed it.

I guess what I was trying to say is the population who would play a 4x game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I guess what I was trying to say is the population who would play a 4x game.

I think this number is around several billions (teen+ world population, minus people with religious prohibitions, strong disabilities and those not having access to hardware). What else could make someone never ever play a 4X game?

EDIT: In marketing terms it's about TAM (Total Addressable Market), SAM (Serviceable Available Market) and SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market). Civ6 grabbed majority of SOM, but it also created a pretty solid base to expand it further, ironically outside of Steam and Steam statistics. EGS free giveaway of full Civ6 game can't be considered as sales or serving the market, because those owners didn't pay anything. But among people who grabbed it were people who never played 4X games before, but thanks to this giveaway they could consider buying Civ7.

 

[Gori the Grey]

What else could make someone never ever play a 4X game?

The amount of time they take and the amount of thinking they involve.

That's not what a lot of people want out of a game.

The historical theme. There are a lot of people who positively dislike history, hard as that may be for Civfanatics to imagine.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The amount of time they take and the amount of thinking they involve.

Questionable take. Most people like to solve interesting puzzles, it's just a question of positioning.

That's not what a lot of people want out of a game.

Most people want some fun out of the game. While I agree that civilization game length is quite a reatricting factor, I don't think there are people to whom it would be an absolute barrier.

The historical theme. There are a lot of people who positively dislike history, hard as that may be for Civfanatics to imagine.

Again, questionable. Active dislike of history is usually some kind of rebellious pose - either against school, or against some group who like it (i.e. nerds) in any case, it's not a hard barrier either.

From marketing perspective bringing those people is not impossible, it's just too expensive.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

1) Civ switching as a sub genre of 4x as implemented in games like humankind and Civ VII has a much lower player cap than conventional "choose your team and stick with them" 4x. Throwing more content and fixes and improvements at the game for nearly a year has only got the game to a quarter of the player base of Civ VI, still lower than Civ V, and the most significant noise generated in the streaming and news communities was about the return of play a Civ from start to finish. So it sounds like they've identified at least the most publicly apparent thing that's put off players and are now moving to address that.

You can't compare Civ VIIs player count to Civ VIs now. You'd have to compare it to Civ VIs player count back then. The past 4 weeks has had 9,568 average peak concurrent players, the same 4 week period for Civ VI at this point in its life cycle had 21,195 average peak concurrent players. So that's around a half. Then you have to factor in what differences there are: different launch platforms, different prices, different launch periods, different sales, different competition, different release state, different reviews/reception. Civ switching isn't as influential as any of these things.

Will also be interesting to see how the period until the next patch in January / February goes. Are more people going to play when they have time off over Christmas? Is the player count going to steadily fizzle away again down to the baseline of 6-7000 concurrent player peaks, or has a new higher baseline been established? Will EU5 drain any of that baseline audience? Next couple of months could be interesting, and next patch will be interesting. Will also be interesting to see how soon these single Civ options come to bear.

There is still going to be a new patch in December I think, along with the second half of Tides of Power (Iceland, Ottomans & Sayyida al Hurra). I think it's almost certain a higher peak than this month will come during the Christmas period, possibly with 1.3.1. January is usually a good month for Civilization on Steam too. February onwards is likely when we will see player counts begin to dip again.

As usual, I say we don't have enough information, but that's surely possible. The game has constant flow of sales, so probably we now have 2-3 times more game owners than initially. With a lot of players returning to try patch 1.3.0 and pirate DLC, that wouldn't surprise me at all. But as I said, it's impossible to measure with the data we have.


We have 7115 average players in the last 30 days (today's data from SteamDB). 30 days are 720 hours. Which means that if average playtime is 2 hours during this period, that's 2.5M players.

The problem is that we don't know whether the average is 2 hours, 20 hours, or 30 minutes. If we look at active players like people on this forum, they clearly play more, but usually there's a "long tail" of users who smash average to the ground.

The game has a constant flow of sales but according to the game ownership estimations it's around another 4000,000 on Steam in the 8 months after the opening 30 day period. If there's 750,000 owners in the opening 30 days that is. So it'd be 1.5 times as many owners now. A lot of players definitely returned to try out the new update & DLC but I don't think it's going to be over 750,000 unique players. We know there wouldn't have been 2.5M unique players in the past 30 days as it hasn't sold that much on Steam. The math makes sense but its not accurate. An argument could be made that the average player is playing more in the past 30 day period now compared to the first 30 day period. Playtracker estimates 154,000 active players.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The game has a constant flow of sales but according to the game ownership estimations it's around another 4000,000 on Steam in the 8 months after the opening 30 day period. If there's 750,000 owners in the opening 30 days that is. So it'd be 1.5 times as many owners now. A lot of players definitely returned to try out the new update & DLC but I don't think it's going to be over 750,000 unique players. We know there wouldn't have been 2.5M unique players in the past 30 days as it hasn't sold that much on Steam. The math makes sense but its not accurate. An argument could be made that the average player is playing more in the past 30 day period now compared to the first 30 day period. Playtracker estimates 154,000 active players.

1. Yes, the math isn't accurate and I said exactly this - we don't know how many hours people play, so we can't say how many of them there are.

2. Personally, I doubt 2.5M number for Steam myself, as I think average playtime is more than 2 hours. But it's area of beliefs and gut senses, not actual data.

3. The estimations of player base from gaming websites are not something to be used as trustworthy source. I recently posted a link about how gamalytics count those numbers and for games where they don't have any insider information, their calculations are worse than something we could count ourselves. Playertracker does have some additional information (as players share their data to it), but on too small playerbase.

 

[itix]

I think this number is around several billions (teen+ world population, minus people with religious prohibitions, strong disabilities and those not having access to hardware). What else could make someone never ever play a 4X game?

You could replace 4X with strategy. I mean, many strategy game players are not playing only one subgenre but are interested in strategy in general.

EDIT: In marketing terms it's about TAM (Total Addressable Market), SAM (Serviceable Available Market) and SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market). Civ6 grabbed majority of SOM, but it also created a pretty solid base to expand it further, ironically outside of Steam and Steam statistics. EGS free giveaway of full Civ6 game can't be considered as sales or serving the market, because those owners didn't pay anything.

Owners didnt pay, but EGS did...

Though many grab free games from Epic, only to play 10 minutes, then discard...

 

[stealth_nsk]

You could replace 4X with strategy. I mean, many strategy game players are not playing only one subgenre but are interested in strategy in general.

Yeah, anyways. I'm just talking that there are no strong borders defining audience. It's usually a gradient defining how hard is to reach people.

Owners didnt pay, but EGS did...

Not sure about the terms between Epic and Firaxis, so I can't say for sure. But most likely yes.

Though many grab free games from Epic, only to play 10 minutes, then discard...

Many don't play at all. But it still enhances the reachability for some people.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

That's for the game. DLC is rated even higher.

Still not enough to tickle recent reviews to "mostly positive", but the changes are strong.

After 6 months of patches updates and millions video reviews, it would be quite appalling for one to buy the game now,
get burned, and leave a downvote... the surprise effect is gone...
If 1000 gamers were given Civ VII for free and give it a feedback, we would have a relatively accurate picture of the
actual tendency.
Or a free weekend with all DLCs for everyone with a Steam account.

The negative reviews are going to be naturally less and less over time as more and more people has over-abundantly clear
what is the general picture at this point. I would never buy a game I know I would never touch, just to leave a negative feedback,
telling the world how stupid I am and that my money was stolen... when everyone knows who's the assassin...


2K has lost invention, surprise.
Teh Gold Rush.
The run to the West, build the first railway to the Pacific coast, and make a unique scenario where Goldminers rush in the Klondike valley
and get scalped by the Indians for killing the beavers on their way...

There's thousands way 2K could go forward.
Ignoring every single alarm me and other fans pointed out every single time doesn't diminish their intelligence.
Their capacity to fly over the clouds.
If they want they can overcome the winds.