What happened to our playerbase?

drakd · Jul 25, 2014

Akado said: ↑

1) Satire. It's a form of humor.

Moving on, do you know why people find statistics to be misleading or "false"? Because there are statistics that can imply support of any conclusion. Take the example of Goat Simulator that krylo provided. You could say "They lost 93% of their playerbase! This is a disturbing trend!" Or you could say "Goat Simulator's player loss is only 10% of the player loss that Terraria encountered, so this is an incredible success!"

Are both factual conclusions from the evidence? Sure, but they paint very different pictures. You cannot use a single statistic to fully explain a complex situation, it just doesn't work. You have to use multiple statistics and look from different angles, because each one only sheds a single point of light into a dark room.

Also, in terms of %, when you're talking the difference between 90 and 96, that's not a big deal. The number it represents (6000 players or 600 players) can be a big deal, but you're talking about peanuts. Even in grade school, 90% is an A-, and 96% is an A. That's not nearly the difference between a B and an A that people seem to be making it out to be. If you're talking about a 6% difference between 1% and 7%, that's big, but not between 90 and 96.

The reason I personally think Hefeweizen is looking at this way too in-depth, is simply because he's looking for numbers that support a specific argument. I think it's a waste of time, because the argument he's looking to support is meaningless. Who cares if other people enjoy Starbound? I'm here because I enjoy Starbound the game and the Early Access experience / forum soap opera. If 10 people or 10,000 people also like what I like, it doesn't change what I like.

There's also no point in saying that the game is in a troubled state, or whatever he was attempting to say by his statistics. The game is unfinished. When it is finished and released, then we can see if it was "a success" by whatever metric you feel like using (profit, copies sold, sales intake vs expected intake, EBIT, whatever). At the end of the day, though, I personally think it comes down to "Do you enjoy the game?" And I also think Hefeweizen can't see the forest for the trees.
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Ok, you're right. @Maxwell Demonic you are also correct.

Have a good day everyone.

Izzabelle · Jul 25, 2014

PJRamaglia said: ↑

What happened to our playerbase?
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Nothing horrible. The delay in updates means people have decided to stop playing until the next major content pass. As Maxwell pointed out too, this is only 1 statistic that doesn't tell the whole story; like the rotation of unique players in the peak cycle.

Anyways -- I'm closing this thread since the more calmer aspects of the discussion have been left in the dust and it has since only given rise to semantics and tempers.

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What happened to our playerbase?

drakd Void-Bound Voyager

Izzabelle Former Staff

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What happened to our playerbase?

drakd Void-Bound Voyager

Izzabelle Former Staff

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