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Well, yes. The descending curve has stopped and vicky3 has kept almost the same players (-3) than the week before.
We will see if Vicky3 remains a top GSG with more of 10,000 24 peak players in the following weeks.
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I was expecting Vic3 to plateau without the patch. But even with the patch, it's lower than other PDX games, or at best in the same range so it did not really improve compared to my expectations.
Looking forward to next Wednesday^^
Looking forward to next Wednesday^^
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This Wednesday aggregate figure is down -13,180 24h Peak Players for all GSG and -3,381 for PDX (see OP for chart with trends).
The most played GSG (>10,000) lose players (-9,730) this week except for Hearts of Iron IV (+179). The most players lost are for Sid Meier's Civilization VI (-5,320) followed by Victoria 3 (-2,218). Victoria 3 after patch 1.11 restarts its downdward trend one week before its 60d anniversary. If it continues this trend it may disappear from the top GSG next week. Knights of Honor II has lost players and this second week after release has 4,550 players (-640). Terra Invicta from its release the 26th of September has gone from 4,844 players to 945 players this week, with a peak of 7,979 players the 5/10/2022. The formula to achieve many peak players remains elusive for new GSG.
I:R has 451 24h Peak players this week (-53).
The most played GSG (>10,000) lose players (-9,730) this week except for Hearts of Iron IV (+179). The most players lost are for Sid Meier's Civilization VI (-5,320) followed by Victoria 3 (-2,218). Victoria 3 after patch 1.11 restarts its downdward trend one week before its 60d anniversary. If it continues this trend it may disappear from the top GSG next week. Knights of Honor II has lost players and this second week after release has 4,550 players (-640). Terra Invicta from its release the 26th of September has gone from 4,844 players to 945 players this week, with a peak of 7,979 players the 5/10/2022. The formula to achieve many peak players remains elusive for new GSG.
I:R has 451 24h Peak players this week (-53).
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Thanks. I don't know if the patch was disappointing but indeed number of peak players went lower after that. And lower than Stellaris or CK3
Seeing as almost all the big GSG games lost players this week, it's hard to know if the reason for this loss of players is real life or a not good enough patch. End of the year is a busy time, quite probably not the best moment to start a new game of GSG. And after a new patch with lots of changes, more small patches coming continuosly, and another big one coming soonish (and that now we know will come after the holidays), I could understand if players stopped playing vic 3 for a while.
So, It could be argued that the decrease on players is due to many players stopped playing last week and probably this one too, and that next week we should see an increase of hours played as holidays are coming.
But, if we don't see an increase on the number of players during the holidays, it's definitely a reason to start worrying.
So, It could be argued that the decrease on players is due to many players stopped playing last week and probably this one too, and that next week we should see an increase of hours played as holidays are coming.
But, if we don't see an increase on the number of players during the holidays, it's definitely a reason to start worrying.
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This week marks 60 days after the release of Victoria 3. The game is holding at 10,225 24h Peak Players this week (-1,139). All the other GSG win players this week: Civ VI (+3534), HOI IV (+2878), EUIV (+2094), CK III (+2087), Civ V (+1619), Total War: Warhammer III (+736) and Stellaris (+465).
I:R also wins players this week (+38) to a total 489
I:R also wins players this week (+38) to a total 489
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I'm seriously bummed that there won't be more done on this. I've played it far more than CK3 and I did really enjoy it while I played. Like most games I set it aside for a while, then more when other games proved fun. So I haven't played in a long time. Therefore
I blame myself.
I blame myself.
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Thinking about your second question (quote below), we can also look at how active users of potential competitors responded to the release of knights of honour II sovereign.
1. The release of Knights of Honour II Sovereign did not impact in a noticeable way the active users on any of these three competitors, whose active users instead followed their pre-existing trends.
2. Knights of Honour II Sovereign active users at release was smaller than 2 of the 3 competitors but not insignificantly so, it had 5,000 users at release roughly one-third of EUIV (17,000) and CKIII (14,000), and roughly the same as Medieval Total War II (4,000).
I find this result surprising, as prior to investigating this I would have thought Knights of Honour II Sovereign release would have reduced the amount at least one of the competitors was played. I would not understate the depth of peak daily users as a proxy for this. My understanding is that peak daily users is the maximum value of concurrent users over the day, so it should go down if either: I) A portion of users do not play the game when the competing game is released or II) Users play the game less when the competing game is released reducing the number of concurrent users at any one time.
I think we should investigate further how effective changes in peak active users of a game in the immediate aftermath of the release of a potential competitor is as a measure for the closeness of competition between games.
The link to the comparison is below you should set zoom to 1 month (sorry I have not directly copied the graph over but am away and phone is playing up):
The closest competitors to Knights of Honour II Sovereign I can think of are: EUIV, Crusader Kings III and Medieval Total War II. If we compare peak daily users of the three titles we can see that:
1. The release of Knights of Honour II Sovereign did not impact in a noticeable way the active users on any of these three competitors, whose active users instead followed their pre-existing trends.
2. Knights of Honour II Sovereign active users at release was smaller than 2 of the 3 competitors but not insignificantly so, it had 5,000 users at release roughly one-third of EUIV (17,000) and CKIII (14,000), and roughly the same as Medieval Total War II (4,000).
I find this result surprising, as prior to investigating this I would have thought Knights of Honour II Sovereign release would have reduced the amount at least one of the competitors was played. I would not understate the depth of peak daily users as a proxy for this. My understanding is that peak daily users is the maximum value of concurrent users over the day, so it should go down if either: I) A portion of users do not play the game when the competing game is released or II) Users play the game less when the competing game is released reducing the number of concurrent users at any one time.
I think we should investigate further how effective changes in peak active users of a game in the immediate aftermath of the release of a potential competitor is as a measure for the closeness of competition between games.
The link to the comparison is below you should set zoom to 1 month (sorry I have not directly copied the graph over but am away and phone is playing up):
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We expect instant results and this may not be the case for a small audience games like GSG.
First, players need to buy the game and learn it. Without massive marketing, many potential players will take time to know there is a game they can enjoy. Then, not everyone can or want spend the money to buy it on release if it is a new franchise and they wait for reviews and let’s play videos. Finally, to appear in Wednesday 24h peak players it requires commitment beyond the weekend casual play.
I believe players fall in love with a game and it is difficult for them to switch to new games when they are hooked.
For example, some PDX players tried Vic3, specially HOI IV, EuIV and CK3 but their numbers are back to the previous week from the release of Victoria 3. These players were looking for a new game but were not enticed and went back to their loved ones. Vic3 players are primeraly a new set of players.
I believe the high entry barriers due to learning the games is the reason for the high retention but also the low count of players.
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In other words I think you are suggesting that in the short-term a new game either: I) Brings its own audience or II) Sucks audience from GSG generally (and not mainly those games which appear most similar to it).
Do we have strong reason to suspect this maps over to longer-term competition between the games?
E.g. A devoted EUIV picks up Vicky 3 on release but then switches rapidly back to the game they love and only several months later when they feel quite bored (and after Vicky 3 has had several updates) do they truly try the game and then fall-in-love with it. While the current Vicky 3 players are disengaged PDX gamers who return just for the Vicky 3 launch picks the game up then and has no other game he loves pulling his attention away. In this case the importance of product similarity is understated by the short-term analysis.
We know picking up audience over the long-term is important to PDX titles, consider HOIV where 24h peak players grew from 12,000 in January 2017 to 45,000 in January 2022.
Though I think investigating competition between games over a longer-period is harder then looking at where new players come from right-after a game releases.
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I think you'll find it difficult to prove or disprove that hypothesis from the data being examined. As an anecdote, I have hundreds of hours in CK3, Stellaris, and Vic 3. But I also play other games. I put a few hundred hours into CK3 when 1.7 came out, but I dropped out of the active player count for a couple weeks before Vic 3 released and I showed up in that statistic. That wouldn't appear in your data as a cannibalization loss.
While I imagine some players might have gone immediately from one GSG to another (especially on release week or patch week), I think it is far more likely that a significant chunk of the playerbase is not playing GSG non-stop every week, which is going to distort your numbers. If it was at all possible to find the unique player numbers for a given week/month, then it might be more conclusive (and I suspect that's why Triumph Studios mentioned they use MAU and hinted that PDX probably does the same). Because when you see 1000 active players for a game on each day of the week, there's a big difference between 1000 diehard fans dedicated to playing that one game daily and the case where 300 of those thousand might play on Monday only and a different group of 300 come in to keep the numbers up on Tuesday to supplement 700 diehard fans.
Anecdotally, I get the impression that the majority (or at least a plurality) of PDX players come back and play a couple campaigns every time a content patch is released and then take a break and play other stuff while waiting for the next patch. And I don't think it's a stretch to project that onto competitor games as well (like Civ 6, which had a boost with the leader DLC that came out).
But it will be tough to really know for sure without unique player counts.
(I'm unfamiliar with HOI, does that game have a strong multiplayer scene or are those mostly singleplayer campaigns? I wonder how many of the dedicated players for a GSG are playing multiplayer vs singleplayer, since multiplayer is what usually drives consistent retention in other genres.)
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Given that there are always limitations on data availability, what is the substantiality of this criticism?
The crucial assumption is that changes in 24h peak active users in a proxy for changes in the active user base.
Lets try gaining insight on this by considering a relatively straightforward hypothesis: Does the release of a sequel reduce users on the prequel game more than other games in that category.
The chart below compares 24h peak daily active users of CK III, CK II, EUIV and Medieval Total War. There is a clear downwards slope in CK II users after the release, which then stabilizes. By contrast EUIV sees a slight dip after the release, but then rapidly regains its previous user base.
A second example. The chart below compares 24h peak daily active users of Civ VI, Civ V, Total War Rome II and EUIV. Prior to the release of Civ VI, Civ V had a flat trend-line to its DAUs, with the release of Civ VI there was an immediate reduction in Civ V DAUs and the trend-line has been downward sloping ever since. The trend-line on EUIV DAUs has been positive since the release and Rome II seems to have a very slight negative trend-line, which existed prior to release as well.
In conclusion, comparing the 24h peak active users does suggest in the case of Civ VI and CK III, the release of the sequel was associated with a longer-term reduction in the users of the prequel then other games in the series.
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I have always been in favour of hours per user rather than peak players or unique players.
Unique players gives a measure of reach that is good for publicity firms that want to hit as many unique users as possible to sell their products. Hence the utility of this measure for sites like youtube.
For grand strategy games and as a user, my quest is to find out a game that encapsulates the same experience when I read a good book or I played CIV I back in the days. Hours and hours of fun, deep, engaging experience.
For each one of us this experience is provided by different inputs. Like books, there are different themes, styles and audiences as we have CK, HOI, EU, Stellaris, I:R, CIV, Total War, etc… Except for I:R, all are best sellers. Different styles, but the same genre, GSG.
My interest as a user is not how many units they sell or how many unique users they get every month but how many hours they suck players in, because that is what I want from a game.
Using peak players numbers over time is the best approximation to the suckers a game is able to get.
DLCs, Expansions, Competitors and Sequels affect the numbers of peak players over time, so we need to know about them to explain the trends on players numbers.
I:R with no DLCs, expansions, sequels or competitors in the last year, is a game that keeps 500 peak players enticed week after week after 3 years. It is not a best-seller but in the GSG genre is a good one as the opening chart proves.
Lacking the median hours per player, the comparison of peak players over time, accounting for DLC, Expansions, sequels and competitors is the closest way to assess fidelity. I should be doing this for all GSG not only the best sellers, but I am guilty of comercial success bias.
Unique players gives a measure of reach that is good for publicity firms that want to hit as many unique users as possible to sell their products. Hence the utility of this measure for sites like youtube.
For grand strategy games and as a user, my quest is to find out a game that encapsulates the same experience when I read a good book or I played CIV I back in the days. Hours and hours of fun, deep, engaging experience.
For each one of us this experience is provided by different inputs. Like books, there are different themes, styles and audiences as we have CK, HOI, EU, Stellaris, I:R, CIV, Total War, etc… Except for I:R, all are best sellers. Different styles, but the same genre, GSG.
My interest as a user is not how many units they sell or how many unique users they get every month but how many hours they suck players in, because that is what I want from a game.
Using peak players numbers over time is the best approximation to the suckers a game is able to get.
DLCs, Expansions, Competitors and Sequels affect the numbers of peak players over time, so we need to know about them to explain the trends on players numbers.
I:R with no DLCs, expansions, sequels or competitors in the last year, is a game that keeps 500 peak players enticed week after week after 3 years. It is not a best-seller but in the GSG genre is a good one as the opening chart proves.
Lacking the median hours per player, the comparison of peak players over time, accounting for DLC, Expansions, sequels and competitors is the closest way to assess fidelity. I should be doing this for all GSG not only the best sellers, but I am guilty of comercial success bias.
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Interesting, I thought you were doing this to understand the nature of competition for PDX games. So competition is very different if Vicky 3 is only sucking users from other PDX games then if it is sucking users symmetrically from GSG games or generating its own users. And as customers we would care about how competition works for PDX games, as for example it would impact their investment decisions and pricing structures.
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The objective of this thread is to compare I:R performance with other GSG.
To be able to compare you need to take into account expansions, DLCs, mods, competitors and sequels, thus it is also a watch post for PDX performance compared to all GSG.
But ultimately my objective is to spot great games I like to play.
I was thinking about a new metric that games score points by having 24h peak players stable numbers for many months. A game with thousand of players in the first week of release or DLC but then losing half of its players after two weeks will score less than a game that keeps stable player base for long time. To make it independent of player numbers the ratio should be something like score = average 24h player numbers / average high peak player numbers. Average peak high peak player numbers = sum of distinctive peak player numbers / number of peaks.
This score will not be affected by long term trends as it uses the average of players. However, long term trends are relevant and this score does not take into account time.
For now, the best I can come up is this chart. My only critique is that I am only focusing in the best sellers.
To be able to compare you need to take into account expansions, DLCs, mods, competitors and sequels, thus it is also a watch post for PDX performance compared to all GSG.
But ultimately my objective is to spot great games I like to play.
I was thinking about a new metric that games score points by having 24h peak players stable numbers for many months. A game with thousand of players in the first week of release or DLC but then losing half of its players after two weeks will score less than a game that keeps stable player base for long time. To make it independent of player numbers the ratio should be something like score = average 24h player numbers / average high peak player numbers. Average peak high peak player numbers = sum of distinctive peak player numbers / number of peaks.
This score will not be affected by long term trends as it uses the average of players. However, long term trends are relevant and this score does not take into account time.
For now, the best I can come up is this chart. My only critique is that I am only focusing in the best sellers.
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Full jackpot this week, GSG increase their player numbers to reach 322,031 Peak Players. This is due to the Holiday period and the current offers.
The weekly increases are around 4% (EUIV) to 27% (CIV VI) and everything in between:
I:R increases its 24h peak players to 693 (+204) a whopping +42% due to the release of the fantastic Invictus Mod update the last 25/12/2022.
The weekly increases are around 4% (EUIV) to 27% (CIV VI) and everything in between:
I:R increases its 24h peak players to 693 (+204) a whopping +42% due to the release of the fantastic Invictus Mod update the last 25/12/2022.
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My instinct is that games with a stronger discount saw larger rises and that the lower the price of the game (including DLCs) the stronger this effect was.
The CIV VI platinum and anthology bundles have a 91% and 86% discounts respectively; whereas the EUIV starter, empire and ultimate bundles are only on 65%, 57% and 56% discounts. To put this in absolute terms, CIV VI's platinum and anthology bundles cost £13.5 and £25.5 respectively, whereas; EUIV's Starter, Empire and Ultimate bundles cost £28.5, £99.5 and £146.5.
Interestingly, Imperator's Centurion bundle had a 76% discount, costing £13.3, so a discount in-between Civ VI's and EUIV's with an overall price cheaper than Civ VI's.
The CIV VI platinum and anthology bundles have a 91% and 86% discounts respectively; whereas the EUIV starter, empire and ultimate bundles are only on 65%, 57% and 56% discounts. To put this in absolute terms, CIV VI's platinum and anthology bundles cost £13.5 and £25.5 respectively, whereas; EUIV's Starter, Empire and Ultimate bundles cost £28.5, £99.5 and £146.5.
Interestingly, Imperator's Centurion bundle had a 76% discount, costing £13.3, so a discount in-between Civ VI's and EUIV's with an overall price cheaper than Civ VI's.
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First update for the year 2023. The overall GSG 24h peak players have decreased a bit from the Xmas peak but still is over 300,000 players (-2.2%) with PDX losing a bit more overall players since last week (-6.1%).
The top played games have all decreased 24h peak players. The game that has lost the most players being Victoria 3 with a decrease of 1,241 players from last week (-11%). On the other side, the game that has lost less players is Europa Universalis IV with a decrease of 88 players (-0,5%).
Imperator: Rome is on a strike with an increase of 36 24h Peak players since last week (+5%). The update of Invictus plus the video from Ludi's World about Imperator (featuring Invictus) are pumping up the numbers for it.
The top played games have all decreased 24h peak players. The game that has lost the most players being Victoria 3 with a decrease of 1,241 players from last week (-11%). On the other side, the game that has lost less players is Europa Universalis IV with a decrease of 88 players (-0,5%).
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Just be aware that
Peak numbers != total numbers played that day, nor total playerbase.
Daily numbers can be anything any multiplier of that value depending on session length and stickiness of a game, where a supercasual game were people play for 5 minutes a day may have a Daily Active Users at 250 times the PCCU reported, or a game where people play for 24 hours straight be a straight 1 to 1.
Peak numbers != total numbers played that day, nor total playerbase.
Daily numbers can be anything any multiplier of that value depending on session length and stickiness of a game, where a supercasual game were people play for 5 minutes a day may have a Daily Active Users at 250 times the PCCU reported, or a game where people play for 24 hours straight be a straight 1 to 1.