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Since nubnub has apparently lost himself in the outback, and also considering our forum membership has doubled in the last two months, I decided to take a crack at some statistics myself. Some of these are useless, some are interesting, some could provide explanations for beta recruitment.
*Note: There is a small percentage of error in one or two of the calculations. I mistakenly used two different total member counts, which equates a difference of 300 members or so. This equates to a .25% error, which is negligible.
**Furthermore, all developer and staff profiles were included in the data-gathering process.
What insight can we gain from Figure 1? Well not since the games announcement and the opening of the forums have we seen such a spike in forum membership*. Until the Game Developers Conference this year, Mechwarrior Online saw a rather steady and consistent growth. That rate began to climb in March and April, and finally saw a spike with the beginning of Operation Inception. Now given the increase in the rate of forum membership right before May 22, one could argue the forums were about to experience a growth spurt regardless. However this does coincide with the developers hinting at a Beta information release the week of May 21st, so that factor must also be noted. Assuming this new growth rate holds constant, Mechwarrior Online could easily be facing approximately 225,000+ users by July 17. At this rate, PGI will need to at least double their forum moderation staff, which they may have already done with the recent addition of IGP members to the Global Moderators list.
*I am well aware that the forum membership numbers at the bottom of the forums do not indicate all the pilots pre-registered for the game. In reality, PGI could be facing numbers double my estimates. Yes, half a million mechwarriors potentially.
I used generic colors for the pie charts...get over it
There is a lot to digest from the three previous figures, so lets start with FIgure 2. I was unable to acquire how many members had a 1 star rating, given the search function simply returned all users on the forum when I searched for members with a star rating of greater than 0**. It also tells us that a very small percentage (.593%) of forum members have ratings. I did find it interesting that 26.7% of the forum members with a 5 star rating had made exactly zero posts on the forums. Someone needs to contact Prosperity Park in the Conspiracy Department.
**Not sure if bug on the search function or not.
Figure 3 was another rehash on the examination of the forum genders. Once again, the results are not entirely surprising. The number of declared female members is 411, or .332%. Approximately 5,304 users declared they were not telling their gender, which is an odd statement to make when you simply could have left the option blank like a majority of forum users. As expected, the forums are largely male dominated.
Figure 4 brings forth the most interesting data in my opinion. In the figure, we find 109,455 forum members have made zero posts in the forums. This is an excessively large portion of the forum membership (88.5%). Furthermore, we find an almost negligible portion of the community is responsible for approximately more than half of all the data posted on the forums. A majority of members up to this point have made less than 100 posts on the forums.
Conclusions
First of all, for those of us dominating the forum content, we strongly need to consider stepping outside more often. Please see this information on the risks of sitting at a computer for too long.
Second, for the hundreds of people demanding the Beta on these forums or wondering why they didn't get one, this should explain some. For the 600 or so users that dominate a majority of the forum, your commitment and membership to the game is devalued to an extent. The numbers show you make up a rather minute portion of the users registered, and since your commitment to the game will probably be unaffected by anything less than an in-game Atlas prancing along rainbows and shooting daisies out its ******, your opinion on the early tests of the game will not reflect the market on a broader scale. A better sample population is to test the users who are relatively new or inexperienced with the game or Mechwarrior itself. While you may be thinking to yourself that you are indeed important because you will pour x amount of dollars into this game, a hundred dollar investment from the top 1000 forum users will only equate to 100,000 in revenue. A large sum to an individual, but according to online sources a game programmer only brings in around 74,000 dollars on average. From a raw financial aspect, the average dedicated user brings in a small sum of money***.
***This does now however take into account other areas a dedicated user is beneficial to a game, such as content generation and the recruitment of new players to the universe.
According to the Entertainment Software Association, 42% of gamers are women. If this study is believed a large market portion is missing. However the true gender background of Mechwarrior Online is tough to estimate since a large percentage of the forum members do not report their gender. Further Reading (GDC article)
Mechwarrior Online is also growing at a healthy pace if forum membership alone is to be considered.
As of finishing this post, the forum membership is currently at 124,297, which is 277 members more than four hours ago and 588 members more than nine hours ago.
***Pardon any mistakes
Edited by Hawkeye 72, 31 May 2012 - 06:07 PM.
. It's kinda the same for all games out there : a very small number of players account for most of the community organisation while the vast majority of players just want to play a little and not invest that much in the game (time I mean, money is another matter).
