43 replies to this topic

[I am]

Approximately .01 % retention of the gamers who were interested enough to download and try MWO. The numbers elude to between .007-.003, but to be fair I bet different people are on at different times of day, resulting in roughly 10,000 players, or .01%.

You can call it a good thing, or a bad thing. I say that's bad, but not as bad as I thought it was. In my humble opinion, had they played their cards differently, they could have 30-40k active players.

Were we right, or is PGI right to ignore the warnings. Guess it depends on your expectations. I wouldn't expect it to get much bigger than it is now though. Smaller, maybe.

I am, on 18 June 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

Just wanted to make the first one, before they become common place. Population counts are dropping, content patches are dripping, and I bet MWO sales are drooping.

Told you so. x 1000

Othello, on 02 July 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

Gamasutra is an online site covering the game making industry.

This article reports that there are 1,000,000+ registered gamers on MWO (people who have downloaded the client and played the game). This brief article covers the role and value of a publisher in game development. It specifically mentions Kelly Zmak, IGP's president, and the MWO game.

summary:

• 1,000,000+ users who downloaded and played at least 1 game.
  
• 490,000+ forum members
  
• ~ 3,000 <===> 7,000 players online (playing at any given time, est. average) based on close beta number and NGNG #79 (start at 49 minutes in)

source: The publishing philosophy behind MechWarrior Online's million-user milestone

[New Day]

I am, on 03 July 2013 - 04:29 AM, said:

Approximately .01 % retention of the gamers who were interested enough to download and try MWO. The numbers elude to between .007-.003, but to be fair I bet different people are on at different times of day, resulting in roughly 10,000 players, or .01%.

You can call it a good thing, or a bad thing. I say that's bad, but not as bad as I thought it was. In my humble opinion, had they played their cards differently, they could have 30-40k active players.

Were we right, or is PGI right to ignore the warnings. Guess it depends on your expectations. I wouldn't expect it to get much bigger than it is now though. Smaller, maybe.

They aren't really dripping money. Phoenix has already made more than the entire Founders program.

[El Bandito]

NamesAreStupid, on 03 July 2013 - 04:37 AM, said:

They aren't really dripping money. Phoenix has already made more than the entire Founders program.

Where did you get the statistics? I would love to make comparisons.

[jozkhan]

Sorry but I just dont buy the 1 Million doctor evil number. Look at the forum users it is currently 490,000-something right?

It has been 480,000-something for MONTHS!

So that either means none of this mystery influx joined the forums at all, or it was one million users many months ago and they forgot to announce it til just now.

It doesnt add up,

ps might be a good idea to remove the total forum users count eh?

[New Day]

El Bandito, on 03 July 2013 - 04:39 AM, said:

Where did you get the statistics? I would love to make comparisons.

Someone who told me. I can't prove, but I believe him.They would never release sales information.
But it makes sense, doesn't it. Founders were mostly older guys, who are careful with their money, but since OB there have probably been an influx of younger players who are probably are not. Not to mention that PGI are total ******** for not allowing you to choose your mechs, but people still bought the Overlord.

[Naja]

That's not how the statistics work. An estimation of 3-7k playing at any given time doesn't mean that that's the total amount of people left playing the game.

[DaZur]

Honestly, I'm not so sure PGI / IGP is not where they've wanted to be all along...

Whether anyone wants to admit it or if anyone believes it for that matter, MW:O is a quasi bastardized open beta, where "we" the community are party to the full spectrum of product development and implementation. As a result the player experience is fraught with huge pendulous swings that, as the constant forum waring bears out... takes it's toll on the player base.

I believe the present "player base" is enough to grind necessary public game metrics, is vested enough to provide sustained support revenue and the fall-out / turn-over is granular enough to keep the player base from dipping as new player induction out paces player-loss.

The long-term goal is to use us as the testing fodder to build / establish a viable product before invoking the marketing blitz to build the long-term player base. In short... We are fulfilling our beta-tester roll whether we know it or not.

[El Bandito]

Just saw at least a dozen of guys registered today. MWO is still cruising.

[stjobe]

Let's go with 5,000 playing at any given moment, just to illustrate the folly of the OP.
Let's also arbitrarily say that the average playing session is 2 hours, and that the average player plays four days a week.

Now, for there to be 5,000 players online at any given moment, the active player base would need to be at least
5,000 * 12 = 60,000 (to cover 24 hours with 2-hour playing sessions),
60,000 * (7/4) = 105,000 (to cover the whole week with four days a week players).

Which means that the number of 5,000 online players requires an *active* player base of at least 105,000, or about 10% of the 1,000,000 that have downloaded the game.

So you see, unless we know the average playing session time, and the average days per week played, we cannot infer anything from a snapshot of concurrent users online. And we don't know diddly about those numbers.

[jozkhan]

10% retention is at the high end of the industry norm

[DaZur]

stjobe, on 03 July 2013 - 05:10 AM, said:

So you see, unless we know the average playing session time, and the average days per week played, we cannot infer anything from a snapshot of concurrent users online. And we don't know diddly about those numbers.

Perfect illustration of why the removal of the idiotic player count was necessary...

I don't have enough wiggly things on the distal region of my arms or legs to enumerate the number of threads I've seen and attempted to demonstrate your point, albeit far less eloquently.

I'd like to retain your services for the next one that pops up if that's alright with you.

[xenoglyph]

I think we should definitely argue about things we know nothing about, because it always ends well.

[DaZur]

Namais, on 03 July 2013 - 05:17 AM, said:

I'm not sure what you'd call the last 10 months of ads on high traffic sites if not a blitz. Rotation placement on the likes of fark/onion do not come cheap.

Nothing more that product / name saturation... They are in the "get us visible" phase...

When they blitz, it'll be more than just some annoying banner or column ads I assure you.

[Victor Morson]

Hurry up and fight those 25 suicide matches that even veterans couldn't salvage! Hurray, Trial 'Mechs!
Once you get done with that you can buy a lot of PPCs! And PPC people! Yeah we have lasers and autocannons, but they suck. Gauss is OK though!

.... how to keep new players.

[DaZur]

xenoglyph, on 03 July 2013 - 05:26 AM, said:

I think we should definitely argue about things we know nothing about, because it always ends well.

New to forum waring?

99.7% of any community forum is nothing more that inane arguing, e-peen measurement and super-charged hyperbole...

[stjobe]

DaZur, on 03 July 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

I'd like to retain your services for the next one that pops up if that's alright with you.

I'd be happy to oblige. I may even waive my customary retainer, since the spurious logic and statistical ineptitude evidenced by the likes of the OP aggravates me disproportionately.

[Appogee]

There are still new players joining.

I know this because Elo keeps putting me on their team, in order to make me lose.

Edited by Appogee, 03 July 2013 - 06:11 AM.

[Karenai]

Appogee, on 03 July 2013 - 06:09 AM, said:

There are still new players joining.

I know this because Elo keeps putting me on their team, in order to make me lose.

You get them, too? It pains me to watch them. They run with arms lock on. Shoot their LRM before the lock is trough and spray and pray with anything else. Love to have them especially when the other team has 8 guys with the same faction and I know those guys but do not know those on my team.
Many new people are trying the game. The more important question is how many pay?
A game like MWO can live healthy of around 10k hard core players who buy more then USD100 worth of stuff in a year.+All the others. It is more imporant to have those stable core player base, so your cash flow does not stop.

[KuruptU4Fun]

NamesAreStupid, on 03 July 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

Someone who told me. I can't prove, but I believe him.They would never release sales information.
But it makes sense, doesn't it. Founders were mostly older guys, who are careful with their money, but since OB there have probably been an influx of younger players who are probably are not. Not to mention that PGI are total ******** for not allowing you to choose your mechs, but people still bought the Overlord.

So you got your information from this person who knows a person huh? Do you know how many people get VD that way?

[DaZur]

Karenai, on 03 July 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

You get them, too? It pains me to watch them. They run with arms lock on. Shoot their LRM before the lock is trough and spray and pray with anything else. Love to have them especially when the other team has 8 guys with the same faction and I know those guys but do not know those on my team.
Many new people are trying the game. The more important question is how many pay?
A game like MWO can live healthy of around 10k hard core players who buy more then USD100 worth of stuff in a year.+All the others. It is more imporant to have those stable core player base, so your cash flow does not stop.

While I appreciate new players can and do cause their share of entertaining situations... Keep in mind they are a potential source of revenue fodder to our weapons and conscripts to our ranks.

Without them it's 10k of rabid hardcore zealots feasting on each other... until the closed ecosystem collapse from the inside out.