Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Do you know which format has the most games, lifetime? Go on, take a guess. The Gameboy? Maybe the PS2? Or was the Amiga the most prolific? No, you’re saying, this is a PC site. It must be the PC. Well, it sort of is, but it’s even weirder than that. Although it’s very nearly (and soon going to be) iOS gaming. In fact, before I reveal the answer, let’s build up to it a little more. Because there are currently more iOS games than NES, Master System, Genesis (Megadrive), SNES, PS1, N64, Saturn, Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, XNA, XBLA, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Dreamcast, DS, and PSP games added together.

No, there really are. And yet there’s one source of games that’s even more prolific. Go on, guess.

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Update: Now with new Nielsen figures on hardcore PC gaming below.

Nielsen’s latest gaming data has been published in the form of The State of the Video Gamer (pdf). Gathering PC gaming data from the “Nielsen MegaPanel”, more than 185,000 PCs were tracked by their system in the US. The findings include that “PC gaming is alive and well,” showing growth, and that females aged 25 and older make up the largest block of PC gamers, responsible for 54.6% of all game play minutes in December 2008.

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Stats about games about stats: what finer way to ring in the new year? GamerDNA and Massively have shoved up some end-of-year research detailing the trending and state of play of the major MMOs, as documented by monitoring X-Fire. Not a perfect sample perhaps, but certainly a reputable one. More importantly, they have graphs! I love a graph, me. Well worth a nose at their detailed and engaging analysis, but some of the more interesting trends are summarised inexpertly below…
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What would the world be like without graphs? Bleak, I dare say. They are like the rainbows of mathematics… So imagine my delight when I discovered a blog dedicated to not simply graphs, but graphs about World Of Warcraft. Look at this beauty, which charts PVP Rank against faction. Cor.

This graph shows that “The Alliance-Horde imbalance (2:1 in our sample) makes it easier for Horde characters to enter PvP BGs. This means that given the same amount of play-time, Horde has less wait time, and thus more practice. This might also encourage forming groups ahead of time (i.e. prefabs) because it doesn’t impact wait times, whereas it would in the Alliance case.”

But you know what? There’s much more.

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While perusing the bazaar of the gaming bizarre over at the eminent GameSetWatch, I happened upon a link to the optimistically named We Can Fix That With Data. To my delight, the site offers an analysis of buffs and nerfs of character classes in World Of Warcraft. And there’s a graph:

Actually, there are loads of graphs. Better still, the comments offer some insight into the foggy science I will now call “nerfology”. There are thoughts from minds such as that of Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green, who observes that no graph can do the complexity of nerfological decision-making true justice:

Yeah, the issue with metrics like this is that you always want more information. Class populations would be interesting, to see how popularity of a class affected balance decisions and vice versa. Also, how do the changes affect different builds, or even different talent trees?

Or indeed, forumite whinging. Speaking of which, I’ll be talking to Eve Online’s development team about nerfing speed later this week.

I should have mentioned this yesterday, but CCP’s full time economist, Dr. Eyjo “DrEyoG” Gudmundsson, has published Eve Online’s first financial report. In it he examines the mineral trade, which is the backbone of all Eve’s production and manufacturing stuff. The Doc explains:

This first Econ Dev Blog (EDB) has given a descriptive overview of the major trends for the market of minerals in EVE. Overall trade quantity and volume has increased dramatically over the last 3 years and the price of minerals has fallen considerably due to increased mining efficiency through better tactics and improved technology. The price formation has also improved showing that price difference between regions is becoming minimal in Empire space and reflects only the time value of moving minerals in low sec. However, smaller population and the risk of piracy in zero-zero space results in less efficient markets with low volumes and great fluctuations in prices given an arbitrage trade opportunity for the brave entrepreneur.

Needless to say, money means graphs:

We here at RPS are enormous fans of graphs, and the more they are seen in relation to games, the better. I should stress at this point that Eve itself has built-in graphs (take that, World of Warcraft), although none of them relate to blowing people up, which is all I do in the game these days. Hopefully a future patch will correlate time over death-mongering, as well as the price of techno-whistles and space-bells.

Meanwhile the economic reports will continue to stress Eve’s complexity as a business-focused game. It’s good for learning how to deal with business problems in the real world, apparently.