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There are two possible ways to measure trends in gaming. One is to look at sales, the other is to look at where the hours are being spent. So, I agree that sal

by xaa 10y ago

There are two possible ways to measure trends in gaming. One is to look at sales, the other is to look at where the hours are being spent. So, I agree that sales of new games are extremely robust now, likely because Steam has made it easier than ever for indie devs to sell, gamers to buy, and studios to push patches. And all this has driven down cost. $50 for a new game used to be par for the course. Now I wouldn't even consider paying that unless I was certain the game would be good. So all this has driven up demand and sales. And yet if you look at where the hours are going on Steam, it supports my thesis at least to some extent. There is a scale-free distribution of player-hours, and it appears to me that the high player-hour games appear to be extended-lifecycle games. A commenter pointed out in another HN thread earlier this week that 1B player-hours per week for DOTA 2 alone.

wtetzner 10y ago
The thing is, money is what drives what content will be produced. So I think what you really want to look at is not the number of sales, or the number of hours, but the amount of money spent.
- xaa 10y ago
  To some extent, yes. But DF and ADOM are direct counterexamples to this. They have been developed for decades certainly far beyond the point where the marginal value of a dev-hour has ceased to be worthwhile. Yet development continues. On top of that, there are quite a lot of very detailed community mods for games that are developed for free. The thing about games that causes them to diverge from regular economics is that it only costs time and expertise to enhance them. And obviously there are lots of people quite willing to donate that.
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    Yes, but that's because the author's are interested in it directly. I don't think measuring how many hours people play these games necessarily directly affects the developers' motivation to keep making them.
hesdeadjim 10y ago
Are you looking at total hours or per-player hours? Competitive games like DOTA, LoL, et-al tend to attract players who sink a lot of time into mastery. Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. I spend thousands of dollars a year for both AAA and indie games, and at most I game ~10 hours a week. The most time I've sunk into any single game this year is 80 hours and the average is closer to 10.
- xaa 10y ago
  Mostly total hours, but both. Per-player hours also follow a scale-free distribution within any given game. You are right that some games encourage more time spent than others (I don't know about whether they "attract" a certain type of player). I mean, to even do half the quests in Skyrim would take many hundreds of hours. Another example of a noncompetitive game with high per-player and high total hours is KSP. Also RimWorld and Factorio to a lesser extent. I still think it is a meaningful observation if we see an increasing "centralization" in total hours in a few games. I'm not commenting on whether that's a good or bad thing. If we wanted to measure whether certain games attracted "obsessive" gamers, I guess we would want to look at hours/player/week or something, which I know nothing about. > Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. That is quite true insofar as a player who spends an extra hour without paying extra is not contributing to the economics of the industry. If the gaming industry had their way, I'm sure they would prefer very low per-player-per-game hours, which would encourage more sales. You seem like an ideal customer from their perspective :) But my primary focus is the trends in gamer behavior, not the industry per se, although they drive each other.

by xaa 10y ago

wtetzner 10y ago

The thing is, money is what drives what content will be produced. So I think what you really want to look at is not the number of sales, or the number of hours, but the amount of money spent.

xaa 10y ago
To some extent, yes. But DF and ADOM are direct counterexamples to this. They have been developed for decades certainly far beyond the point where the marginal value of a dev-hour has ceased to be worthwhile. Yet development continues. On top of that, there are quite a lot of very detailed community mods for games that are developed for free. The thing about games that causes them to diverge from regular economics is that it only costs time and expertise to enhance them. And obviously there are lots of people quite willing to donate that.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  Yes, but that's because the author's are interested in it directly. I don't think measuring how many hours people play these games necessarily directly affects the developers' motivation to keep making them.

hesdeadjim 10y ago

Are you looking at total hours or per-player hours? Competitive games like DOTA, LoL, et-al tend to attract players who sink a lot of time into mastery. Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. I spend thousands of dollars a year for both AAA and indie games, and at most I game ~10 hours a week. The most time I've sunk into any single game this year is 80 hours and the average is closer to 10.

xaa 10y ago
Mostly total hours, but both. Per-player hours also follow a scale-free distribution within any given game. You are right that some games encourage more time spent than others (I don't know about whether they "attract" a certain type of player). I mean, to even do half the quests in Skyrim would take many hundreds of hours. Another example of a noncompetitive game with high per-player and high total hours is KSP. Also RimWorld and Factorio to a lesser extent. I still think it is a meaningful observation if we see an increasing "centralization" in total hours in a few games. I'm not commenting on whether that's a good or bad thing. If we wanted to measure whether certain games attracted "obsessive" gamers, I guess we would want to look at hours/player/week or something, which I know nothing about. > Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. That is quite true insofar as a player who spends an extra hour without paying extra is not contributing to the economics of the industry. If the gaming industry had their way, I'm sure they would prefer very low per-player-per-game hours, which would encourage more sales. You seem like an ideal customer from their perspective :) But my primary focus is the trends in gamer behavior, not the industry per se, although they drive each other.