Is FAF growing?
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Just nice!
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The y-axis label is insufficient.
Unique players... registered, ever? Great—how many actually log on?
More meaningful would be "average number of unique players that log on each week." If that's what you mean, label it so.
Even better would be "average number of unique players that play a game each week."
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Did you read the note below the graph?
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I did not, thank you for pointing that out. It would be more obvious if the axis label was more detailed or had an asterisk to indicate it was explained below. I honestly thought that was part of his signature, and thus, ignored it.
So in what looks like July 2020, about 19,000 unique players played at least one game?
I believe it (because it's a pretty graph, and confirmation bias), but... where are they? Last Saturday at primetime there were about 1800 people online. Let's say 25% of them were unique (had never logged on in the past 30 days)... in a 30-day month, that would mean 13500 unique players. And not every day has an 1800 player primetime, nor does every player in the lobby play.
Also, how many people play in a given month that also played the previous month? Because retention is as important as (more important than?) "this many people played one game."
BTW I'd love to have a hand in coding this if someone wants to point me in the right direction.
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join the promotions discord they have access to lots of data and a specific channel for it
too https://discordapp.com/channels/197033481883222026/433140724276527109/682654791058325592 -
Just for some napkin math, we have about 300 concurrent games at the peak hour of FAF. If all those games are 1v1 games and no one plays more than 1 game a month, that is already 18,000 users. Of course, there is more than 1 hour in a day and there are many games on FAF that are not 1v1. So essentially, there is no real reason to doubt the integrity of the numbers.
Retention isn't relevant to a basic growth question so I didn't look into it.
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@FtXCommando said in Is FAF growing?:
Just for some napkin math, we have about 300 concurrent games at the peak hour of FAF. If all those games are 1v1 games and no one plays more than 1 game a month, that is already 18,000 users. Of course, there is more than 1 hour in a day and there are many games on FAF that are not 1v1. So essentially, there is no real reason to doubt the integrity of the numbers.
Retention isn't relevant to a basic growth question so I didn't look into it.
All your arguments are based on each unique player playing one game a month.
I don't understand how you don't understand retention isn't relevant.
If 2 million people play one game each next month, yes... technically FAF is growing. And we (myself included) would all love that.
But do you really want people that just play one game and then leave?
I would rather have 1000 new players next month and retain all of them (they all play 10 games a month and continue to do so for infinity) than 10,000 and retain none of them (they play one game and then leave).
What I am missing that retention is "not relevant?"
Let me re-iterate that I am not doubting the numbers aren't real ("integrity"). I believe that 18,000 unique players logged on in July. But that they may or may not be meaningful.
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Because this is a question on growth in playerbase. More unique players means there is a growth in playerbase. The question is answered.
Don't understand any of your concerns about retention, really. Nor do I understand the point of your graph. I've made no extrapolation of the data based on current patterns, so including some projection 101 graph is entirely irrelevant.
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I think the graph from @Pearl112 is a bit off, but I would love to know how many people decide to stay around. Having more unique players shows the game is gaining traction, but I'm not sure if you can say that the active player base is growing from just those numbers.
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You have answered, "does FAF have more unique players that play at least one game a month than it did in the past?"
Great!
If that is the only question you care about, then the following is not directed at you. You and I both have better things to do than repeat ourselves at each other endlessly; let's respect both our time but not doing so.
That is not to say it's not a meaningful question—it is. And I'm glad you've answered is. But "is faf growing" is about more than unique players that play one game.
How many unique players play more than one game? How many stick around for more than a month? When do they play? How do I play with them?
If the graph I chose is confusing to you because you're not sure how it applies, then it's the perfect graph. The graph you chose to is confusing to me because I'm not sure how it applies. You understand exactly how I feel.
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Nobody claimed that retention is not relevant. It is just not relevant to the question "Is faf growing?" This is in the FAQ section and aims to provide a short answer to a short question.
Discussion about how we can measure retention and how it changes over time is probably best discussed in a different thread. (Because it is indeed a relevant topic, but should not clutter this only semi-related topic in the FAQ section imho.)
