Where players found us: August

[Nyr]

It's been a busy month and I haven't been able to get to this until today.  Here's what we have!

2012 survey results
July post
June post
May post
April post
March post


Raw data

Total new accounts created:  425
Duplicates (created multiple accounts out of confusion/staff accounts/etc): 4
New accounts minus the above: 421



Where people came from
(noteworthy results mentioned)

Topmudsites:  50
Themudconnector:  174
Both:  2
Google:  38 (note that these can probably be attributed to either TMS or TMC)
Search/web:  20 (these also can probably be attributed to either TMS or TMC)
Friends/other players/family/co-workers/homies:  43
Reddit:  7
Web articles:  2
Random forums:  7
--some overlap from TMS and TMC forums here
TVtropes:  2 (still!--even now)

Miscellaneous funnier or "odd" ones:
Your momma (twice!)
a dream
abort
YMCA


Summary

A little copypasta below from previous posts:

An interesting metric to point out is our new accounts numbers for the year.  This post details how we did in 2012 (and this one goes over account stats for the past 4 years).  To recap that below:

2009 -- 1481
2010 -- 1865
2011 -- 1325
2012 -- 1631

2013 data for new accounts (compiled from various sources):
January (83), February (123), March (235), April (457), May (491), June (464), July (406), August (421)
2013 total (so far) -- 2680

We've broken the record for most new accounts for any given year, and the year's not over!



What matters, however, is how many people actually log in even once to play the game.  This has been a major improvement.  When I first looked at this data in January and February with Calavera, we found that over the course of about 100 accounts created, only 21 actually made it into the game.  This month, we had 421 new accounts, and out of those, 89 actually made it into the game.  We are seeing around a 3x to 4x increase in the amount of people that play the game for the first time.



Player Retention

More copypasta.

I mentioned that the best way to determine real player retention would be to see who did the following:

started playing in x month
is still playing THIS month

To recap, our stats from 2010, 2011, and 2012:

Excluding new staff accounts

2010

January:  1
February:  1
March:  2
April:  3
May:  7
June:  5
July:  3
August:  1
September:  1
October:  2
November:  4
December:  4

2010 Total:  34

2011

January:  2
February:  2
March:  0
April:  5
May:  1
June:  5
July:  2
August:  2
September:  1
October:  3
November:  3
December:  1

2011 Total:  27

2012

January:  4
February:  3
March:  5
April:  7
May:  2
June:  2
July:  1
August:  3
September:  2
October:  1
November:  6
December:  4

2012 Total:  40

I also mentioned that this year would be skewed due to the database issue we had which would've wiped records from 1/23 to 3/28.  Even with that, here's what we have for 2013.

2013

January: 2 (missing 8 days of that month's data)
February:  0 (missing all of that month's data)
March:  1 (missing 27 days of that month's data)
April:  9
May:  6
June:  8
July:  7

2013 Total so far:  33

We're still on a path to increase retention and total playerbase size by a sizable percentage over last year.  If we assume even just 6 players stick per month from now on, we'll end up with retention of a little over 60 players this year, more than 50% higher than 2012.  I am going to redo all of these retention numbers at the end of the year and run new ones so that we know who has sticked not only for the following month (like we are doing above) but how these numbers have changed over time (started in 2011, still playing today, etc).



This Month's Players

More copypasta.  The numbers are new though.

5-6 hours of playtime or less:  63
--Ok, good.  We can find out what is turning off the players that have spent that much time in the game.  A few minutes?  They probably didn't intend to do more than look around.  A few hours?  Something must have occurred, or something didn't occur.  We will be delving into this over time but probably not immediately.

6+ hours of playtime:  26
--Ok, good.  From this, we can find out who got turned off AFTER putting in a significant time investment, but before being hooked.  This is probably a better area to look at for the purposes of retention.  They've spent time playing the game but (for whatever reason) they have stopped playing.

So who's hooked this month--at least, so far?

Of the remaining 26 players, I narrowed down who was still logging in as recently as 8/25/2013.  That gets us 8 players.

If you're a new player from this month and you're in the categories mentioned above, feel free to chime in here or elsewhere on the forums if you haven't already!  We'd love to hear from you.  What almost turned you off to the game?  What has hooked you?

[a french mans shirt]

Holy mother of god Nyr

you need an award

[ShaLeah]

Holy mother of god Nyr

you need an award

Nyr makes stats look sexy as hell. Kudos.

[Patuk]

TVtropes:  2 (still!--even now)

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH

I really am quite glad I made the decision to create that whole page. Not to mention add Arm links to a few other trope's pages.

[Barsook]

Thank you for that Patuk.

[Bushranger]

Holy mother of god Nyr

you need an award

Nyr makes stats look sexy as hell. Kudos.

I agree. Thanks Nyr! Have this Tektolnes Box Award!



Seriously it's really encouraging to see these posts.