That's what I read of the game. And yet, when I check http://store.steampowered.com/stats/, you will see that today's peak, or any other day's peak comes nowhere near the implied 1,000,000 playerbase this game has. Not even half, nor even half of half of a mil.
So where are they?
Many of them were probably those people that download it because it says 'free' then barely touches it... or were only after the TF2 hat and had no intentions regarding the game otherwise.
There are several possible reasons for such a discrepancy.
1) Those are stats specifically for Steam users, and not all Spiral Knights players play it through Steam.
2) Peak users measure just that - the maximum number of users logged in at a single time. It doesn't measure the total number of different users that were logged in.
3) Many players might have alternate accounts.
4) Spiral Knights, while fun, is generally not very friendly toward new players with the Energy system, and it's often cited as a key turn-off for people who are just starting out. A good deal of people probably created accounts, then never came back to the game after being restricted by Mist Energy limitations.
5) People just get bored of the game. Their accounts are still counted for the total account number, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily playing.
I would definitely not expect 1mil playerbase when they say they have 1mil accounts, that's a given. But I would expect more than what it is online day after day in this game. Ranick has a sharp point though. Though, I'm not sure what you mean by rage crafters, Poopsie. I am rather new to the game.
Are there other servers for this game for other countries?
Your second point doesn't hold any weight considering games like HoN has 35k players on at all times. ~2k is still a pathetic number regardless.
>That's what I read of the game.
Where did you read that?
Also not all players are steam players.
>Where did you read that?
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/74410/SEGA_and_Three_Rings_C...
>Also not all players are steam players.
This is true. And sadly, there's no way (that I know of) to check how many players are in-game currently. But we know that Steam is one of the best media outlets for creating awareness about the game, and we can also see that Spiral Knights is one of the most popular F2P game in Steam. And yet, you only see so many people online through their stats.
If you look at the gates, no gates ever have more than 300 people in it. And that's a generous number; 300. Let's say that with 4 gates right now, there are 1200 players. And let's say that the double the amount of players are out in Haven messing around. So that adds 2400, we stand at 3600. And let's say that 500 players are PvPing (which they are not). So being super generous, we have maybe 4k players online. [Crapsticks], double that, triple that, it's still not even half of 50k.
Wow I didnt know the numbers dropped so much. Back in the day there would be 1k-2k players just in the JK gate and 500-1k people in the vana gate
>said Haruki Satomi, Vice President of Digital Business at SEGA of America.
Never trust the business people.
Might have been a translation error though, and "millions" meant "a huge amount" or something like that.
The most active steam players there ever were ingame was around 10k just after the Steam release.
A lot of those accounts were generated during the Steam summer camp event. Play X game, obtain achievement for ticket, remove from library and never look back. It gained a lot of attention, but not a whole lot of interest.... but what else would you expect from that kind of promotional event.
Right now it feels like the whole game has about the same population as a single server in other MMOs. I play a lot of lockdown these days and it's a bit disconcerting to see the same people all the time in a game that supposedly has a worldwide playerbase.
My top 3 reasons haven't changed since July
1) The CE system is very new-player-unfriendly.
2) The game hitches a lot, even on high-end systems.
3) Most user reviews (be they blog posts, forum posts, reviews under a 'professional' review, whatever) of SK on the 'net are negative for one or both of the above reasons.
Quite simple, really. Lots of people try out the game since its free, decide they don't want to play it, and leave their account there. Or they play it for the Steam Summer Sale ticket/TF2 hat/Pumpkin Bandolier and then stop.
They didn't say active accounts. The game has been around for a lot longer than Steam release and can be accessed via Facebook, SEGA Pass, or a web account. All of which would not be counted by Steam.
Most MMOs have a lot of inactive accounts, they're still counted in their player base because it sounds better when you can say "1 million users!"
It's 2:45pm eastern time, so school is still in for the US. Currently there are 103 people in pvp, 1542 (261 emerald skull, 256 dark queen, 422 silver bishop, and 603 diamond pawn) in the clockworks, and Goddess knows how many in Haven, and this is no where near the peak time. Come back at 6-8pm eastern and you'll see a lot more people on, and even more anytime during the weekend.
~Gwen
Sk has a REALLY low retention rate with the energy system.
~<3 :D :D Jim-Dale-Chan :P :P :( <3
Online games tend to be played by a lot of people, but loved by a smaller number. Most games have large numbers of people who register, and out of that, a few who stick with it over time.
The number you're looking at (1m registrations) is a ticker that tracks the total number of people who have tried Spiral Knights. The current number for that ticker is now about double what we announced previously. And while we do watch the number of registrants, we're more concerned with the number of people that love the game and return to play each month. That number is lower than 1m, but is pretty stable. It was about 300,000 last month, with about 1% of that being the "peak" on any given day. Looking at the concurrents on Steam doesn't give an accurate picture, because not all of our players are Steam players.
Hope that helps clarify!
"with about 1% of that being the "peak" on any given day."
I'm reading this as there being about 4 to 5 thousand active players left in the game. That probably explains why 000 is having to milk their remaining players so hard.
You're probably right Khamsin, but dont forget that the game is getting much more current with updates nearly every week (at least it seems so.)
Imho if new recruits were given more playtime and a better understanding of the game, Instead of being thrown into the Energy market without any help or any outspeakers supporting it, then they won't stay long. If OOO could find a way to implement that (or if beggars would shut up so we can help newbs who need it.) then the game would definitley draw in a bigger crowd. Then again, we always rage about each update and then adapt to it after a week, so... (^^;)
Ah well at least those that play actually like the game. We don't want a trolling playerbase do we?
Khamsin, I didn't interpret Eurydice's comment to mean that there are 4,000-5,000 active players.
Here's what she said, I think: About 2,000,000 players have tried Spiral Knights. Last month, about 300,000 players played. At any given time, at most 1% of those were playing --- i.e. 3,000 players online. This seems not unreasonable to me --- considering the players in Haven, Advanced Training, Guild Halls, PvP, and the four active gates.
So I don't know what you mean by "active", but if you mean "online all the time", the number is less than 3,000, and if you mean "playing within a given month", then the number is closer to 300,000.
If only 3,000 players are on during the peak, I'm giving 000 a huge benefit of the doubt in suggesting that 40% of the active population, those who play at least six hours a week, aren't on during the peak hours. I think my guesstimate holds pretty well.
I'm printing out Eurydice's last comment, and framing it, and posting it on my wall.
My guild has about 100 people. At most 13 are online at any given time. Now that we can see how long people have been offline (thanks, Three Rings!), I can report that more than 90% of them have been online in the past week. So I think that Khamsin's estimate of the active population is too pessimistic.
"At most 13 are online at any given time."
"more than 90% of them have been online in the past week. "
I think I'm nailing it pretty hard. If you don't know whether the person even plays on a weekly basis, they're hardly active. I think it is fair to say most of the active players are on the peak time and that the majority of people who aren't on during the peak time aren't active.
Khamsin, when I said "What Bopp said," I meant Bopp was correct. You are incorrect. Monthly active players is not the same number as concurrent players.
Monthly active =/= Weekly Active =/= Daily Active. I'd say concurrent is probably the closest guesstimate to weekly and daily active. The likelihood of 300,000 players online each week or day is very, very slim.
Edit: Actually, scratch that, probably closer to 3000 people spend 70-100% of their energy... let's say, "active" is 6 hours put in per week. Then I'd still stick to the 4000-5000 number.
I'm passive. How do we look with passives?
Except by your standards of people who use 70- 100 of their mist in a day it would have to be higher than the concurrent numbers. By gate running - probably the slowest way to use up mist - 100 mist will only last you about an hour and a half. If people use just their mist then log off then by using the concurrent numbers we're looking at ( 24 hr / 1.5 hr ) * 3000 players which would equal 48,000 daily active players. Now I realize I'm simplifying this a lot but it shows pretty clearly that your assumption of 3000 concurrent players equaling the active player base as very flawed. Especially when you consider that an active player would probably not log in every single day - I don't and I'm active enough to participate in this thread.
There aren't 3000 players at all time. That's the peak, when most of the active population is online. Most of the day is probably much, much less.
"Especially when you consider that an active player would probably not log in every single day"
They're not very active if they only log on once a week or month. That's pretty much the opposite of active. Those types fall into the "not active" category with the rest of the 99%.
Once a week isn't the same as not every single day. I sometimes miss days because I'm out of the house for whatever reason. I'm still an active player and probably average more than 6 days a week. But I don't log in every single day.
> The likelihood of 300,000 players online each week or day is very, very slim.
You are correct. However, no one said anything about there being 300,000 players online each week or day. What I said was:
"And while we do watch the number of registrants, we're more concerned with the number of people that love the game and return to play each month" and "It was about 300,000 last month, with about 1% of that being the 'peak' on any given day." (Emphasis added.)
Anyway, the point in my giving out those numbers was to clarify things for those who were mistakenly comparing total registered SK accounts with daily concurrent Steam players.
"Anyway, the point in my giving out those numbers was to clarify things for those who were mistakenly comparing total registered SK accounts with daily concurrent Steam players."
They (those who are concerned with the active population count) don't have any other numbers to compare the active population with. 000 throws out these numbers of total registered accounts or even monthly users who have simply logged on, but to the layman they mean nothing. Said layman goes and sees the concurrent Steam players are low, and says "Well that makes more sense, there are probably only 2k people playing (or whatever the number is)" and even though he's wrong, he's more likely to think that number is correct than the numbers being thrown around.
The real number is probably closer to 4000-5000, but the layman doesn't know that. He believes and will likely continue to believe the Steam number.
I think it would be best if you spoke for yourself, which is fine.
but saying the layman believes this and that.. is a bit too far
I never believed that there were 1 million 'active' players.
I do believe that over 1 million players have tried this game tho
I personally have 4 accounts, but only 1 of them is registered to steam, and they are all 'active'
and when I look at steam, I don't think they are the complete picture either.
What is it that you actually want to know. Even the 3k-5k peak players doesn't tell how many people logged in each day.
all it does tell you is how many people were online at the same time.
I would estimate that each day there would be about 10~15k unique accounts logging in. That's just an estimation
I would like to thank Eurydice for actually giving us numbers, because a lot of other games don't.
And I don't know what use these numbers are to the 'layman'.
Thanks Eury for those #'s I figured out of the total register accounts for this game was guessing over 2 million since I do count older Beta accounts which went poof, and the multiple accounts people have for some odd reasons. This game has a given population of 100k to 400k Active players, but matters how you define active as in:
1: Active meaning a player logs-in and records 20 minute of playing time per day
2: Active meaning a player plays for 8 hours a day
3: Active meaning a player is in a guild called Active
4: Active meaning a player is in a guild called Unity which Cootiecakes called Active.
5: Active meaning a player plays about 5 hours a month
6: Active meaning a player plays about 1 minute every month.
etc.
But thanks again for those #'s I was very surprised as the result it shows that Three Rings is doing a great job to keep a good flow of new players into this game for sure.
@Khamsin I think you're coming from the perspective of a hardcore gamer, where not playing a game for at least an hour a day counts as not playing it at all. SK is a F2P game, and one geared towards casual players at that. For a lot of people, playing 1-2 hours every week or two is as much time as they put into any game and, more importantly, these are the same people who will be more likely to buy CE since they A: likely have responsibilities involving making money, and B: don't have the time to grind mist for crowns every day.
Really, the important question is "is the number of active players (by whatever reasonable measure) increasing" and, relatedly, "is the volume of CE being sold increasing, per paying player and/or overall". I think we all want to see this game succeed both socially and financially. As open as Eurydice has been with player numbers, I'm not sure we'll get a really straight answer to these questions.
Personally I'm a bit worried given the recent shadow key fiasco, and the fact that I've been in two guilds so far and both have evaporated into a list of inactive users. Granted the guilds were both casual guilds, not one of the big ones or anything, but still. (At this point I'm thinking I'll probably drop out of guilds entirely, given I haven't found much use in them)
On the other hand, the in-game CE/CR market seems to be pretty liquid, so obviously a lot of people are still buying.
"more importantly, these are the same people who will be more likely to buy CE
I highly doubt they're spending more money than the hardcore. They'll buy CE, such as with the starter pack and battle pack, but I doubt they're dropping the dinero that the hardcore population is spending. Guys with full sets of rose regalia, multiple VH and max items, accessories, etc that are really going all out. Most people aren't spending fifty to a hundred dollars a month on a game they play for 1-2 hours a week. I really, really doubt that.
"Really, the important question is "is the number of active players (by whatever reasonable measure) increasing" and, relatedly, "is the volume of CE being sold increasing, per paying player and/or overall". I think we all want to see this game succeed both socially and financially."
This is true though.
To me, "active" accounts means the number of accounts logged in and playing at any one time. Remember, not everyone plays the game at the same time. At the very least, you have people spread out by time zones. Free to play players are limited as to how long they can play. Not everyone plays the game 24/7. Further, some people can't play at certain times due to their circumstances.
For instance, I have a part time job, college, and share a bad internet connection that cannot support normal internet usage and Spiral Knights at the same time. This means I'm not "active" all the time. But I think I play enough to be one of the 300,000 regulars that play this game.
Considering all this, 1% peak active players at any one time makes sense.
highly doubt they're spending more money than the hardcore. They'll buy CE, such as with the starter pack and battle pack, but I doubt they're dropping the dinero that the hardcore population is spending. Guys with full sets of rose regalia, multiple VH and max items, accessories, etc that are really going all out. Most people aren't spending fifty to a hundred dollars a month on a game they play for 1-2 hours a week. I really, really doubt that.
^
There are people with all the following sets or even people who spent over 300+ dollars on this game who don't even log in 1 to 2 hours a month since they quit, and many of them were not as hardcore. Regardless "hardcore players" and regular players do not matter in the overall player scale unless you are only wishing to know the total # of hardcore players who play this game which would then lead me to ask you define a hardcore player? Since from your statements it seems they are only players who spend money, but wouldn't the player who got to 5* gear without spending a dime more "hardcore" than the people who did since he had a tougher struggle? Which also brings up the question why do we need to define players as "hardcore" or "regular"? Since a player is a player if you play for 40 hours a week or 2 hours a week your still considered a player.
Regardless I will not comment on your other viewpoints since Eury provided all the information I needed. If you want to find out the % of hardcore gamers in Spiral Knights give her a criteria.
Khamsim, take a look at that Battlefield Online presentation that is linked here somewhere and possibly easier to find on the web and you'll see that while the hardcore spend a lot, a company still needs the "casuals" money because it is still a big slice of the pie. They may spend less, but they got greater numbers.
"But I think I play enough to be one of the 300,000 regulars that play this game."
There are not 300,000 regulars. As eurydice said, that number is not the daily or even weekly active. And if you're not playing at least one a week during any given month, you're hardly a regular.
Anyways, Nicoya-Kitty already made a legitimate point that I agree with - none of these numbers really matter as opposed to knowing the CHANGES to the average daily and average weekly player base, and the amount of overall CE entering the market and how that number has changed. However, I doubt we'll see 000 posting the equivalent of their earnings. It would be fascinating to see though, a comparison of the inflow of CE compared to the consumption of CE.
Like we disscussed on the "Newb supply is running low" thread. I would like to see more players comming into the game as well. The overall population "feels" like it has plateaued, but I have no data to back that up. 300k is a decent player base but I would like to see the SK PR team get this game in the public eye some more.
000 does have a new game comming out. Dr. Who: Worlds in Time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who:_Worlds_in_Time
Maybe they are focusing PR on the release of that. I don't know.
I can not vouch for the accuracy of this data, but here are some website disscussing rough sales figures of Three Rings. Also a list of CEO and other personel, just for curiosity sake.
http://free.salesfuel.com/CoIntell/CoDetailsOverview.aspx?CompanyID=2198...
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/people.asp?pri...
I was unable to locate a stock quote for 000. I believe since they are privately traded. I am no financial wizard.
Rage crafter would have more accounts I guess. One could have 10 accounts so it's not really a good estimation to say there are 1 mil active players. Also, if you see spiral knights achievement on steam database, most people give up the game before they even reach to haven.