Monday, March 03, 2008

Five & Dime 2007: Decay Rates

This is a new way for me to analyze some of these numbers - I'm not sure my work here is statistically sound but it's interesting. (That's your cue to smile & grin knowingly.)

Anyway, what I did was to take the top 350 games (percentage of plays-wise) from the last ten years - the cut-off number ended up being an average of 2.0% or better over time. (You'll see this subset of games for the next 2 or 3 Five & Dime reports. It allows me to work with games that really registered statistically and lessens the workload at the same time.)

For this particular exercise in determining decay rates of games, I then set aside games with 4 or less years on the list... leaving me with 230 games. To do the decay calculation, I:
  1. Took the largest percentage played number from each game.
  2. Compared it to the current (2007) percentage played number for each game.
  3. Divided that amount by the number of years since it had first appeared on the Five & Dime Lists.

Only three games showed no rate of decay whatsoever - they have appeared on the list for 5+ years (weirdly enough, all three of them showed up 6 years ago) and their highest percentage played is in 2007:

  • Downfall of Pompeii
  • Hive
  • Uno

Now that's what I call "strange bedfellows". (Connect 4, btw, was very close to joining this illustrious group - 0.06% decay over time.)

Here's the chart with the rest of the top 20 games... that is, the games that showed the least decay over 5+ years time. (There's actually 22 games on this chart, as the final 3 games were very close in percentage.)

Gameyears on listpercentage decay
Cloud 98-0.20%
Hamsterrolle7-0.30%
Gang of Four7-0.31%
Wizard10-0.33%
Cafe Internationa9-0.34%
Midnight Party7-0.35%
Loot/Korsar/Pirat6-0.37%
Set8-0.39%
Rummikub8-0.46%
RoboRally10-0.47%
Viva Pamplona9-0.47%
Meuterer7-0.48%
Shark7-0.48%
Quoridor9-0.50%
Amazing Labyrinth10-0.50%
Magic: The Gathering10-0.52%
Time's Up/Celebrities10-0.52%
Rage7-0.53%

And here's a chart with the 20 games who've shown the highest rates of decay. (Note - to show a high rate of decay, you have to start from a high position.)

Gameyears on listpercentage decay
Puerto Rico7-10.12%
Attika7-8.48%
Euphrat & Tigris10-6.30%
Balloon Cup7-6.23%
Bohnanza10-6.01%
Carcassonne7-5.58%
Mamma Mia!/Sole Mio8-5.55%
King's Breakfast7-5.55%
Lost Cities9-5.44%
Battle Cry (AH)8-5.13%
Settlers of Catan10-5.08%
Wyatt Earp7-5.05%
Transamerica/europa10-4.94%
Through the Desert10-4.89%
Coloretto7-4.69%
Guillotine10-4.67%
Web of Power/China8-4.51%
Clans6-4.49%
Amun-Re7-4.43%
Paris Paris7-4.41%

I'm not sure I'm really qualified to comment beyond the statistics... you need to know that the average decay rate of these games was 6.91% over their lifespan (1.94% per year) and that the average lifespan was just over 8 years. Make of that what you will.

1 comment:

Clay B. said...

It would be informative to see the decay rates as relative rates, e.g. a game is played 60% as much as it was 5 years ago.