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General Discussion Forum » The Pub at MMORPG.COM » XFire - As MMO population estimation tool
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12/26/12 2:29:09 PM#81
Then people didn't listen to what the mods asked them to do. The mods said to create a single thread to discuss XFire and game population numbers. Keep it civil and don't do it in specific game forums. They said they would sticky a thread if people used the thread and could carry on a conversation without become total @sshats*. * I'm paraphrasing here. Join the League For Gamers. |
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12/26/12 2:35:41 PM#82
I personnaly don't think you can use x-fire to accuratly get sub numbers for an MMO. All you can get from it is trends. There are just to many variables to take into accout. All games are different in some way and tend to attract people who play in different ways. For example I would suggest that Eve would attract people who would put more hours a month into a game than WoW just because if your going to stick with playing Eve your going to have to spend more time playing it than most of the playerbase of WoW.
The other thing is at launch or major expansion games are going to log higher average hours played than a month or 2 afterwards as people use holiday time and sick days to take time off work and play the game. Heck launch days regularly see people logging 20+ hour days in a game or at least attempting to which is why you see so many threads on lauch day about how people feel ripped off about planning a day off work and being unable to log into the game for several hours as the login servers crash and burn due to so much traffic.
Really about all you can say about x-fire numbers is hmmm people are playing this game less/more than they were last month guess a few people left and a bunch of others ran out of holidays or sick days to waste on a game. The lesser of two evils is still evil. |
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12/26/12 2:45:14 PM#83
You could just as well claim that type of underwear players are wearing creates a bias that has no been examined. Burned of proof is on your shoulders.
There still either official data, other data sources or verified method to tell the divergence. No issue there.
As said, the "how much" isn't the important part.
There is already such experiment going for years: www.mmodata.com |
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12/26/12 2:46:09 PM#84
Originally posted by Rydeson Truth.. No where near a general population tool, but when combines with stats of other social networks can help paint a "trend".. Either it increases or it decreases in time played.. Trying to pinpoint subscription numbers or player counts using only xfire is inutile.
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12/26/12 2:50:29 PM#85
Originally posted by Vyeth XFire is nothing more than a way to get information from 3rd parties to your email. They also collect pertinent data to sell to these 'clients' and that is how they make money. I used XFire many moons ago, when it first released but no one I knew used it so I uninstalled it and never looked back.  "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." Abraham Lincoln |
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12/26/12 3:47:29 PM#86
If we knew that they all made the same choice about their underwear, then it would be a bias. I'm pretty sure if that bias existed (everyone making that same choice), then it would certainly get examined because, come on, that's a little weird. Everyone wearing the same underwear? Everyone in XFire made a choice to participate in XFire's program. That is a bias and it hasn't been examined to determine what kind of impact it has on the results. If it had been examined, we would know what kind of impact it has on the results. Someone with a monocle would say something like, "Based on this data, we can show that people who agree to install XFire play {more|less} than people who do not, by XX%". Something like that anyway. We don't know what kind of impact it has, so that bias has not been examined. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. I'm not sure which MMORPG forums you frequent, but on this one, the "how much" is apparently very important. A 1% population drop is not as noteworthy as a 10% population drop during the same period of time. Just like determining the validity of XFire's numbers, the "how much" is central to the whole idea of using XFire as a population estimation tool. That is why people are so interested in population numbers. They want to know "how much" the population has dropped, and "how much" the population of game A differs from game B. Are you talking about MMOData.Net? The .com site is a parked domain. MMOData.net doesn't compare real population numbers to XFire. They may use XFire as a source of information...I'm pretty sure I've seen a post on the site about XFire as a source of information. The experiment I described is not what MMOData.net does. They lay out pretty clearly what they're doing, if not exactly how they are doing it. They even tell you per game if they are getting information from reliable sources or if they are estimating the populations of the game. What they aren't doing is taking Eve's numbers and XFire's numbers, running them through a feedback loop and determining how accurate XFire's number are. That's what I'm proposing. Look at real numbers and see how consistent XFire is or can be with known good data. Join the League For Gamers. |
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12/26/12 5:57:47 PM#87
We know for a fact that different games have different %es of xfire users. Eq, Eq2, and Rifts xfire users vs EvEs xfire users prove this. I posted this earlier in this thread. Go back and read it if you need to.
I also see in this thread crap about xfire measuring the games 'hardcore' users, which is ridiculous. Again, look at EQ. 14 years later with an insurmountable mountain to climb for new players, EQ is mostly hardcore fans. Yet its (likely) the most under represented in terms of % of players using xfire.
My guess is its more age related than anything. If this is true than you would need to know two things to use xfire. 1. The game's average age of its players. 2. The "xfire factor" for that average age.
There is also likely another factor involved: Im betting PvPers use xfire in greater numbers because they are more inclined to play FPS games (which tend to attract xfire users).
The representation of the games looked at points to that as well. EvE: most represented Rift: somewhat represented EQ2: barely represented EQ1: practically zero representation Which mirrors the amount their game is based off of PvP. And Im not talking about number of users as representation, Im talking about number of users vs game population (% of people that use xfire)
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12/26/12 5:57:57 PM#88
Originally posted by Yamota
Now, I'm no math guru here but what I think you are saying is that according to your estimation, 1 out of every 522 gamers use xfire. Here's how I can be pretty sure that doesn't look right. It is what you are doing right? Taking every 1 you see on xfire and applying them as 522 at the end of the tally.
Registered xfire users * There are only around 7 billion people on the entire planet. To use your flat 522 it is definitely off because you count more people than exist in the world with that scheme.
Xfire doesn't delete accounts so you could claim that people have had up to 3 accounts per person and cut the number down by 1/3. 11,823,154,362 <-- Still billion / 3 = 3,941,051,454 <-- Still billion Now you claim that more than half of the worlds population are gamers.
Unless I'm doing some math wrong, I don't think the 522 is right just because of global population and the likelihood that there are that many gamers on the planet.
For the record, I have had 2 xfire accounts in my life and I don't use any right now. Any game I play is unknown to them. |
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12/26/12 6:00:05 PM#89
Originally posted by lizardbones here is how they used xfire to monitor swtor's numbers:
SWTOR gave out numbers. we know what their xfire was that date
So when the xfire users drop by a %, they estimate the population drop based off of that. Thats how xfire can be useful, but only if you have a starting point. |
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12/26/12 6:20:00 PM#90
Might be weird but that does not imply any relation to their gaming habits. You just put 2 random facts together without any logical structure.
I already said I am not arguing precision thus you are arguing with yourself or I do not know who...
Yes, I mean mmodata.net. They do compare their sources to get better estimates. |
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12/26/12 6:32:38 PM#91
Statistically speaking you are fine but you first have to determine what % of MMO players at large use Xfire. Then you can determine the deviation from that global norm by checking official numbers against the global XFire norm estimate.
e.g.
Lets assume 10% of MMO players on average use crossfire by sampling 5000 of them. Game A releases it's number and they say they have 100,000 players. You check XFire's numbers and it shows 15,342 users. We can see that XFire is closer to 15% rather then 10%. We can with reason say that Game A if off by about +5% from the expected norm.
Game B releases it's number and they say they have 100,000 players. You check XFire's number and it shows 9,422 players. We can see that XFire is closer to 9% rather then 10%. We can with reason say that Game B is off by about -1% from the expected norm.
6 months go by and the XFire numbers for Game A have gone up 15% and Game B has gone up by 22%.
Can we safely estimate the MMO's population? Answer: No. Despite the correlation we can 'obviously' see, all that we can speak to is: XFire usage is up by MMO players for game A and B, but this doesn't imply our population of players playing Game A or B increased, only that XFire use for those games increased. We would have to re-sample the MMO community at large to see if XFire usage is also up in other games that DIDN'T have population growths so we can de-trend the samples. If we found that XFire use rose by 10% in all other MMOs but they didn't have population growth then we could eliminate 10% from both of the second samples leaving us with 5% and 12% growth unexplained. (Residuals) (Simplified) Perhaps Game A's population rose by 5% and Game B's population rose by 12%. But we'd have to still go back and see what % of the growth is represented by XFire users and what % of Growth is non-crossfire users. 5% growth in Game A in XFire users may be 5000 users but we don't have any data to explain NON-Xsfire users growth rates in comparison. If 10% of users use XFire would could try and day that another 50,000 non-xfire users may have added to the growth... but there is nothing in the model that explains or correlates the growth patterns in the non-xfire users. Yes we may know by sample that 10% of MMO players use XFire but we have nothing, zip, zilch that tells us how the non-Xfire users relate to Game A or Game B. It is an indirect relationship. It may give us a clue to MMO populations at large, but nothing in the mechanic explains Game A or Game B's non-xfire growth patterns and trends. XFire is useful for seeing 'Changes' in MMO populations as a whole, but again is limited. For example if we sample 10 different MMOs and see there is an average growth of 5% across all titles, but Game A grew by 10% and Game B shrank by 7% we get some usable data in that sense, we can say then "Among XFire users, Game A grew by 5% more then expected and game B fell by 7%." always careful to state "Among XFire users". Eve Online is also a special monster since it doesn't kick AFK players, 100% of the players I know in my Alliance (Apx. 5700 members) that are on my watch list, 100% of them log in around 6-7 AM CST and are on until downtime. So despite the game showing 29,000 players online the actual number of active players is substantially lower at a given time. And of course their subs have lagged behind inflation 7 years running.... but hey lets borrow another $20 mil for a pair of games that aren't finished, after laying off 60% of the staff. But Hey! They made it into a museaum. I swear to God CCP never ceases to amaze me on their ability to stay afloat. |
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Yamota
 Elite Member
Joined: 10/05/03
There's a beast within every man that stirs when you put a sword in his hand |
Originally posted by strangiato2112 Well if you dont believe it is a good population estimation tool then why dont you just move on? I find it funny that so many people seem to have this unsufferable needs to show that XFire is innaccurate. Why? As for the games you mentioned, I have seen nothing to suggest that those games have the sub. numbers you suggest they do. You got a source for that? If you are referring to MMOData.net, they havent tracked EQ 1 or 2 for over two years. And your example with beatles is in no way comparable. Classification of music to population estimation by using a tool which shows how many people of said tool plays a particular game? That is the worst example I have ever read.  |
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12/27/12 5:56:18 AM#93
They probably find the idea of using an inaccurate measuring tool to try and yield accurate numbers insufferable. Join the League For Gamers. |
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12/27/12 6:03:44 AM#94
Actually estimating sub numbers on X-fire is kinda like estimating who will win an election by asking your friends... And by how much based on it. It is useful for measuring large trends in a game, if a certain game drops 75% in a few months that is bad (not counting the first 2 weeks after launch, we MMO players take time of for some games and always play more then). Certain games players and certain countries use more Xfire than others. You need more teamspeak in some game than others and the Xfire users are often a rather small part of the actual players so you dont have enough data for sub numbers and should be careful with trends less than 25% or so. I would say it have some use but only for large dips and ups in population. |
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12/27/12 6:06:47 AM#95
I didn't imply that it had anything to do with their gaming habits. I said it's a bias (it is) and that it hasn't been examined to determined if it does have an impact on the results obtained from XFire (it hasn't). It is one of the differences between obtaining good statistical data and getting random noise. If you review MMOData.Net's site, they classify their data sources per game into three categories. Most of the games are category "C", which means "estimating". They are also very non-specific about how they are doing what they are doing. Again, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. They are not doing an analysis of XFire. I said, "Let's look at XFire's numbers, compare them to a known good number such as Eve's and see how consistent XFire is." Your response was, "This website that doesn't tell us anything about Eve already does that." What is the point you're trying to make with this? Also, I'm sure it would be helpful to anyone reading this if you didn't chop up posts and pick out sentences, leaving people to assume the context in which the statements were made. I don't really expect that many people are following this particular conversation thread, but if they are, they'd have to go back through the posts to get a complete conversation. Join the League For Gamers. |
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12/27/12 6:15:20 AM#96
I went back and found the quote.
He's using XFire as a source of data. Join the League For Gamers. |
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Yamota
Elite Member
Joined: 10/05/03
There's a beast within every man that stirs when you put a sword in his hand |
Originally posted by Loke666 No, it is not. I dont know anyone on XFire so the selection is not biased based on who is my friend and not. Is XFire perfectly representetive? Certainly not. But, based on what I have seen, it is good enough to get a rough estimate. Maybe +/- 10%. |
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12/27/12 6:24:29 AM#98
Then it is irrelevant... We went through this couple of times already and you only keep repeating yourself, ignoring any points raised or just talk something unrelated. Not much more I can say until you actually address what one writes... |
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12/27/12 6:25:23 AM#99
Point 1- Date: 12/26/2012 3:00 PM ish Eve Pop: 49,375 XFire Players: 690 Eve Pop/XFire Players: 71.5580 Point 2- Join the League For Gamers. |
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12/27/12 6:33:50 AM#100
Originally posted by Yamota And that's the crux of it. It's all based on opinions of Xfires validity. There is no reliable verifying data for your assertions. Maybe it's +/- 10% but then again it could be +/- 50% or +/- 150% . It likely isn't the same over a broad spectrum of games. Yet time and again we're expected to swallow this as proof of one crackpot theory or another. It's unpalatable to say the least. "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." ~Greys Law |
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