Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-02 Thread Reece Dunn
On 01/10/2007, Dan Kegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 10/1/07, Reece Dunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Searching Google is only really useful around the time of release
> > (with a suitable time window either side).
>
> If that were true, I would expect World of Warcraft's google
> search curve to have flatlined long ago, but instead it's
> still going strong.  What's driving all those queries if not
> user interest?

Sure. My comments were generalisations that apply to most games.

> I certainly agree that other sources of data will show
> things that Google query history doesn't, but that
> huge signal for WoW has to mean something.

Definitely. I have had a look at the search trend you gave a link to
and WoW is consistently (abnormally?) high. I'm sure that the number
of hours played (per user, per day, per week) is high as well... and
the number of breakups as a result of this!

- Reece




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-02 Thread Reece Dunn
On 01/10/2007, Jesse Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 10/1/07, Daniel Remenak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > No other single game has the market penetration and staying power of
> > WoW as things stand.
>
> I think starcraft has it beat for penetration and staying power,
> actually. But WoW is the current money maker.

Until Starcraft II :) (Interestingly, these are all Blizzard games.)

There are different things to consider when deciding the popularity of a game.

Searching Google is only really useful around the time of release
(with a suitable time window either side). That is because there will
be a media buildup to, say, Halo 3 and people will get excited about
it. After release, you will get reviews from magazines and the like
published on the internet, as well as user reviews from blogs. There
will also be activity on game forums that may be hard to judge by
Google alone.

In time, as bugs and issues get resolved; as the excitement dies down,
this activity will fade. Does this mean that the game is no longer
popular? No. It may be that you are still making your way through
Oblivion or its extensions, or that you are playing Starcraft,
Warcraft III, Counterstike and others at LAN parties with friends.

You may have dusted off your copy of Settlers II or Lemmings,
installed DOSBox and are enjoying revisiting classic games.

The online multiplayer facilities of games like Starcraft, and the
MMORPG games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, have more
visibility because of their online nature and visibility there.

- Reece




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-02 Thread Kai Blin
On Tuesday 02 October 2007 11:12:41 Stefan Dösinger wrote:
> I think the main blockers for Wine as a gaming Platform isn't D3D any more.
> A few months back sound used to be a blocker, but Maarten has done a great
> job on that. Most issues seem to be located in the copy protection area,
> and in input handling. Sadly, there are some copy protection / anti cheat
> rootkits which are technically almost impossible to support(namely
> GameGuard), and in the Input area we have another OpenGL child window like
> problem. Also the network sometimes makes troubles, but this has improved
> with the recent wintrust / crypt work done for iTunes.

Smells like a WineConf BOF topic. I'd especially be interested in the current 
status of copy protection support.

Cheers,
Kai

-- 
Kai Blin
WorldForge developer  http://www.worldforge.org/
Wine developerhttp://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin
Samba team member http://www.samba.org/samba/team/
--
Will code for cotton.


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Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-02 Thread Stefan Dösinger
Am Montag, 1. Oktober 2007 21:36:26 schrieb Roderick Colenbrander:
> Call of Duty is popular but I would say that CounterStrike (+
> CounsterStrike Source, the port to the Source engine) are way more popular.
>
> More and more games these days are distributed using Steam. That's
> something to watch too.
There are very few cash cow games, the ones I know were mentioned already. 
However, from a Wine point of view, the engines are more interesting. When 
looking at the engines, there are a few popular ones: ID Software 
engines(quake, doon), Unreal, Source, and a few others. Many of the new high 
end games released in the last months were Unreal 3 based. Bioshock, Medal of 
Honor: Airborne, Rainbow Six: Vegas, and others. Also note that while most 
engines are cross platform in their nature and have an opengl renderer, many 
games ship only the D3D backend, or the opengl backend is not functional.

The games which cause the buzz on the graphics market are usually single 
player games(TES Oblivion, Bioshock). Those are usually used by users to talk 
about how good or crappy Wine is, but the games that are long term 
interesting and block Windows to Linux switches are always Multiplayer or 
Online games, or sometimes Kids games. Those games are usually rather simple 
in their graphics requirements.

I think the main blockers for Wine as a gaming Platform isn't D3D any more. A 
few months back sound used to be a blocker, but Maarten has done a great job 
on that. Most issues seem to be located in the copy protection area, and in 
input handling. Sadly, there are some copy protection / anti cheat rootkits 
which are technically almost impossible to support(namely GameGuard), and in 
the Input area we have another OpenGL child window like problem. Also the 
network sometimes makes troubles, but this has improved with the recent 
wintrust / crypt work done for iTunes.


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Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-01 Thread Vincent Povirk
Because this is my solution to everything, here's a wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#PC

The Sims belongs on that list based on google trends.

On 10/1/07, Dan Kegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 10/1/07, Jesse Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 10/1/07, Daniel Remenak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > No other single game has the market penetration and staying power of
> > > WoW as things stand.
> >
> > I think starcraft has it beat for penetration and staying power,
> > actually. But WoW is the current money maker.
>
> Call of Duty and Starcraft do show up pretty well, thanks.
>
> Here's the best graph I was able to put together so far:
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=world+of+warcraft%2C+guild+wars%2C+tomb+raider%2C+%22call+of+duty%22%2C+starcraft
>
>
>


-- 
Vincent Povirk




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-01 Thread Dan Kegel
On 10/1/07, Reece Dunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Searching Google is only really useful around the time of release
> (with a suitable time window either side).

If that were true, I would expect World of Warcraft's google
search curve to have flatlined long ago, but instead it's
still going strong.  What's driving all those queries if not
user interest?

I certainly agree that other sources of data will show
things that Google query history doesn't, but that
huge signal for WoW has to mean something.




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-01 Thread Roderick Colenbrander

> On 10/1/07, Jesse Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 10/1/07, Daniel Remenak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > No other single game has the market penetration and staying power of
> > > WoW as things stand.
> >
> > I think starcraft has it beat for penetration and staying power,
> > actually. But WoW is the current money maker.
> 
> Call of Duty and Starcraft do show up pretty well, thanks.
> 
> Here's the best graph I was able to put together so far:
> 

Call of Duty is popular but I would say that CounterStrike (+ CounsterStrike 
Source, the port to the Source engine) are way more popular.

More and more games these days are distributed using Steam. That's something to 
watch too.

Roderick
-- 
Pt! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört?
Der kanns mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-01 Thread Dan Kegel
On 10/1/07, Jesse Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 10/1/07, Daniel Remenak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > No other single game has the market penetration and staying power of
> > WoW as things stand.
>
> I think starcraft has it beat for penetration and staying power,
> actually. But WoW is the current money maker.

Call of Duty and Starcraft do show up pretty well, thanks.

Here's the best graph I was able to put together so far:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=world+of+warcraft%2C+guild+wars%2C+tomb+raider%2C+%22call+of+duty%22%2C+starcraft




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-01 Thread Jesse Allen
On 10/1/07, Daniel Remenak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> No other single game has the market penetration and staying power of
> WoW as things stand.
>
>

I think starcraft has it beat for penetration and staying power,
actually. But WoW is the current money maker.




Re: Are *any* games as popular as World of Warcraft?

2007-10-01 Thread Daniel Remenak
No other single game has the market penetration and staying power of
WoW as things stand.

XFire collects statistics[1] from their (large) network, if you're
interested in "minutes played" as opposed to "copies sold."Be
aware that it's not a random sample, though; some game communities
(like Call of Duty) have a proportionally large XFire presence
compared to others.  As far as subscriber-driven MMORPGs go,
MMOGCharts[2] is another reasonable source of statistics (note that
Guild Wars and certain other MMOGs are not subscriber driven, so they
won't show up on their lists).

[1] http://www.xfire.com/cms/stats/
[2] http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart7.html

--Daniel Remenak

On 10/1/07, Dan Kegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I spent some time noodling around looking
> at what games are really popular (I wouldn't
> know firsthand, I don't play much).
> There's some data at
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames
> (click on PC Games).
> I tried to cross-check titles with Google Trends to
> see which ones seem enduringly popular, but I
> haven't found any that beat World of Warcraft yet:
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=world+of+warcraft%2C+guild+wars%2C+tomb+raider%2C+bioshock%2C+half-life+2
>
> Is Google search popularity a bad measure, or does it
> reflect the public's mood well?
> - Dan
>
>
>