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Topic: Past and future growth (Read 19165 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Past and future growth
« on: Jan 7th, 2009, 9:47am » |
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The new year is an occasion to look back and look forward. I gleaned the following statistic from Omar's growth page:
Year New Accts Games Played
---- --------- ------------
2003 . 381 . 4722
2004 . 334 . 6018
2005 . 770 . 12221
2006 . 635 . 22447
2007 . 729 . 22031
2008 . 756 . 25331
It was a record year for us in terms of games played, and a steady stream of new players are creating named accounts, but the growth has definitely plateaued. For 2009, I hope that the publication of physical sets reignites the explosive growth rate we saw in the early years.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 7th, 2009, 9:52am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #1 on: Feb 3rd, 2009, 7:08am » |
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I haven't posted a graph of server activity for a while, partly because it is a bit awkward that the image must be hosted off-site. Now that we have MediaWiki on arimaa.com, though, the images can be hosted locally. [EDIT]Apparently Media Wiki won't let me reach in for the image[/EDIT]
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Image:GamesPerWeekSmoothed.png
As you can see from the graph, the level of HvB games is at an all-time sustained high. The previous peak in late 2007 was fueled in part by botbashing activity, with a lot of unrated games attempting to set records, but the present surge is due mostly to a steady influx of new players working their way up the bot ladder. That's why the present surge is less choppy.
Also the BvB games are at an all-time sustained high. The high level in 2006 doesn't count because that was automated games between bots that weren't being actively developed. We had previous brief peaks in BvB games fueled by bot developers, but nothing like the steady stream of games over the last three months.
Only the HvH activity is not at its all-time high. Probably this is related to the demise of the Player of the Month contest. One boost to this metric could come from tournaments that actually attracted newcomers instead of only attracting old-timers.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 3rd, 2009, 7:09am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #2 on: May 31st, 2009, 6:22pm » |
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I have updated the graph of game activity here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Image:GamesPerWeekSmoothed.png
We coasted up to a new all-time high in human vs. bot games in April, as well as a new all-time high in total games. Unfortunately, our total human vs. human games is lower now than it was three years ago. Let me do my small part to bump that up by restarting the Continuous Tournament!
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #3 on: Jul 28th, 2009, 6:13am » |
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on Jan 7th, 2009, 9:47am, Fritzlein wrote:Year New Accts Games Played
---- --------- ------------
2003 . 381 . 4722
2004 . 334 . 6018
2005 . 770 . 12221
2006 . 635 . 22447
2007 . 729 . 22031
2008 . 756 . 25331
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We are on a pace to play over 33,000 games this year and sign up over 950 new players. The release of boxed sets (hopefully in August) could hardly slow down the trend. Unless disaster strikes, 2009 will be another record year for Arimaa.
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Cobra
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Arimaa player #3971
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #4 on: Aug 7th, 2009, 3:24am » |
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If we want to know where people are coming from it's essential to add something like Google Analytics or Clicky to find out. I did this for my open source project http://cobra-language.com/ and was surprised to find that many visitors came in from Wikipedia. Also, I get the occasional blog post about Cobra and the report lets me see from where.
At the very least, it's fun. 
http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://getclicky.com/
-Chuck
--
http://chuckesterbrook.com/
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #5 on: Aug 14th, 2009, 10:17am » |
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In the early days most of our references were from Wikipedia, at least so it seemed from anecdotal evidence of asking people how they heard of Arimaa. Nowadays I would suspect that "word of mouth" recommendations (e.g. blog posts, boardgamegeek, Facebook) are catching up in importance.
Google Analytics is just about tracking referrer pages, right? I mean, if someone lands at arimaa.com from the Wikipedia page on Arimaa, we don't know how they got to the Wikipedia page. Similarly, if someone lands at arimaa.com after having done a Google search on Arimaa, we don't know why they searched for Arimaa. That's not to say that referrer pages are uninteresting, but I imagine that it gives limited insight into the hook that gets people interested enough in the first place to do a search for Arimaa, or to go to the Wikipedia page about Arimaa.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 14th, 2009, 10:21am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #6 on: Sep 5th, 2009, 10:58am » |
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I have updated the graph of game activity here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Image:GamesPerWeekSmoothed.png
One week in August we had 876 HvB games, which broke the old weekly record of 804, set in December 2007. Also the smoothed weekly average of HvB games reached 714, breaking the old record of 673 set in April 2009. The man vs. machine contest is livelier than ever.
The BvB game numbers remain very healthy, especially considering that it is several months until the Computer Championships. Only the HvH numbers are disappointing, continuing a long, gradual slide. An interesting possibility is that the release of Arimaa boxed sets will continue to drive up man vs. machine matches on arimaa.com, but now folks will have a greater preference for playing human opponents offline.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #7 on: Sep 23rd, 2009, 4:11pm » |
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Wow, I can't believe I just saw 19 players in the game room on a September weekday! Admittedly, that's not close to our record of 31 logged in during the 2009 World Championship, but for a time when nothing special is going on, it's incredible to see so many players. Also, I used to consider it a big day when there were more than 100 games played in 24 hours, but we just topped 100 games in the last 12 hours.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 23rd, 2009, 5:35pm by Fritzlein » |
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nycavri
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #8 on: Sep 24th, 2009, 6:50am » |
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I am also excited to see that, on BGG, as the number of ratings for Arimaa increases the already impressive raw score is *also* increasing.
It can't last, but bodes extraordinarily well that since the physical sets were released, there have been 20-30 more ratings and the raw score has *risen* from a 7.98 to a 8.01 . . .
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #9 on: Sep 24th, 2009, 12:11pm » |
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Yes, you would expect that only fanatics had rated Arimaa before, and that exposure to a wider critical audience would lower the average response. However, there also haven't been as many new ratings as I expected.
The combination of the two factors makes me think that Arimaa is on a better track to long-term success than if it were making a huge, immediate splash. There is no point trying to rope in a bunch of people who would say Arimaa isn't their cup of tea anyway. It's better to be attracting a smaller number of people but with a higher density of folks looking for a deep, strategic game.
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qswanger
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #10 on: Sep 24th, 2009, 6:40pm » |
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Speaking of future growth ...
When are we gonna get an AAF ? 
And by AAF I mean, of course, the American Arimaa Federation!
I thought about USAF (similar to the US Chess Federation, not to mention US Cycling Federation), but we've already got a US Air Force. And then I thought about AAA (similar to the American Go Association), but we've already got an American Automobile Association too (among other acronyms). AAF seemed the best way to go. The only thing Arimma has to "compete" with is the American Advertising Federation, but big deal ... at least it's not as widely known as the other two conflicts I mentioned. Something to think about long term?
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RonWeasley
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #11 on: Sep 25th, 2009, 3:05am » |
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on Sep 24th, 2009, 6:40pm, qswanger wrote:Speaking of future growth ...
When are we gonna get an AAF ?
And by AAF I mean, of course, the American Arimaa Federation!
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It took a moment to realize you are simply having fun with acronyms. At first I was concerned for the many active non-American players. Sometimes I'm just slower than a flobberworm.
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qswanger
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #12 on: Sep 25th, 2009, 5:57am » |
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on Sep 25th, 2009, 3:05am, RonWeasley wrote:
It took a moment to realize you are simply having fun with acronyms. At first I was concerned for the many active non-American players. Sometimes I'm just slower than a flobberworm. |
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Well, at first I was just having fun with acronyms, but then after I posted this I thought more seriously and began to think: why not? Any organization with "US" or "American" in it does not necessarily preclude/exclude non-Americans from joining. I don't think the USCF or the AGA operate this way.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #13 on: Sep 25th, 2009, 6:37am » |
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If every country sets up its own Arimaa federation, we will then need an umbrella organization for the whole world, to arrange for world championships and such. We should call it the League of Many Arimaa Organizations -- LMAO.
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Arimabuff
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #14 on: Sep 25th, 2009, 11:18am » |
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on Sep 25th, 2009, 6:37am, Fritzlein wrote:| If every country sets up its own Arimaa federation, we will then need an umbrella organization for the whole world, to arrange for world championships and such. We should call it the League of Many Arimaa Organizations -- LMAO. |
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Also known as League Of Lots -- LOL.
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