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Title: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 7th, 2009, 9:47am The new year is an occasion to look back and look forward. I gleaned the following statistic from Omar's growth page (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/growth/players): 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2009, 7:08am 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on May 31st, 2009, 6:22pm 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jul 28th, 2009, 6:13am on 01/07/09 at 09:47:39, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Cobra on Aug 7th, 2009, 3:24am 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Aug 14th, 2009, 10:17am 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Sep 5th, 2009, 10:58am 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Sep 23rd, 2009, 4:11pm 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by nycavri on Sep 24th, 2009, 6:50am 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Sep 24th, 2009, 12:11pm 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by qswanger on Sep 24th, 2009, 6:40pm Speaking of future growth ... When are we gonna get an AAF ? :D 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by RonWeasley on Sep 25th, 2009, 3:05am on 09/24/09 at 18:40:35, qswanger 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by qswanger on Sep 25th, 2009, 5:57am on 09/25/09 at 03:05:46, RonWeasley wrote:
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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Sep 25th, 2009, 6:37am 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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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Arimabuff on Sep 25th, 2009, 11:18am on 09/25/09 at 06:37:57, Fritzlein wrote:
Also known as League Of Lots -- LOL. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Oct 4th, 2009, 6:41pm on 09/05/09 at 10:58:48, Fritzlein wrote:
Well, that record didn't stand for very long. In the last week of September we shattered it with 974 HvB games. Also I note that we have played more than a hundred total games every day for seventeen days in a row, an unprecedented occurrence. Furthermore, on Friday, October 2, there were 73 unique human logins. We have only been tracking the number of unique human logins per day since August of 2007, but in that time Friday's number is the fourth-highest ever, surpassed only by March 17, 2008 (finals of the World Championship) and February 5&6, 2009 (during the last round of the Open Classic). To have so many people logging in when nothing special is going in is in itself special. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by megajester on Oct 18th, 2009, 3:42am on 09/25/09 at 05:57:42, qswanger wrote:
If we really want to make it an international organization I think we should call it exactly that: "international". Don't get me wrong, because I know this is a delicate subject, and I just want to have a mature discussion about this as I'm sure we all do. But just based on my life experience as a European I can definitely say that an American "we'll lead and the rest of the world can tag along" approach will do Arimaa more damage than good. I know that's not what you intended qswanger, I'm just concerned that it could be interpreted that way and harm Arimaa's international image. Most sports, like soccer and chess for example, started having associations on a national level which then federated into an international organization. But since Arimaa launched internationally I think it would make sense for an international body to be started before national ones. So we could start with, say, the International Arimaa Association and then start sub-associations for individual countries, if we ever felt the need for it. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by omar on Oct 18th, 2009, 6:44am on 10/18/09 at 03:42:18, megajester wrote:
It's neat that you suggested 'International Arimaa Association' for the name. That's exactly what I would have suggested also :-) John Herr (The_Jeh) had also mention 'the IAA' in his reply to my posting announcing the Arimaa sets. I think the earliest discussions of an international organization are in this thread: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1214335888 The thought of starting such an organization has been crossing my mind since June 2008 and I noted down once some thought on the things this organization would do and how it might be structured. But then I realized that creating such an organization and operating it is a big undertaking and I wouldn't be able make that kind of time commitment. So I've put it on the back burner for now :-). But if anyone is interested in taking this on, let me know. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Nov 5th, 2009, 12:41pm In October, more games were played on Arimaa.com than in any previous month. We didn't top the record single week from September, but had consistently high participation every week. In particular, the number of HvH and BvB games ticked upward, perhaps in anticipation of the looming 2010 tournaments. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 3rd, 2010, 5:21pm Let me update the table from the first post in this thread: Year New Accts Games Played ---- --------- ------------ 2003 . 381 . 4722 2004 . 334 . 6018 2005 . 770 . 12221 2006 . 635 . 22447 2007 . 729 . 22031 2008 . 756 . 25331 2009 . 1052 . 37418 The best fit for the growth rate of the number of games per year turns out to be almost exactly doubling every two years (a factor of 1.996 according to Excel). So maybe Arimaa has its own Moore's Law to compete with the growth of computing power. :) 2009 was an amazing year for Arimaa. Here's hoping 2010 is even better! |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 8:57am For the most part I have measured the growth of the Arimaa server in terms of the number of games played, but that is only because it is easy to query. I actually prefer the metric of unique users. Unfortunately, we don't have data that goes back to the beginning of the server. Omar only started tracking daily unique logins in August of 2007. Nevertheless, starting with August 2007, here are the monthly averages of the daily number of unique human logins. Thus in September 2007 an average of 45 people logged in every day. Bots are not counted. 2007-08 41 2007-09 45 2007-10 39 2007-11 36 2007-12 40 2008-01 47 2008-02 43 2008-03 47 2008-04 34 2008-05 30 2008-06 30 2008-07 32 2008-08 34 2008-09 39 2008-10 39 2008-11 38 2008-12 43 2009-01 46 2009-02 51 2009-03 48 2009-04 50 2009-05 43 2009-06 42 2009-07 45 2009-08 47 2009-09 53 2009-10 62 2009-11 61 2009-12 58 2010-01 61 There is a pattern of summer months being weak, and the most logins during the tournament months of January through March. This year the spike started earlier, in October, and has gone higher. February has started out even better than January, so I expect to set a new participation record during this month. The Arimaa community is larger and more engaged than ever! |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 1st, 2011, 5:57pm Year New Accts Games Played UU/day ---- --------- ------------ ------ 2003 . 381 . 4722 2004 . 334 . 6018 2005 . 770 . 12221 2006 . 635 . 22447 2007 . 729 . 22031 2008 . 756 . 25331 . 38 2009 . 1052 . 37418 . 51 2010 . 1194 . 36121 . 63 The year 2010 was basically flat in terms of total games played on arimaa.com. On the other hand, the size of the community continued to grow steadily. Not only did we have more new accounts created than ever, an average day also saw 63 unique human logins. My interpretation is that we are collectively spending slightly less time bot-bashing while spending slightly more time being sociable. The chat room was occupied a much higher percentage of the time in 2010 than in 2009, we had more live commentary, and we had events such as the Arimaa World League and the Online Festival. I'm truly proud to be part of a community that doesn't just enjoy its sport individually, but instead multiplies the fun by enjoying it collectively. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by rbarreira on Jan 1st, 2011, 6:04pm on 01/01/11 at 17:57:48, Fritzlein wrote:
What's the easiest way to find the number of HvH, HvB games? That might confirm your theory. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 1st, 2011, 6:14pm on 01/01/11 at 18:04:24, rbarreira wrote:
The game database is available for download here: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/download/gameData/ Once you have the game database, it is a simple query. However, my database is both months out of date and also located on my other computer. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by JoeHead on Jan 10th, 2011, 2:41pm It is a pity that growth of the number of new accounts or the number of games played is linear. Exponential - I wouldnt even dared to wish, but maybe cubic or at least quadratic would be fine... Maybe I am wrong and we are just at the bottom of triple exponential curve :D |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 10th, 2011, 7:00pm Why do you say it is linear growth in the number of games played? Can't you get a better fit to this data with an exponential curve? |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Oystein on Jan 11th, 2011, 12:53am I have added a column with the result from linear regression for both new accounts and game played. The growth seems pretty linear to me. Year . New Accts . Games Played ---- . ------------ . --------------- 2003 . 381 ~ 343 . 4722 ~ 3682 2004 . 334 ~ 454 . 6018 ~ 8631 2005 . 770 ~ 565 . 12221 ~ 13580 2006 . 635 ~ 676 . 22447 ~ 18529 2007 . 729 ~ 787 . 22031 ~ 23478 2008 . 756 ~ 898 . 25331 ~ 28427 2009 . 1052 ~ 1009 . 37418 ~ 33376 2010 . 1194 ~ 1120 . 36121 ~ 38325 |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 11th, 2011, 9:08am This is a sort of thing that is hard to eyeball. Here I have added exponential growth to the new accounts: year act lin exp ---- --- --- --- 2003 381 343 380 2004 334 454 447 2005 770 565 527 2006 635 676 622 2007 729 787 733 2008 756 898 864 2009 1052 1009 1018 2010 1194 1120 1200 It isn't obvious to me from looking at the list which is a better fit. Are you able to eyeball it? But it turns out that that R^2 value is slightly higher for linear than for exponential, both for new accounts and for games played. I guess I could have just done the math in the first place rather than being lazy and asking whether linear or exponential was a better fit. Then I could have peacefully acquiesced to the "too bad it is linear" comment. :) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Oystein on Jan 12th, 2011, 2:13pm I have to agree that eyeballing is hard. What I should have said was that the linear model fits the data well. There is no reason to reject it. But I guess you have never claimed anything close to that. I was reading more into your previous post than I should. Exponential model do also fit well, better than I thought. It is to much noise in the data to decide the best. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2011, 11:34am I have updated the games played graph for the first time in over a year: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Image:GamesPerWeekSmoothed.png The number of human vs. bot games seems to have plateaued over the past two years, but we are currently at a record level of human vs. human games. The World Championship itself accounts for sixteen HvH games per week, but we are averaging over fifty, so there is a lot of extra-curricular activity going on as well. Also we set an all-time record for bot vs. bot games in early December, presumably due to an assignment in somebody's computer science course. Then again at the end of January we spiked again, partly due to the Computer Championship qualifying and partly due to briareus and clueless testing changes. The graph shows a more sustained peak of BvB games in 2006, but that was due to Omar automating server bots to play each other. We eventually decided that it wasn't worth the server resources. Anyway those games were sever bot vs. server bot, so they didn't represent the kind of community activity that developer bot vs. server bot represents. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by omar on Feb 8th, 2011, 5:25pm Since the bots are off during WC games, I think that may also be helping to boost the number of HH games. Also I've seen more WC players practicing against humans to prepare for their games. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Aug 14th, 2011, 4:26pm We're starting to emerge from the traditional summer slump. The Gang vs. Mob and the AWL are giving us something to chat about. The number of unique users per days and total games played have also ticked up again. I will be surprised if 2011 isn't another record year, and the first year with over 40,000 games played on the server. It was sad that Zman had to remainder his Arimaa sets; apparently Arimaa isn't quite ready for the prime time as a business endeavor. As a playing community, however, Arimaa shows no signs of letting up. Barring a decision by Omar to simply pull the plug, I think we are past a critical mass and to the point where Arimaa will grow every year simply on the continuing excellence of the game. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 5th, 2012, 3:20pm Year New Accts Games Played UU/day ---- --------- ------------ ------ 2003 . 381 . 4722 2004 . 334 . 6018 2005 . 770 . 12221 2006 . 635 . 22447 2007 . 729 . 22031 2008 . 756 . 25331 . 38 2009 . 1052 . 37418 . 51 2010 . 1194 . 36121 . 63 2011 . 997 . 40405 . 71 New accounts were down in 2011, but games played and unique users per day were each up more than 10%. My interpretation: our evangelism was weak but our retention remains strong and our engagement is increasing. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by omar on Jan 6th, 2012, 5:48pm Thanks for posting this. You were right we did cross 40,000 this year; good prediction. Lets hope 2012 will be another record year; maybe we will cross 50,000 games :-) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Arimabuff on Jan 13th, 2012, 8:43am on 01/05/12 at 15:20:38, Fritzlein wrote:
Let's hope we've passed the Jehovah's witnesses' stage... |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by megajester on Jan 13th, 2012, 9:04am on 01/13/12 at 08:43:50, Arimabuff wrote:
::) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by hyperpape on Feb 26th, 2012, 11:10pm I got curious, looking at this thread. Around 10500 games so far this year, 1400 new players. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by rbarreira on Feb 27th, 2012, 4:17am on 02/26/12 at 23:10:39, hyperpape wrote:
Nice. There were about 7600 games between Jan-Feb 2011, so that's at least a 38% increase year-on-year. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by 99of9 on Feb 27th, 2012, 5:35pm How does it look for H-H games? |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by hyperpape on Feb 27th, 2012, 7:18pm No idea. I just did it the stupid way via game record numbers, not using the database. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Mar 7th, 2012, 8:08pm on 02/27/12 at 17:35:10, 99of9 wrote:
We are currently at an all-time high for HvH games, around 55 per week. Not that this is the record number for a single week, mind you, but the highest sustained average ever. The record set in HvB games was even more dramatic, and the xkcd-induced spike in January looks discontinuous even after smoothing. Notably, however, we settled in to an average of more than 1000 HvB games per week throughout February. I had to rescale the graph from when I last did it in early 2011; back then we had never broken 1000. I have to say that the recent surge reminds me of the heady days of 2005. Back then we had a new World Champion every year, bot_Bomb was behind the humans but still improving, and the man vs. machine match was competitive enough that only a handful of humans could defend it. (Hands up all who remember wondering whether Belbo might lose to Bomb in 2005!) Most of all, we had no idea what was going to happen next. It is inspiring to see Arimaa recapturing that sense of excitement and possibility on both sides of the Challenge. http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/images/f/f3/GamesPerWeekSmoothed.png |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by 99of9 on Mar 7th, 2012, 9:53pm Thanks Fritz. *raises hand* |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by lightvector on Mar 12th, 2012, 10:12pm That spike in January looks really unimpressive at first, until you look at how strongly logarithmic the y axis is... Cool! |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Mar 21st, 2012, 12:15am on 03/12/12 at 22:12:29, lightvector wrote:
Yes, it is both logarithmic, so all three types of games fit on the same chart, and smoothed, so the eye can make sense of the data more easily. This combines to make short-term moves look unimpressive, but gives a good feel for the long-term trends. I like it because the long-term trend is up. :) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Arimabuff on Mar 21st, 2012, 7:28am on 03/21/12 at 00:15:35, Fritzlein wrote:
We broke the audience record hands down last time, I believe it was over 80, fortunately the server can take it and then some. Now, if you take into account the dozens that might have been repelled by my accent, then sky's the limit... |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by supersamu on Nov 14th, 2012, 6:03pm I would like to see a statistic about how many games newcomers play on average over time. With that i mean the average number of games by players in the month after their first game. I just have the impression that lately there are a lot more active, new players than what I have seen before. For example, I think I see an unfamiliar username everyday. EDIT: Some statistics: We have (8144-6942)=1202 new registered members up until now in this year and (249424-206662)=42762 games have been played. EDIT2: On a completely unrelated note, I just read that one of the new registered players said that he was referred to arimaa through a Facebook Ad. Does Arimaa have facebook ads? EDIT3: A statistic about how many players play n games per month( where n is 5, 10 or 20) would be interesting as well, I think. I wish I could do these queries, but I don´t know how to do them. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by mistre on Dec 3rd, 2012, 10:20pm Supersamu, On your second note, Arimaa has a FB group page - http://www.facebook.com/groups/2225228097/ That was probably what the player was referring to as we don't have any Ads on Facebook to my knowledge. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 2nd, 2013, 10:58pm 2012 was another record year, this time in every column. Year New Accts Games Played UU/day UU/month ---- --------- ------------ ------ -------- 2003 . 381 . 4722 2004 . 334 . 6018 2005 . 770 . 12221 2006 . 635 . 22447 2007 . 729 . 22031 2008 . 756 . 25331 . 38 2009 . 1052 . 37418 . 51 2010 . 1194 . 36121 . 63 2011 . 997 . 40405 . 71 2012 . 1307 . 46336 . 77 . 260 |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by mattj256 on Apr 11th, 2013, 8:33pm on 08/14/09 at 10:17:53, Fritzlein wrote:
Google Analytics is basically a tool to help you analyze how users use your site: what their demographics are, what path they followed, what the referrer page is, etc. If you're selling a product it can give you great insight into how often you're "converting" page views into sales, and at what point in the process customers are "jumping ship." As you said above, if you want to know why they were searching for Arimaa in the first place it doesn't help. Google also has a keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool). It's intended to help advertisers plan strategy when deciding what keywords are worth buying. (If I'm selling bathing suits maybe I want my ad to show up when the user does a Google search for "beach" or "vacation.") If you use that "Keyword Tool" and type in "arimaa" you get: Keyword . Global Monthly Searches . US Monthly Searches arimaa..............6600...............1300 arimaa game..........140.................58 arimaa online........110.................46 arimaa board..........58.................36 arimaa board game.....36.................22 The above info is for laptops and desktops. Mobile devices add 720 global searches per month for "arimaa" and a negligible amount for everything else. The things that stand out to me the most: 1. There is plenty of non-US demand for Arimaa. 2. Look at some of the things that don't show up on the list.
In response to Fritzlein's implied question, I would suggest that what people are not looking for when they search for Arimaa is a programming challenge. The question of "What is Arimaa?" seems to be much higher on their minds than "Where can I play Arimaa?" The good news is that means that there is a lot of room for growth. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by mattj256 on Apr 11th, 2013, 8:57pm This is Google's historical data on global searches for the word "arimaa." http://i.imgur.com/2PVfPN0.png (http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=arimaa&date=10%2F2006%2078m&cmpt=q) The spike in the chart is from January 2012, when XKCD published a comic (http://www.xkcd.com/1002/) about Arimaa. Jan 2012: 100% (scaled) Aug 2007: 30% of peak volume Dec 2007: 24% of peak volume |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by mattj256 on Apr 13th, 2013, 3:20am More stats... http://i.imgur.com/6ZOnKi0.png (http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/arimaa) This is the number of daily page views for the Wikipedia English "Arimaa" page. The spike is on Feb 3, 2013. This website only displays Wikipedia's stats going back 90 days. Compiling data for farther back than the past 90 days is left as an exercise for the reader. (Meaning I don't want to download countless gigabytes of Wikipedia's log files and parse through them...) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by mattj256 on May 2nd, 2013, 1:27am My goals for the 2014 World Championships are: (1) A statistically significant increase in page views of the Arimaa Wikipedia page. (2) A statistically significant increase in people using Google to search for the word "Arimaa." |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on May 2nd, 2013, 8:54am Super! I hope we can continue the growth trend, because so far in 2013 we are lagging behind the same period from 2012. Are you by any chance close friends with any celebrities? Can you persuade your bud Justin Bieber to give Arimaa a shout out in his next interview? |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by chessandgo on May 2nd, 2013, 11:51am Do we know what the two 2007 and the Feb 3 peaks correspond to? |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by 99of9 on Jun 19th, 2013, 6:27am on 04/13/13 at 03:20:35, mattj256 wrote:
You can already get specific months without parsing the entire log. For example, the xkcd spike is here: http://stats.grok.se/en/201201/Arimaa |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by mattj256 on Jul 16th, 2013, 1:26am on 06/19/13 at 06:27:00, 99of9 wrote:
Thanks! |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 2nd, 2014, 10:27pm Year New Accts Games Played UU/day UU/month ---- --------- ------------ ------ -------- 2003 . 381 . 4722 2004 . 334 . 6018 2005 . 770 . 12221 2006 . 635 . 22447 2007 . 729 . 22031 2008 . 756 . 25331 . 38 2009 . 1052 . 37418 . 51 2010 . 1194 . 36121 . 63 2011 . 997 . 40405 . 71 2012 . 1307 . 46336 . 77 . 260 2013 . 976 . 34344 . 62 . 271 Clearly, 2013 was a down year for activity on arimaa.com, which is disappointing after the amazing 2012. I believe, however, that there are no signs of the game per se running out of steam. On the contrary, I note that 20 of the top 22 seeds from last year's World Championship are back again this year, and the two that aren't would be if not for real life interference. Our retention rate remains astounding; it is merely recruitment that fell off recently, and it is new recruits who play most of the games. It surely would have helped sustain the excitement had there been events throughout the year rather than just in the first three months, but Omar had a hectic year in real life after the 2013 tournament season was over, and there was no serendipitous burst of publicity like there had been with the xkcd cartoon in early 2012. I have been around Arimaa long enough to remember three distinct periods when it felt like Arimaa's popularity was waning, and each time it came roaring back stronger than ever. Therefore, I feel no sense of panic or malaise at present. I will not worry unless the game itself starts to look played out and/or the Arimaa Challenge is won. In the mean time, I'm just waiting for the next endorsement or publicity boost that will take us to new heights. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by 99of9 on Jan 20th, 2014, 3:55am It looks like the BBC article kicked up some interest in late November: http://stats.grok.se/en/201311/Arimaa |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Fritzlein on Jan 20th, 2014, 9:10am on 01/20/14 at 03:55:20, 99of9 wrote:
Yes, not quite the order of magnitude of xkcd (http://stats.grok.se/en/201201/Arimaa), but still a nice boost. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Adanac on Jan 25th, 2014, 11:18am on 01/20/14 at 09:10:20, Fritzlein wrote:
If Jean Daligault can challenge Bill Gates to a game of Arimaa, it would be the ultimate boost. Don't worry Jean, it won't take a lot of time out of your day ;) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by chessandgo on Jan 25th, 2014, 2:23pm Tell your friend Bill I'll give him games all day long :) |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by Arimabuff on Jan 26th, 2014, 6:16am on 01/25/14 at 11:18:23, Adanac wrote:
I think what would be a great boost is if we could get a chess champion to say that he played a game of Arimaa once in a while. Like for instance Kasparov in his memoirs said that he liked to play Othello to relax after an important game. Imagine the impact if he had said that of Arimaa! The game room would crash instantly under the hordes of new players. |
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Title: Re: Past and future growth Post by GorgeTranche on Jan 26th, 2014, 6:59am I might be able to do a colloquium at my University of applied sciences. Its basically just for Computer science. So there might be some general interest there or maybe just a few people for developing something. It probably will be around 2014, so not right now. But I will definitely give it a shot. And hopefully get some more people to join the community :D |
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