Fallout 3, Fable 2, Oblivion, Mass Effect: Setting Or Style?
After our infant son goes to bed, my better half and I have a few precious hours of Adult Time with which we pursue any number of pastimes. Admittedly, we often choose sleep. But we also watch movies together, or we play games together.
We used to, anyway. I haven’t laid eyes on my spouse during Adult Time since October 28th. He’s been blowing the heads off mutant zombies. That’s right, I’m a Fallout 3 widow. I’m not bitter. The sooner he’s done, the sooner it’s my turn.
You’ve probably heard the reviews. “Oblivion with Guns.” “Post-apocalyptic Oblivion.” “The spirit of Fallout, not the sequel.” All that made Steve the Data Man wonder… what is the gaming background of people who are playing Fallout 3? Since 15% of GamerDNA members have tried it so far, and the number continues to climb, we’ve got a terrific sample to draw from! To eliminate any possible inaccuracy due to self-reporting errors, we’re just talking about the Xbox players. If you add in the PC players, I suspect the total is even higher than 15%. But we’ll take the 15% and run with it.
Let’s start with the obvious – Oblivion. First question, how many people are playing, so far to date?
49% of the GamerDNA population has played Oblivion so far. Now, this title launched in March 2007 in North American, and April 2007 in Europe, so it’s got a bit of a head start. Fallout is, as we said, sitting at 15% despite a launch date of less than two weeks ago. Fable 2 is on the chart, but hang on, we’ll get back to that in a minute. That 15% is rising every day, but is there a relationship between a history of liking one game and playing another?
If Fallout 3 is “Oblivion with guns,” a certain degree of overlap would be expected, right?
Again, ignore the Fable bit for a second. 66% of Fallout3 players have also played Oblivion. A strong showing, but hardly overwhelming given the persistent meme of “It’s Oblivion with guns!” The relationship could easily be explained by both titles being RPGs.
That’s what’s with the Fable 2 references. Fable 2 is also a highly anticipated RPG sequel, and it launched just a week before Fallout 3. Oh, yes, this autumn has been good to us, my nerdly brethren. Anyway, with a week’s headstart, Fable 2 has been played by 23% of the GamerDNA family, and its overlap with Oblivion is 64 – 64% of Fable 2 players also have Oblivion in their DNA.
Let’s look at the first nine days of both North American launches:
Each bar represents the percentage of new players added each day for the first nine days that Fable and Fallout launched. (In raw numbers, there are more Fable2 players than Fallout – a little more than a third more.)The trends are essentially the same, and track well with previous GamerDNA snapshots of sequels. Sequels are highly anticipated, but that makes the drop off fairly steep. There isn’t much room for word of mouth to goose sales when everyone was already talking about it before launch. All word of mouth can really do to a sequel is… kill it. But anyway, the trend data lets us go back to the Oblivion data and say that Fallout 3 isn’t actually getting much of a boost because of the “Oblivion with guns” meme. No one is suggesting that Fable and Fallout have anything in common besides being RPGs.
Hrm. RPGs. Okay. If that’s the case, let’s check out the numbers from a science fiction RPG.
Bingo! Where the overlap with Oblivion was 66%, the overlap with Mass Effect is 74%. (The percentage of our members with Mass Effect in their DNA is just under 40%, by the way, and since the Bioware title is only five months old, it may yet catch up.)
We can tentatively conclude, therefore, that setting is more important than the publisher. We kind of knew that – how many times have you seen some board warrior going on about how he’ll NEVER buy another game from So and So EVAH AGAIN, and yet somehow So and So somehow manages to soldier on? But it looks like we can also tentatively conclude that setting is even more important in terms of a player’s buying decision than genre.
Or that players are starting to get just a little sick of fantasy settings… and wouldn’t THAT be a kick in the hind end for all the fantasy titles under development, and a shot in the arm for all the rest.
What do you guys think? What other data points should we consider when determining whether genre or setting is the main point? Which of those two is more important to you?
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Stormwaltz
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Whipray
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Fumteedesmoox
