The GamerDNA Year In Review, Part 1

When a calendar year draws to its close, there is a law on the internet that says “Thou shalt do a year a review column.” There’s another law that says “Thou shalt kill time until the holiday sales numbers are released, because there’s nothing to talk about until then.” But we’re not supposed to admit to that one.

So, what kind of year have we had at GamerDNA? Thanks to you, a pretty awesome year, that’s what.

To be honest, a year in review column is difficult for us. We changed our name, our look, and our mission. We added a ton of functionality. We started this column. We added a lot of terrific people to the team. We had some low moments, like when our servers decided they hated us. And some high moments, like when thousands of players decided they loved us. It was a little tragic when the low moments and the high moments tended to happen on the same day this summer. But we sure appreciate you guys hanging in there. We especially want to thank those of you who sent in feedback and bug reports. Finally, tons of appreciation go to those of you who sent the link to your friends. We wouldn’t be where we are without you!

On to the game stuff. You can get a “top sales of 2008” list elsewhere, and you can get tons of long winded bloviating on the Game of the Year on the rest of the internet. Let’s see what the year looked like when we peer through the DNA lens.

First, I want to show you a little about how we grew this year. The following is a chart displaying the raw numbers of titles added to our profiles.

Let me explain what you’re looking at. The data points are the number of times titles were added to profiles during the month that those titles launched. So, in January, if ten people added Pirates of the Burning Sea, and two people added Boogie Bunnies, the January data point would read “twelve.”   The numbers are cut off, because that’s proprietary data for us. Also, these numbers don’t totally correlate to the number of users we have – some people are here because their guild sites are hosted by GamerDNA, and their profiles have one game, if that. Other people put every game they ever played into their DNA, because the site is about one million times more interesting and exciting when you’ve powered it up with your profile. (Hint, hint.) But you can still get a sense of how we were growing with the old name and site – and how when you’re making an omelet you gotta break some eggs. The numbers took a dive when we relaunched in June, and it took us a little time before we got the profile system smoothed out for you. But in many ways, the summer was a great time for us to relaunch our site, because it left us ready for you tell us about all the games you were psyched about in the fall.

Anyway, there’s some context for you. Let’s crunch some data!

The blue lines represent the number of new titles, played by at least one GamerDNA member, that launched in that particular month. The red lines are games played by more than one GamerDNA member.

December is obviously not yet over, and as the month wears on, the number of new titles being added decreases, and the number of people adding an already added title will rise. I find it fascinating that the number of titles that appears on multiple profiles is remarkably consistent from month to month – 24-34%.  It skews more to the higher end of that range. And that range holds regardless of our population and the success of the month’s major titles.

But speaking of the top titles, instead of looking at raw numbers, let’s take a look at which titles took more than 10% of all the launch month’s profile additions. You can get a good feel for what really was popular regardless of the ever growing size of our sample.

Blue lines are PC games. Red are Xbox. Orange are PS3. Green is Wii (and if you are red/green colorblind, don’t worry that you’re missing something – only Super Smash Bros. is green). And purple represents games available on both the PC and the Mac.

Now, don’t make too much soup from this oyster. Because we offer guild hosting, the number of people who come here just for that purpose (and add only their game to their DNA) skews the numbers during MMO launches. Expansion packs for MMOs don’t make the list, generally, because most people put the main title in their profiles, not expansion pack titles – the fact that the WoW expansion made the list is a function of the fact that when you have as many players as Blizzard does, even minority behavior impacts the charts. Finally, over the summer we introduced automatic Xbox feeds. And because of that, our results skewed towards Xbox releases starting with the summer releases.

With those imperfections in mind, you can still see some neat stuff. Ten of the games on the list are sequels. (All those people saying the game industry is the new Hollywood are on to something.) Shooters are the dominant genre, with nine titles on the list, with roleplaying games right behind them taking seven titles.

Even with the bias caused by our automatic feeds, the degree to which platforms played a role is interesting.

Our data for January and December was incomplete.

Xbox and PC titles have the advantage of our automatic feeds. Even with that advantage, um, Nintendo owns. Their titles almost never appeared in our top 2008 additions to the profiles. They may not have many titles in the breakout, mass consciousness level of individual title sales amongst our members. They aren’t crying too hard; they leave everyone else in the dust in terms of the sheer number of titles that at least one player bought and loved enough to add to their DNA profile. This isn’t going to shock anyone – Nintendo has been doing very well in the console wars, and everyone knows it – but this is a data point I haven’t seen covered elsewhere.

Next week, we’re going to look at the data feeds for the second half of 2008, and see what our PC and Xbox players were actually doing instead of working this year. When you can’t take the family celebration one more minute, sneak into the den and check in with GamerDNA.