On Census: Part 2

June 26, 2006 on 11:59 am | In General Gaming, Playstyles, Reporting, Industry, FFXI

Given the popularity of Final Fantasy XI, I've long wondered how much of the playerbase was playing in Japan vs the U.S.

I think there might be some insights available. And other data being reported potentially unlocks even more discussion, thus making this part 2 of a series I didn't even know I was starting.

I Just took a look at the 6th Vana'deil Census for FFXI*. It shows some charts from late May I found particularly interesting.

Peak Concurrencies

It looks like the peak concurrent logins for the game are prime-time U.S. The graph below is as reported in JST, GMT+9 hours for Tokyo (among other cities).

Original link 

The article states the following about this graph:

Europe's peak time begins as soon as Japan's peak time ends, and is followed by North America

Based purely on this one week period, I could guess the following:

• 26% of the players are in the U.S.
• 37% of them are in Japan
• 37% of them are in EU

Unfortunately, previous Census data is not available from Square Enix, and folks like Abalieno who've been reporting on Census 4 and 5 haven't reviewed the data they saw then for this particular bit of info. So there is no real way to note a trend.

Session Length

Also interesting is a pie chart on that page that shows the vast majority of players log in for "3 hours or less". That makes me wish they had reported on more increments below 3 hours.

Original Link

Player Levels

Similar to the previously discussed EQ2 and WoW level distributions, this page of the FFXI Census provides insights into activity per level.

Original Link

The general curve shows a game with a lot of people at the level cap, much more than EQ2 but not nearly as many as WoW:

EQ2 Chart

WoW Chart

Player Jobs

And if anyone wanted to follow the pack when making a Jobs choice, according to this page they would want to go White Mage.

Original Link

So why all of this interest for a game I haven't played much?

It's about the data.

While some are collecting data about the market performance of games, there's also data about the game system and mechanic itself. Companies measure all of this stuff already, most differently from others. But there's potential commonality out there, if the right questions are asked. For example:

• The average play session. This is already something being explored of course, with conventional wisdom stating that 2 hours is about the cap of what the majority of players want.
• The average length of an account in good standing. How much content do you provide players who stick around for eight months versus one? That can be very different per person. For a person with eight months in, have they hit the level cap or are they still questing? With all the changes made to a game in that time, do they feel left out? Even though there could be much of the default game left for them to discover, sometimes people just want to know they're being pandered to as well.
• The type of roles most played. Sometimes this is based on what is successful in a game. Other times it's player whim, particularly different between those new to the genre versus those who've played every conceivable role and have long since formed their own preferences.
• Whether in a game with Good and Evil there can be expected a persistent balance between both.
• The potential of a game based on the time to complete it. Given that the endgames are typically fairly different from the leveling-up one, how many players can you expect at the endgame and what features do you provide to keep them there? Conversely, how arduous is the leveling-up process such that people leave before they hit the cap?
• How does this affect the market share of a game in year one? In year five?

And so on.

As usual, there are more questions than answers. But the data may be out there for many more games, whether publicly reported by the company or collected through mods. I'll be looking.

* Please note: In looking for previous Census data, all links that pointed to any prior Census announcement are dead. Therefore, while I include links to the original images, I am hosting copies of them (undoctored, of course) for posterity.