Forums > MobyGames > Game Stats 2013
vedder (70822) on 1/4/2014 12:14 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Just a couple weeks ago I figured I didn't have to make these anymore. But it seems that MobyGames had a last second save just before the Holidays, so I felt compelled to make one yet again.
Previous years:
January 2013
January 2012
January 2011
January 2010
January 2009
Note: As with previous years. Arcade game data is courtesy of Arcade-history.com.
Each coloured shape in the graph represents a platform. Horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis represents the number of games released. So the height of a shape on a given point in time indicates the number of games released for that platform that year. The total height of the graph on a given point in time shows the total releases that year.
Of course the graph is only as complete as our database is.
The black line shows the total number of games released each year, disregarding ports being released to different platforms (so only unique game entries). This line excludes data from Arcade games. Also note that this still includes shovelware and special editions as that's how MobyGames is set up.
Notable changes:
- The people at Arcade-History have been busy bees with 549 titles added since last year
- In spite of the whole redesign fiasco still 4936 new games/ports were added by my count
- The Microvision received some love and care and now has 10 games documented!
- A high number of contributions to the final days of the Atari 8-Bit's life-cycle
- Supervision's number of games more than tripled
- Windows, as usual had a huge increase of games (1095 added this year). DOS also had a notable increase of 199 games this year.
- We seem to lag behind a bit on new Macintosh releases, but still an impressive 319 added this year.
- PlayStation 2, 3, Portable and Vita contributors have also been very busy. We'll see if they can keep up with the PS4 in the coming years.
- Mobile platforms are steadily increasing their presence in the graph.
- After the surge of new platforms last year, only PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were added this year
- Games are hip on Linux, we've documented more game releases on Linux for 2013 than any previous year!
j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (95187) on 1/4/2014 12:27 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
[Q --start vedder wrote--]Supervision's number of games more than tripled [/Q --end vedder wrote--] Yay! The poor, forgotten little Supervision got a mention! As bad as most of the library is, it was a fun little project to go through and document this thing. :) We actually have the complete known library documented now, apart from two extremely rare undumped games (Mahjong and Journey to the West).
As usual, thanks for taking the time to put this together. :)
Simon Carless (1834) on 1/4/2014 3:19 AM · Permalink · Report
Interesting! Obviously the rise of digital games (esp. iOS/Android) in recent years hasn't been dealt with quite so easily by Moby due to the amount of it and the difficulty working out the notoriety... but I feel confident that can be fixed over time, and it's a pretty amazing graph overall :)
Rola (8483) on 1/4/2014 4:38 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
I'd say there's a similar situation with web browser games (Flash etc.). Nearly anyone can make one, they are huge in numbers, so unless the developers themselves help us help them, we'll only be able to document a small percentage.
[Q2 --start vedder wrote--]
2013: 4936 games added
2012: 8932 games added
2011: 6644 games added
2010: 6666 games added
2009: 6577 games added[/Q2]
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/4/2014 5:01 AM · Permalink · Report
The casual games are the only ones that can still be dealt with casually -- documenting just the credits of an AAA console release can be days of work!
These numbers must also reflect that for three months of 2013 there was a submission morotorium going on.
Patrick Bregger (301035) on 1/4/2014 7:13 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Nah, 1000 would be nothing special. 7500!
Rola (8483) on 1/4/2014 9:12 AM · Permalink · Report
Backers are like investors. Do we list all shareholders of the game publisher? I know, some will say it's like the "thanks" section, but this is a special case - and there are exceptions from nearly every rule. If it's going to cost us several workhours - cut it short.
Patrick Bregger (301035) on 1/4/2014 9:13 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
If a publisher lists all their shareholders in the credits roll, yes, then we list them too. Simple as that. We certainly won't start to divide the credits roll into "worthy" and "unworthy" entries.
Patrick Bregger (301035) on 1/4/2014 1:42 PM · Permalink · Report
Relevant is everyone the developer chooses to put in their credits roll.
Cavalary (11445) on 1/4/2014 4:55 PM · Permalink · Report
shrug So loads of pointless names for a few and none for most others it is then, judging by the available willing manpower for the task. (If I understand the system correctly, a list of 7500 names like that one mentioned would land the contributor 1877 points... Last year there were precisely six that got above that number from credits. And that's just for the one game with such a list.)
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/5/2014 3:36 AM · Permalink · Report
For cases like credits rolls with 7500 names on them, clearly we have two sane options: write the developer and ask for a dump of the credit roll (you can tell them: we can do this the easy way or the hard way), or write down the first few names and then do a hexedit search for those strings in the game data and liberate the rest of the list like so 8)
j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (95187) on 1/4/2014 6:52 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start chirinea wrote--]Those 3 months have hurt the contributions so badly that we barely surpassed half of the contributions from 2012! It was the worst year since 2009, and only because we don't know how the previous years went. [/Q --end chirinea wrote--] And that's including the 650 or so games that were approved between Dec. 18 and the end of the year.
Of course, the fact that we've had close to 800 games approved in the last three weeks bodes well for the short-term health of the database. I don't think I've ever seen the "New Games" list stretch for that many pages.
Fred VT (25953) on 1/4/2014 3:21 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start 雷堂嬢太朗 -raido.jotaro- wrote--] [Q2 --start chirinea wrote--]Those 3 months have hurt the contributions so badly that we barely surpassed half of the contributions from 2012! It was the worst year since 2009, and only because we don't know how the previous years went. [/Q2 --end chirinea wrote--] And that's including the 650 or so games that were approved between Dec. 18 and the end of the year.
Of course, the fact that we've had close to 800 games approved in the last three weeks bodes well for the short-term health of the database. I don't think I've ever seen the "New Games" list stretch for that many pages. [/Q --end 雷堂嬢太朗 -raido.jotaro- wrote--]
And I've been pretty much idle as far as approval goes in those two weeks... :P I could've added a few dozens more if I had been active (They'd have to be submitted, of course...)
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/4/2014 4:37 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Rola wrote--]I'd say there's a similar situation with web browser games (Flash etc.). Nearly anyone can make one, they are huge in numbers, so unless the developers themselves help us help them, we'll only be able to document a small percentage. [/Q --end Rola wrote--]
Well, we still haven't added a percent of all BASIC games made in the eighties.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/5/2014 3:37 AM · Permalink · Report
Well duh, we have no BASIC software platform!
I always felt we should prioritize the earliest games -- cover our foundations concretely while the primary sources are most at risk of dwindling away permanently.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/5/2014 3:40 AM · Permalink · Report
Speaking of which, this here -- http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zarfs-list.html -- would be an excellent resource for covering the very very early frontiers (~1993) of the Browser platform. I've chanced upon some early representatives, but this was a systematic effort (heh, shades of the start of Yahoo!) and of course in retrospect it's completely unsurprising who was conducting it.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/5/2014 3:43 AM · Permalink · Report
(heh, in conjunction with the Waybackmachine -- so far I can't find a single link that's still valid. 20 years is just too long to expect a website to stay up!)
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/5/2014 4:24 AM · Permalink · Report
(OK, starting at The Contact Project are a few links that are still valid...)
CalaisianMindthief (8172) on 1/5/2014 7:09 AM · Permalink · Report
Thanks for the link, I'm also interested in the early history of browser games.
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/5/2014 6:49 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Pseudo_Intellectual wrote--]Well duh, we have no BASIC software platform!
[/Q --end Pseudo_Intellectual wrote--] Well duh, I wasn't exactly talking about a BASIC software platform, just about all those lousy games made in Sinclair BASIC or BBC BASIC or Microsoft BASIC 2.0.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 1/5/2014 7:01 AM · Permalink · Report
Certainly there's a lot of BASIC games even within our reach that we've failed to cover, but also a decade or so of them (from which many of them derive) pre-home computer that are not even on the table.
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/5/2014 4:50 PM · Permalink · Report
At least those will have been ported to one or the other of our currently supported systems.
Havoc Crow (29859) on 1/4/2014 5:59 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start vedder wrote--]
[/Q --end vedder wrote--] Shouldn't that be "10?" Unless you thought it was binary :)
Catawiki.com (671) on 1/5/2014 10:45 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start JudgeDeadd wrote--] [Q2 --start vedder wrote--]
[/Q2 --end vedder wrote--] Shouldn't that be "10?" Unless you thought it was binary :) [/Q --end JudgeDeadd wrote--]
He ment it needed its last 2 games entered ;).
CalaisianMindthief (8172) on 1/4/2014 6:52 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Nevermind, my mistake, confused the graphs.
