How many people play Angband?

[fph]

In my opinion there are a lot of small UI, complexity issues that keep a lot of people from playing Angband. [...] I wouldn't want to simplify strategy, but there's no reason that a new player should need to learn (a)im (A)ctivate (u)se (z)ap (F)ire (G)ain (q)uaff (r)ead (E)at etc. [...] (and for that matter, many new players would prefer to start with an item and then say "use" rather than going verb/noun). [...] I also think that monster and item lists should be on by default for new players.

I agree with every single word you wrote.

[nppangband]

Did you mean to put a link in there somewhere?

:::::seardhing for a decent excuse, but knowing there is none:::::

http://forum.nppangband.org/viewtopic.php?id=966

[Magnate]

On that very subject, here is a cool story on the NPP forums about a year ago. Angband does have a great "word of mouth" reputation.

Did you mean to put a link in there somewhere?

[nppangband]

I agree with you, but the point I was making is that in popular consciousness "gaming" == Call of Duty (or whatever). I don't think most people are aware that there are challenging and immersive games that cost nothing, take less than 2GB of disk space and use ASCII (or tiles).

On that very subject, here is a cool story on the NPP forums about a year ago. Angband does have a great "word of mouth" reputation.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think it is probably more than that. I have found out there are many players who simply download the game and play without being active in any on-line discussions or logging onto .oook. Over the years I have met several of people who play Angband & variants casually.

I just Tuesday met one person that says that "he is trying not to play" angband (too hooked) that doesn't write here. I think people writing here is only tiny fraction of entire angband player base.

[d_m]

In my opinion there are a lot of small UI, complexity issues that keep a lot of people from playing Angband. I have a bunch of friends who play Angband (or variants, e.g. TOME) somewhat but many of them have a hard time remembering all the different commands, when they should do what, etc.

I wouldn't want to simplify strategy, but there's no reason that a new player should need to learn (a)im (A)ctivate (u)se (z)ap (F)ire (G)ain (q)uaff (r)ead (E)at etc. for what is essentially one idea "use the item to gain an effect, whatever that means for this item". Ideally there would be one command (mapped to a convenient key) which does these, in addition to the precise versions.

Established players benefit from choosing the narrowest command (and thus being prompted with only the wands, for instance) but IMO most new players would rather see all the items (and for that matter, many new players would prefer to start with an item and then say "use" rather than going verb/noun).

EDIT: I also think that monster and item lists should be on by default for new players. These are hugely helpful for people trying to remember what a red p is.

[Magnate]

I'd expect people who like Angband to mostly dislike twitchy FPS games

I agree with you, but the point I was making is that in popular consciousness "gaming" == Call of Duty (or whatever). I don't think most people are aware that there are challenging and immersive games that cost nothing, take less than 2GB of disk space and use ASCII (or tiles).

[Therem Harth]

?? IMO the decline in numbers of people playing Angband (or indeed any roguelike) has much much more to do with the rise of the X-box/PS3 and its associated eye-candy twitch gaming than any of the above.

I'd expect people who like Angband to mostly dislike twitchy FPS games, though that could be projection of my personal bias; I happen to hate FPS games.

I think the biggest barrier is probably the steep learning curve. This is the Steve Jobs era, and people just don't want to memorize 40-50 commands to play a game anymore.

I never found Angband's learning curve to be that steep; the commands are at least pretty intuitive, which is more than can be said about certain *ahem* other roguelikes.

[nppangband]

?? IMO the decline in numbers of people playing Angband (or indeed any roguelike) has much much more to do with the rise of the X-box/PS3 and its associated eye-candy twitch gaming than any of the above.

That too. But there are some pretty good RFPs on there as well. I must say I enjoyed Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Mass Effect, and I am looking forward to playing Skyrim.

Most people who would like Angband are probably playing WoW.

[nppangband]

I don't think there are many people playing Angband any more. It's what, down to a few hundred worldwide? Whereas Doom 3 sold more than 3.5 million copies.

I think it is probably more than that. I have found out there are many players who simply download the game and play without being active in any on-line discussions or logging onto .oook. Over the years I have met several of people who play Angband & variants casually.

I think the biggest barrier is probably the steep learning curve. This is the Steve Jobs era, and people just don't want to memorize 40-50 commands to play a game anymore. That and "you die, you start over" games are practically unheard of these days.

[Magnate]

I don't think there are many people playing Angband any more. It's what, down to a few hundred worldwide? Whereas Doom 3 sold more than 3.5 million copies.

I can think of a few things to blame...

- The "pure" nature of Vanilla. In theory, it's an almost ideally balanced game. In practice it gets boring after a while.

- The death of various variants. Zangband might have been the big one... Also Pernband/ToME, which I recall being very popular back in the early 2000s.

- Being overshadowed by other roguelikes, most notably Nethack, which seems to have a bigger following.

- The sheer difficulty of the game: one small mistake and you have to restart the whole thing. That kind of risk turns new players away.

?? IMO the decline in numbers of people playing Angband (or indeed any roguelike) has much much more to do with the rise of the X-box/PS3 and its associated eye-candy twitch gaming than any of the above.

[Therem Harth]

I don't think there are many people playing Angband any more. It's what, down to a few hundred worldwide? Whereas Doom 3 sold more than 3.5 million copies.

I can think of a few things to blame...

- The "pure" nature of Vanilla. In theory, it's an almost ideally balanced game. In practice it gets boring after a while.

- The death of various variants. Zangband might have been the big one... Also Pernband/ToME, which I recall being very popular back in the early 2000s.

- Being overshadowed by other roguelikes, most notably Nethack, which seems to have a bigger following.

- The sheer difficulty of the game: one small mistake and you have to restart the whole thing. That kind of risk turns new players away.

[d_m]

Even though I'd like to know this information, I'm not really a fan of 'spying' on users even in a seemingly innocuous way. What I'd be ok with is logging the number of times Angband is downloaded from rephial. That'll give us a feel for the number of new or updating players, and that's useful.

I guess I wasn't clear, I mean there might be a box "Enable anonymous statistics? y/N" that pops up when you first run angband or something. It would be opt-in.

I agree that spying on users is unethical. Anonymous usage isn't spying, but I'd probably ask anyway.

[david3x3x3]

We're keeping anonymous usage statistics in the Android version of Angband using Flurry.

We get about 100 users who use the app each day, 400 who use it each week and 1200 who us it each month. User retention is pretty low. A lot of people run it a couple times and then not again. I'm not quite sure how to read the retained user graph, but it looks like the number of retained users has been growing recently. Up from about 10 at the end of last year to 53 in August. They define a retained user as someone who uses the app twice in a week.

This also tracks number of users by location (by country internationally and down to the city level in the US).

We've had about 27,000 downloads since the app was released in July 09.

[awldune]

I think even more people play periodically (e.g. pick Angband up once a month or once a year).

I suspect this describes a LOT of Angband players. I'll play quite a lot for a little while and then go away for a year or two and then come back. Been like that since 1994 or so.