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Hey, I even included a silly emoji to indicate that I was being facetious!
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Sorry, the emoji didn’t come through when I pasted - it’s all good!
Anyway clearly 2021 was a great year for smart people who don’t follow the crowd, it was a thinking persons’ feast.
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Some second layer analysis based on the games listed above…
TOP 50 AUTHORS BY NUMBER OF TOP GAMES
Rank Author Top Games Top Games Plays Avg Plays/Top Game
---- ------------------- --------- --------------- ------------------
1 Emily Short 18 2974 165.22
2 Ryan Veeder 17 831 48.88
3 Chandler Groover 12 933 77.75
4 Andrew Plotkin 11 2216 201.45
5 C.E.J. Pacian 10 883 88.30
6 John Olsen 10 45 4.50
7 Adam Cadre 9 2631 292.33
7 Arthur DiBianca 9 406 45.11
9 Jon Ingold 8 717 89.63
9 Brendan Patrick Hennessy 8 679 84.88
9 mathbrush 8 435 54.38
9 Anonymous 8 216 27.00
13 Victor Gijsbers 7 565 80.71
13 Porpentine 7 545 77.86
13 Eric Eve 7 422 60.29
13 Stephen Granade 7 388 55.43
17 Paul O'Brian 5 364 72.80
17 Astrid Dalmady 5 307 61.40
17 Amanda Walker 5 186 37.20
20 Ian Finley 4 408 102.00
20 Graham Nelson 4 386 96.50
20 J. J. Guest 4 273 68.25
20 Steph Cherrywell 4 270 67.50
20 Nick Montfort 4 264 66.00
20 Liza Daly 4 210 52.50
20 Robin Johnson 4 201 50.25
20 Autumn Chen 4 146 36.50
20 Agnieszka Trzaska 4 122 30.50
20 Neil deMause 4 90 22.50
20 D. A. Leary 4 62 15.50
20 Paul Allen Panks 4 22 5.50
20 Robert Parker 4 8 2.00
33 michael lutz 3 375 125.00
33 Buster Hudson 3 357 119.00
33 Aaron A. Reed 3 288 96.00
33 Abigail Corfman 3 215 71.67
33 Mike Spivey 3 205 68.33
33 J. Robinson Wheeler 3 150 50.00
33 Magnus Olsson 3 125 41.67
33 Michael J. Roberts 3 117 39.00
33 Sara Dee 3 115 38.33
33 Jim Aikin 3 114 38.00
33 Wade Clarke 3 108 36.00
33 Ade McT 3 107 35.67
33 Ben Jackson 3 105 35.00
33 Dan Shiovitz 3 99 33.00
33 Robb Sherwin 3 99 33.00
33 J. D. Berry 3 89 29.67
33 G. Kevin Wilson 3 87 29.00
33 Juhana Leinonen 3 78 26.00
33 Kit Riemer 3 78 26.00
33 Simon Christiansen 3 75 25.00
33 David P. Gray 3 19 6.33
Note that I-0 has been credited to its author (Adam Cadre) for this table.
Authors tying on “Top Games” are given the same rank but shown in descending order by total plays across all of their listed games, then alphabetically.
4 Likes
Also, a second layer analysis where ranking is by total plays across all of the author’s games from the yearly charts above:
TOP 50 AUTHORS BY TOTAL PLAYS OF TOP GAMES
Rank Author Top Games Top Games Plays Avg Plays/Top Game
---- --------------------- --------- --------------- ------------------
1 Emily Short 18 2974 165.22
2 Adam Cadre 9 2631 292.33
3 Andrew Plotkin 11 2216 201.45
4 Chandler Groover 12 933 77.75
5 C.E.J. Pacian 10 883 88.30
6 Ryan Veeder 17 831 48.88
7 Jon Ingold 8 717 89.63
8 Admiral Jota 1 711 711.00
9 Brendan Patrick Hennessy 8 679 84.88
10 Victor Gijsbers 7 565 80.71
11 Jeremy Freese 1 558 558.00
12 Porpentine 7 545 77.86
13 Sam Barlow 1 499 499.00
14 mathbrush 8 435 54.38
15 Eric Eve 7 422 60.29
16 Ian Finley 4 408 102.00
17 Arthur DiBianca 9 406 45.11
18 Stephen Granade 7 388 55.43
19 Graham Nelson 4 386 96.50
20 michael lutz 3 375 125.00
21 Paul O'Brian 5 364 72.80
22 Buster Hudson 3 357 119.00
23 David Fisher 1 323 323.00
24 Astrid Dalmady 5 307 61.40
25 Star C. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto 1 297 297.00
26 Jason Devlin 2 296 148.00
27 Lynnea Glasser 2 289 144.50
28 Aaron A. Reed 3 288 96.00
29 J. J. Guest 4 273 68.25
30 Steph Cherrywell 4 270 67.50
31 Nick Montfort 4 264 66.00
32 Anonymous 8 216 27.00
33 Abigail Corfman 3 215 71.67
34 Liza Daly 4 210 52.50
35 Stephen Bond 2 206 103.00
36 Jim Munroe 2 205 102.50
36 Mike Spivey 3 205 68.33
38 Robin Johnson 4 201 50.25
39 J Cater, R Dubbin, E Eve, E Heller 1 193 193.00
40 Rob Noyes 2 186 93.00
40 Amanda Walker 5 186 37.20
42 Dan Schmidt 1 177 177.00
43 D Dyte, S Bernard, D Shiovitz, I Merr 1 171 171.00
44 Christopher Huang 2 159 79.50
45 Andrew D. Pontious 2 158 79.00
46 Gareth Rees 2 156 78.00
47 David Welbourn 2 155 77.50
47 Linus Åkesson 2 155 77.50
49 Porpentine and Brenda Neotenomie 1 152 152.00
50 Chris Klimas 2 150 75.00
50 J. Robinson Wheeler 3 150 50.00
3 Likes
As a follow-up to the stats above, I wanted to share a couple of more graphs.
The first graph is the good news: It shows, for each publication year, the number of games from that year which have at least one registered play. (Note that only about 70% of games on IFDB have at least one registered play.)
The “twin towers” of 2023 and 2024 are an interesting coincidence, differing by only 1. There has clearly been a huge uptick in widespread playing in the last couple of years (at least of playing being registered on IFDB.)
The second graph is the bad news: It shows for each publication year, the number of people who have registered a play of at least one game published in that year.
Clearly the 1998 and 2000 spikes reflect a broader pool of people participating on IFDB in the past. Particularly worth noting is the downtrend between 2023 and 2024, though that may to some extent just be a matter of people not yet having gotten around to playing last year’s games.
On the good news side again, with about a quarter fewer players of 2024 games, the number of 2024 games played was functionally the same, so everyone playing them must have played about a third more games compared to those published in 2023.
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I wouldn’t call it bad news—just speaking statistically, I would expect a downward slope over time. If we imagine a hypothetical player who picks a page from IFDB purely at random every month, that hypothetical player has had ~36 chances to potentially pick a game from 2022, but only ~24 chances to pick a game from 2023, and ~12 chances to pick a game from 2024.
2 Likes
Well, in any given “play year” (i.e. year in which a game is registered as played) there is a very strong bias toward recently published games (“recently” relative to that play year), but data from the last 10 years shows that a substantial chunk of plays are for games that were published one year prior, so I think you’re right that in the long run (i.e. by next year) the gap between players of 2023 games and players of 2024 games will narrow considerably.
+-----------+-----------+-------+-----------------------+----------------------+
| year_play | year_publ | plays | tot_plays_for_play_yr | pct_of_play_yr_plays |
+-----------+-----------+-------+-----------------------+----------------------+
| 2024 | 2024 | 2779 | 7920 | 35.0884 |
| 2024 | 2023 | 1237 | 7920 | 15.6187 |
| 2023 | 2023 | 2923 | 8029 | 36.4055 |
| 2023 | 2022 | 904 | 8029 | 11.2592 |
| 2022 | 2022 | 2041 | 7411 | 27.5401 |
| 2022 | 2021 | 531 | 7411 | 7.1650 |
| 2021 | 2021 | 1620 | 6548 | 24.7404 |
| 2021 | 2020 | 619 | 6548 | 9.4533 |
| 2020 | 2020 | 1980 | 7125 | 27.7895 |
| 2020 | 2019 | 519 | 7125 | 7.2842 |
| 2019 | 2019 | 940 | 4198 | 22.3916 |
| 2019 | 2018 | 561 | 4198 | 13.3635 |
| 2018 | 2018 | 944 | 4087 | 23.0976 |
| 2018 | 2017 | 425 | 4087 | 10.3988 |
| 2017 | 2017 | 1193 | 5224 | 22.8369 |
| 2017 | 2016 | 840 | 5224 | 16.0796 |
| 2016 | 2016 | 1643 | 5591 | 29.3865 |
| 2016 | 2015 | 793 | 5591 | 14.1835 |
| 2015 | 2015 | 1563 | 5309 | 29.4406 |
| 2015 | 2014 | 691 | 5309 | 13.0156 |
+-----------+-----------+-------+-----------------------+----------------------+
Wow. Being at number 10 in this list is paradoxically both humbling and a source of pride.
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| 2 | Damon L. Wakes (as Leah Thargic) | 2024 | Uninteractive Fiction
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Including data from the last three months, now The Den is #2 for 2024.
(Uninteractive Fiction is now #3.)
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2000 absolutely crushed it, just like I knew it would.
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1996 leader lol
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