Now that Rare Earth has been out for a few months, I’d like to take a look at some of the data that’s been gathered from players, as well as reflect on the implications.
Analytics have been a big part of the Rare Earth experiment. I used Flurry for this. It was incredibly easy to implement (they actually have a Windows Phone SDK!) and free.
That said, the service isn’t perfect. For example, according to Flurry, 6308 people have downloaded Rare Earth. Microsoft’s App Hub statistics say the number is 10617. Assuming Microsoft is right, since they control the servers and all, Flurry is missing a full 40% of users.
Even so, the numbers should be good enough to draw some conclusions. Let’s get started!
General
Between 6308 users and 1503 new games, 7811 solar systems have been created
A reported 16660 play sessions
15478 new planets have been created
9359 planets were consumed by stars (judging by some reviews, this often wasn’t intentional!)
79211 asteroid waves have entered, as well as 105450 comets
4840 star upgrades have been purchased
56 stars have reached the end of their lives (version 0.6 introduced stellar evolution, and has only been live for a few days)
Life
379 users have discovered life, and have nurtured its existence on 1024 planets
Beyond the initial required spark to the single-cell organism stage, users have also used the spark to shortcut to:
- Plant-level 289 times
- Animal-level 368 times
- City-level 360 times
- Space-faring-level 251 times
Curious that people generally skip forward in the middle stages most, rather than the highest level (which takes the most time to advance naturally)
2702 gamma ray bursts have torn through systems with life
1819 of those GRBs have caused mass extinctions
In other words, 67% of GRBs were fatal, which indicates the difficulty for this obstacle is quite high. I’ve received this feedback independently from several players, but this data really crystallizes that
3170 rockets have been launched from space-faring planets (about half of which were planet evacuations)
Only 275 have successfully landed and colonized planets (~9%; perhaps space-faring life is due for an intelligence upgrade?)
Features
6113 orbits have been normalized (a surprisingly popular feature – maybe the standard controls could use with a bit of “assist” if the difficulty is so high that people happily trade valuable earned orbits for more-stable planet orbits?)
A dismal 11 people have clicked on the referral for BuildDown. Is the game not appealing to those in the market for a gravity/life sim/arcade game? Or do people just ignore the About menu? Actually, I can’t tell. I didn’t hook menu transitions, so I don’t have the data to answer that question. Big oversight, and lesson learned for next time!
Other
34101 invaders have made their way into systems
8594 were shot down
I figured a fair number of kills were accidental, as invaders in early versions used to get tripped up around stars and crash themselves.
However, since they were upgraded to avoid stars a few versions ago, the kill rate has actually improved, which shows that the only thing holding players back before was their enemies’ own stupidity
Before the feature was removed, 9383 “orbits for matter” transactions occurred. While a popular option, ultimately it hurt balancing for other orbit-powered features, like life and orbit normalization. Instead, I’m trying other ways of making more matter available to players
The email feedback button was pushed 211 times (my inbox says 72 people went through with it, and I really appreciate all that incredible feedback!)
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Even with the inaccuracies, these analytics have been very helpful, providing another dimension of insight to complement the impressive volume of marketplace reviews and feedback emails.