Skyrim and some calculations

[Chmero]

Was rolling through the achievements of Skyrim on Steam and noticed one neat little thing.

 

Skyrim's first achievement is finishing the quest "Unbound" which is basically the first 10 minutes of the game.

 

Only 92.6% of the people who got the game on Steam have done it... meaning 7.4% have not played the game for more than 10 minutes.

Now on to the calculation part, according to VGChartz, as of 5th of May, Skyrim has sold 2.18 million copies on PC (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/49111/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/), and since all legit copies of Skyrim must be registered on Steam they all count towards it.

 

Now, 7.4% of 2.18m is roughly 161.320 copies of the game. Considering the game retails for $59.99 that means roughly 9.6 million USD of revenue from people that didn't even bother to play the game for more than 10 minutes.

 

What a waste.

[NoobusExtremus]

Or they're playing offline, to prevent a forced update that would screw up their game.

[PsxMeUP]

Or they're playing offline, to prevent a forced update that would screw up their game.

 

So basically only 7.4% know what they are doing.

[Staind716]

Or they're playing offline, to prevent a forced update that would screw up their game.

This.

[Moraelin]

Certain third-party patches like blood patches -- believe it or not, in Germany it's routine to get a game with all blood and gore removed; e.g., in FO3 even with the perk for spectacularly messed up deaths, you'd only get the +5% damage bonus and enemies would still just neatly fall over -- are for a specific version of the game. And with Steam getting popular lately, they tend to also come with instructions on how to prevent Steam from auto-patching your game.

 

Which is basically why I don't tend to read much either way into such statistics, or people having trouble with some of my mods in NV because their game is unpatched.

[thompsonar]

many could also have either used the console immediately or accidentally hit the "~" while getting used to the buttons. This disables achievements for that session.

 

I know I hit the thing by accident all the time.

 

edit: I mean why would anyone buy the game and not even watch the opening video/start the first quest. Maybe it's happening but I doubt your assertion that 7.4% of people haven't played the game for 10 minutes is correct.

 

A related quote that I don't know the origin of....

"Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures. "

Edited May 15, 2012 by thompsonar

[SubjectProphet]

Then what explains Raptr? Same problem there, not everyone has earned Unbound, but there's no option to play offline (logs your trophies every login on the computer)

[thompsonar]

Never used Raptr but after a quick search and reading about it.... the achievements are kept track of by steam, raptr checks steam, hence if steam is offline or if you use the console and don't get the achievements, they won't show up on raptr.

[Moraelin]

I'd also add: don't forget that a lot of games are bought as gifts, and sometimes quite cluelessly when it comes to guessing the recipients tastes in games. I have a few games around that I didn't even unpack, much less get any achievements in them, bought by family members, apparently under the mistaken impression that my being a "gamer" means I'll play anything whatsoever.

 

And, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the intention and all, but a few of those games will stay unopened anyway.

 

At this point someone will probably think, "but Moraelin, even if it's an unwanted gift, who wouldn't want to play SKYRIM?" Well, quite a few people, actually. Ever tried buying a RPG for someone who makes a point of, say, only playing Counter-Strike or whatever the equivalent is these days? Yeah, they're not actually going to play it.

 

So, yeah, while the number is probably smaller than those 7.4%, there will be a few thousands people who got it as an unwanted gift and didn't even bother selling it on eBay :P