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Forums > CSDb Discussions > CSDb - Quantify Me Too - Hype stopped?

2015-04-10 22:24

Mr. Mouse

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 235

CSDb - Quantify Me Too - Hype stopped?

Heya folks.

I thought I'd get the data of CSDb again for another analysis like I did for the CSDb - Quantify Me ( CSDb - Quantify Me ) release back in 2010. It's been now more than 4 years on, would be interesting to compare the pivotal line chart from that analysis with the current state of affairs:

In the chart you see the data of today, compared to the 31st of July 2010. You can also see a lot of more additions have been made to the database, most releases attributed to the period between 1984 and, say, 1997.

At that time in 2010, 88380 releases were in my analysis, of which 76425 did have a release year listed. Today, I counted 130743 releases, with 113612 having a release year. So that's 37186 new CSDb additions with a release year since back then. Of course, most of this is due to stuff that was apparently made back in the 80s and 90s.

I would like to draw your attention to the period after 2010 however, that showed a steady increase of yearly number of releases, from 1046 in 2010 to 2037 in 2013. The latter number is touching the number in 1984, mind you. In this light, I would point out the drunken rambling in a word document I put at the end of the third of these CSDb - Quantify Me pages ( http://www.xentax.com/?page_id=235, http://www.xentax.com/?page_id=254, http://www.xentax.com/?page_id=265 ). In effect, this one: http://c64.xentax.com/downloads/csdb_quantifyme_part2_mindspook..
There I suggested (so in 2010) that we might be reliving a hyped surge in C64 activity, not unlike that seen in the Golden Age of C64 (the 80s).

Further drunken analysis might now confirm that, since the rise in the years after that is pretty clear. ;-) Where's that bottle of wodka? Anyway, what is somewhat troubling though, is that 2014 seems to be a year of decline. Has the hype stopped, ladies and gentlemen? Have we all now gone through our mid-life crises and/or died and is there no future? ;-)

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2015-04-12 11:41

MagerValp

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1074

Quoting Mr. Mouse

Back to topic, this is the distribution of the release types by release year, and it tells us the proportion of all the different types per year. Looks like especially large (relative) spikes were seen in graphics and music (and cracks) the past few years.

Nice! Could you do a distribution graph with absolute values as well?

2015-04-12 12:00

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086

way too much releasetypes up there impossible to distuingish all those similar colors.

2015-04-12 14:06

Mr. SID

Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 424

Statistics like this don't mean anything, if you can have a dip in the curve just because JSL throws a hissy fit, or a peak because someone decides to do a "Get Ready Tune Competition"... :)

Oh and what Oswald said!

2015-04-12 15:12

Mr. Mouse

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 235

Quote: Statistics like this don't mean anything, if you can have a dip in the curve just because JSL throws a hissy fit, or a peak because someone decides to do a "Get Ready Tune Competition"... :)

Oh and what Oswald said!

Statistics like this mean absolutely something, because you can actually now proceed to show that curves are due to events like you mention. That's what this is all about: pointing to the confounding factors and/or covariates that gave rise to the baseline curve. After all, the results above are "as is", raw data, and purely descriptive. Next up is looking into depth. :)

2015-04-12 19:14

Frantic

Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 1646

nice!

2015-04-12 19:56

Mr. Mouse

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 235

Quote: Quoting Mr. Mouse
Back to topic, this is the distribution of the release types by release year, and it tells us the proportion of all the different types per year. Looks like especially large (relative) spikes were seen in graphics and music (and cracks) the past few years.

Nice! Could you do a distribution graph with absolute values as well?

I could, but perhaps this limited table may also be of some more use? It shows 20 Release types.

The 20% in- or decrease doesn't mean much with small numbers, but should have some impact on the overall number of releases when the Release type is one of these: Music, Graphics, One-file demo or Crack (those that have years with more than 100 releases).

The +400 overall increase in 2012 and 2013 each year can then largely be explained by an substantial increase in Cracks, Music, Graphics and One File Demos in 2012, with a further dramatic increase in Graphics and Music in 2013. The dip observed last year is then due to an equally dramatic decrease in Graphics and Music, not recovered by Cracks (that already went down substantially in 2013).

Taken together, for each of these "top" 4 Release types last year saw still a big number versus 2010. :)

2015-04-13 17:01

Mr.Ammo
Account closed

Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 228

Quoting Mr. Mouse

Anyway, what is somewhat troubling though, is that 2014 seems to be a year of decline.

Is that a gut feeling based on little over 1 quarter of data in 2015, or a hypothesis with some statistical significance?

2015-04-13 18:27

TheRyk

Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2219

as I said before and will say again, 2013 was a peak of so-so significance.
nothing else can be oracled based on that stats so far,
no worries or as groepaz said nothing to see.

2015-04-13 19:32

Mr. Mouse

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 235

Quote: Quoting Mr. Mouse

Anyway, what is somewhat troubling though, is that 2014 seems to be a year of decline.

Is that a gut feeling based on little over 1 quarter of data in 2015, or a hypothesis with some statistical significance?

Take heed of the word "seems". Also, read the other data. You will see that even though there is a decline versus 2013, it is still a big leap up from 2010. So no, I am not posing it as a decline that will continue downward as truth. I merely found it "somewhat troubling" and it "seemed" to be a year of decline. And technically, it actually is, versus previous year. Overall, we will have to wait for 2015 data to see the next point in the chart.

Nevertheless, the very fact that it can be pointed out makes it interesting to check the past 5 years. And that's what I am doing.

The biggest finding though is that 2012, 2013 and 2014 suggest an annual number of releases at a level we haven't seen since 1998 (as listed at CSDb). Personally, I think that is great news, and I wish this trend to continue!

2015-04-16 19:37

Mr. Mouse

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 235

About those 2013 releases, zooming in on C64 Graphics, we can see part of the big increase was probably caused by the many graphics compos, such as Font Creation Competion 2013, C64pixels.com Double Screen Compo 2013, Plain PETSCII Graphics Competition and the 3-Color-Logo Competition 2013.

Here's a table with the top 15 "ReleasedBy" IDs as listed at CSDb (ranked for 2013, with the other years also in the table). As you can see, JSL was going strong both in 2013 and 2014 ;-)
But you can also see that a lot of those in the top 15 of 2013 did hardly release anything before or after that year, hence the correlation with the compos in 2013.