Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.

Gamasutra, among others, reports that:

“Sony Online Entertainment’s free-to-play MMO Free Realms is ‘close to’ 5 million registered users”

as reported by Sony Online president and Arch Deacon of Meaningless Facts, John Smedley.

Do people really look at that and think ‘Wow, look at that revenue stream!’?

If they’d said:

“Sony Online Entertainment’s free-to-play MMO Free Realms is ‘close to’ 5 million baked beans consumed in the staff canteen.”

I’d have at least found it interesting, even if it was just as irrelevant with respect to Free Realms commercial viability.

Post the sales figures for the online store, SOE. Or if, as m’colleague predicts:

“such figures are locked deep in the Sony vaults, guarded by teams of Sony ninjas with orders to shuriken on sight. New Sony recruits are told “remember, MILLIONS of PLAYERS! NEVER talk of sales!”, with said ninjas ready to pounce if one looks like letting anything slip.”

then post figures of registered accounts that have been used in the last month. I hope you’re not including my two registered accounts in your figures, for example, because I didn’t play after the first day with my initial account, and the second account was merely created because I forgot the details of the first and I wanted to do a quick bit of research, many moons ago.

Therefore I suggest that the next time you, dear reader, see a ‘Free Realms registered users’ marketing ejaculation, simply substitute the following KiaSA Approved text in its place:

“Sony Online Entertainment’s free-to-play MMO Free Realms is ‘close to’ publicising an arbitrary figure that is larger than the arbitrary figure that Blizzard publicises in order to wave it around like a giant penis and beat other MMO companies about the head with” reports Big Arbitrary Number Poobah and Chief Irrelevant Statistic-wallah, John Smedley.

5 thoughts on “Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.

  1. Brian 'Psychochild' Green

    SOE bragging about 5M seems about as clever as Blizzard bragging about a bunch of Chinese players who pay less than people in the rest of the world. However, it does show that there is some level of interest in the game. Having that many players means that FR isn’t a dud out of the gate, which is good. How does it translate into revenue? I guess we’ll see if the press releases brag about more players playing in the future and more people enjoying the game.

    From what I’ve seen, there seemed to be a big burst of activity, then less interest as time goes on. Then again, most of the people talking about it were adults, not necessarily the target audience for the game.

  2. Stabs

    I think we’re quietly heading for another dotcom bubble. As in 1999 companies are now seeking impressive sounding statistics over actual revenue.

    Presumably some venture capitalists will see these figures and throw money around like confetti. They hope. Venture capitalists who weren’t doing the job in 1999 of course.

  3. Melmoth

    SOE bragging about 5M seems about as clever as Blizzard bragging about a bunch of Chinese players who pay less than people in the rest of the world

    I’m not sure if Blizzard started the whole mess, what with counting their non-subscription players into their whole “eleven million players” boasts, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I do think that it harms the industry, and as Stabs says, it will inevitably lead to some sort of collapse if it is not reigned-in.

    As Tycho said on a recent Penny Arcade post regarding Paul Barnett:

    I really want to catch up with him this year if I can, if he’s got the time. I want to know what it’s like to design a game that makes millions of dollars a month, millions, and is still considered a failure.

    It’s because nobody is looking at the revenue, they’re looking at the number of players. Yes, Mythic didn’t meet their own targets, but still you can’t help but feel that people look at its number of subscribers and then compare it to ’11 million’. And now, of course, new MMOs will have to compete with a ‘free-to-play’ game that has 5 million ‘players’.

    It’s a stupid situation that once again has come from the minds of marketing people, and is based on deceiving the general populace in order to affect the way that they view success within this industry.

    Until companies start posting revenues against maintained operating costs and deduct initial development investment from profits, I’ll be ignoring all their marketing output as nothing more than inane propaganda.

  4. Stabs

    To be fair Barnett and Jacobs set the height of their own bar before they attempted the jump.

    The antispam word this time is, hilariously, greased. Would you like an extra dollop of lard on your user numbers, Mr PR Man?

  5. Melmoth

    I do believe that, with all the mentions it’s getting, our anti-spam system is developing a form of sentience and is now presenting words for our commenters’ amusement.

    If it starts singing ‘daisy daisy’ I may have to pull the plug.

Comments are closed.