Hello, everyone!

I had been making a quick analysis of all the views my games got in Newgrounds the last years.
Even though I am not an expert on data analysis, I think the results are somehow interesting and also I think it is important to always review what went well and what didn’t.

The most viewed game

So, first of all, I took all the list of games and placed them on an spritesheet. Then, I made a pie chart because pie charts are cool.

From there I got an unexpected result. I never thought that Zelda the Welder would have the highest amount of views between my games. I mean, it as a cool game for a game jam (NG Game Jam 7) but it didn’t have a lot of content.

So I decide to investigate why it had a lot of views and I found some interesting things.

My first idea, was that the main possibility was because my teammates were really popular on Newgrounds. LewToons has a lot of followers and Aigis and SilenTakedown where making a lot of cool content. But that wouldn’t explain then why games like Primal Champions (only 3.4% in Newgrounds with a total of 34k views) though didn’t got as much as attention. But then I checked the ArmorGames link and it has almost 400k views (making it the most played game if I combine Newgrounds and ArmorGames).

So I went for the comments to see what people where saying about the game. I remembered that a girl once made a fan art about the game, which never happened as far as I know with any other of my games. At least from a total stranger.

The first impressive thing was the amount of reviews it has (almost 300). Then I started reading the comments and even most people liked it, there wasn’t anything that would grab a lot of attention:

its own charm to it. Ok now here is a little cute game has some fun to it and it actually makes you work a bit I like that there is a goal here and with a story so that makes it more fun too. the weilding part makes it really fun was a tad tricky at first but overall was fun. Ok so now we have arrived at the end of this submission and my final thoughts on this game are that while some things can be better I still found it interesting.

XwaynecoltX

I played this game back in September of last year, it is a really fun game, I can tell that there was a lot of hard work and effort placed in the game, the music is nice while the art reminds me of a comic book. Some of the jokes are a little bit too…ahem…animated in which caused some of my friends including myself to literally fall down in such a way one would only see in an Anime. I’d give this game a 4.5/5 based on my own opinion as it seems.

KikkawaAkimotoHaruno

as an experienced welder i found it interesting. while i couldn’t get past the robot (1 wire top left, just wouldn’t go no matter what) it was neat, and pretty funny and fun to play. good job.

miroku575

Until I found maybe the real cause:

*sigh* i was drawn to it with Zelda in the title…..

Rodlim

So I guess naming your game right gives a lot of exposure ¯_(ヅ)_/¯. Though, to be honest, I didn’t name it and I am not sure the name got named after Zelda.

Views during the years

After all of these, I got curious about how the views changed during the years. And this is what I got:

From there, I noted the following things:

• From 2008 to 2009: I was just learning to use Flash so the things I did weren’t good at all.
• 2010: Here I got to make two first episodes of the Pyroscape saga. Which were something “new” in Newgrounds and got very popular by it’s time. Also, I got to make Escape from Ice Mountain for the Newgrounds Game Jam #2.
• 2011: I got to make more Game Jam games like Shark Antennas Co. and Headbanging Hero. Apparently the game jam games got a lot of views thanks to the publicity Newgrounds gave.
  Even more, here we made Kingdom in the Clouds, a game sponsored by Newgrounds. So, I guess I can conclude that if you got the attention of a Newgrounds admin, you would get a lot of user’s views. Wich is kinda fair if you think about it.
• 2012: We make Zelda the Welder during a game jam and is the game with the most views. Anyway, I think this probably may be because of the name.
• From 2013 to 2014: These years were the first years from my studies and most of the games there where for subjets so I guess it isn’t weird that they didn’t grab to much attention. Anyway, these years were also the start of decline for Flash. I think that from this point, it got very difficult to get a good amount of views.
• 2015: Primal Champions gets it’s release, being sponsored by ArmorGames, and it’s probably my biggest release for web ever. A lot of time and work was put in this game and even it has some clear flaws, is one of my proudest games for web that I have ever made. Sadly, it never got the amount of views that it got in ArmorGames but I guess it was something predictable because of the exclusivity it got in ArmorGames before.
• From 2016 to 2019: Here most of the games where for freelance or quick games for game jams. So I didn’t expect too much views. Less giving the fact that people play less and less games in browser.
  Luckly, Asterash did a really good amount of views for being a Flash game published in 2017.

It is kinda sad that people are less willing to play games in browser but it is pretty obvious giving the limitation it has. Probably this will be replaced in a future for things like Google’s Stadia and other similar services.

Also, to be honest, I had been moving from web games to desktop games after the release of Witchcraft. This probably made that my visibility in Newgrounds got lower but still, it will always have a special place in my heart because it was the site that helped me become what I had.

Well, that’s a general weird and poor analysis I made of the views. Hope you had found it interesting and thanks for reading!