Recently in TF2 Category

Yesterday I started collecting data for all TF2 servers in the Australian region as returned by the Steam master servers. This includes NZ but misses some Aussie servers which don't have a region setting (I might look for these based on latency and contact the server owners later).

There's lots of questions I have about the Aus TF2 player & server base but by happy coincidence Valve released an update around 7am this morning (Sydney time, AKA Australian EST) so here's a simple graph of total players & servers starting at 2am and ending at 2pm (7 Sept 2012).

The total number of servers hovers around the 470 mark. Within 5 hours we're back to over 400 servers and during a time when most operators are probably at school & work. No doubt auto-update scripts and server rental companies help here.

And at 2am in the morning each player could have their own server, forever alone! :)

Random factoid: the player base last night (Thursday) peaked at ~2,800 around 7:30-8pm.

Raw data here.

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 since its public release in October 2007. Before that I played QuakeWorld TF and Q3F for many years also both of which were essentially free (you had to pay for Quake and Quake 3 but the TF mods were free). TF2 was the first TF variant that I paid for.

Steam tracks play time and over the last 5 years I've clocked up 2,500 hours. I bought TF2 as part of The Orange Box which I think cost about $20.

So I've long held this impression that TF2 is insanely good value for money in terms of cost per hour. Consider a movie is $20 and lasts 2 hours - $10/hour.

2,500 hours at $20? Not even 1c/hour!!! Except that's not the real figure.

On 30 September 2010 Valve released an in-game store called MannCo. There you can buy various virtual items including hats, paints (alternate colours for in-game items), gifts, and keys (for opening virtual crates that you randomly get in-game, pretty much a virtual instant scratchie). So keep in mind this store has been available for ~21 months.

Today I took a look at my Steam transactions and tallied up all my TF2 in-game transactions.

$750 Holy cow.

The largest transaction I can remember making was the $130 I donated as part of TF2's Japan Charity Bundle

Where did the other $620 go?!

One can buy a Pile o' Gifts which gives everyone on a server a gift (a random item). For many months I played almost exclusively on the games.on.net #02 server so it was nice to "pop" gifts there as I knew most of the regulars. Turns out I've used 11 of these suckers for a total value of $220.

And then there's the Secret Saxton ... for when you don't want to give everyone on the server a gift, just a random stranger :) I used $90 worth of these.

$130 + $220 + $90 = $440 out of $750 ... leaving $310.

Keys. As you play the game you randomly get crates. Crates contain various items, including the possibility of a rare hat. Rare hats means extremely low probability, I've never gotten one. To open a crate you need a $2.50 key. Turns out I'm more of an instant scratchie player than I thought -- roughly half of the $310 was spent on keys, and the remainder was miscellaneous hats, paints and tools.

So ... 2500 hours for $750 puts the real cost at roughly 30c/hour. Still good value but several magnitudes more than I was expecting.

And in reality the $750 was spent over the 22 months after the Mann Co. store opened so I've effectively been paying $34/month for a "free" game.

Now you know why TF2 is free to play. "Free" :)

PS: Do I regret spending so much? I am a little amazed at how much I have spent and I'm sure that if the total figure was regularly shown to me I'd curb my spending. However it's still a cheap form of entertainment, not to mention a helluva lot of fun, and I've met some awesome people because of TF2.

Anyone who knows me knows I play a lot of TF2. In fact I've been playing variants of Team Fortress since 1996, almost half my life time.

I think its a common belief that gaming, whilst good stress relief and general entertainment, is still largely a waste of time. I thought I might share how TF2 in particular parallels the "real" world.

One of the things I enjoy about TF2 is observing human behaviour, as much as one can within the confines of a virtual game. The game is not unlike soccer - individual skill matters greatly but so does team work. You can have the most amazing striker/shooter but without strong support and co-operation her team will still be beaten by a less skilled, more cohesive group of players.

In-game you get to observe the usual spectrum of players - the couldn't-care-less-what's-going-on-I'm-here-to-play-my-game players, usually recognisable because there are 5 snipers in a team of 12 which is a well known recipe for disaster, but all refuse to change class. On the other end you have the players who will switch class and play whatever the team needs, folks who will help other team mates for no individual reward, e.g. engineers who upgrade or repair their fellow engineers' gear are not given any points for doing so.

There are players who have to win no matter what. These players will join a server and upon realising that they have joined the weaker team will switch to the other side. They might even sit in Spectator mode until a slot opens up on the winning team rather than play with the losing team. And on the other end you have players who for whatever reason will switch from winning to losing team when there is a noticeable imbalance. Maybe through a sense of fairness, or maybe they just want a challenge? Who knows.

There are players who can turn losing teams into winning teams through natural leadership ability -- even when the team is composed of complete strangers.

All of these player types are easily recognisable and I think there are valuable lessons to be learnt that can be applied to any team situation in future. e.g. teams need a mix of personality types & skills, or that the individual's role in a team may not always be what they desire but if they do it well the team can still win; is winning as a group a sufficient trade-off?

This is all the same stuff you find in management books & courses. Does its presentation in a game format make the lessons any less valuable? Or does it make the material more accessible, even fun, to a wider variety of people?

Recently a whole new side of the game was added - the MannConomy. Basically there are in-game virtual items that can be bought, found, and traded. There is an official store where a limited set of items are available for sale 24x7 but more interesting is the "underground" economy that has sprung up.

Players are now setting up "shops" on forums such as SourceOp.com. This particular link is to a list of "trusted sellers", each of whom have their own forum thread listing items for sale, some with prices and stock levels! The buying process typically involves the buyer paying the seller via PayPal, and upon receipt of moneys the seller will initiate an in-game trade request with the buyer to transfer the virtual goods. This is currently the most efficient mechanism since the game itself does not support monetary transfers between players.

Although the mechanisms are haphazard all of the typical characteristics of a market economy are present. There are buyers & sellers, bids, asks, even escrow ("middlemen"), and price discovery happens as expected. Reputation of the participants is a huge part of the market's integrity, particularly because of the disjoint nature of payment vs goods transfer.

Browsing and speaking to a few traders its clear that there's at least two types of market makers.

One is the unusual hat trader who seeks to profit from a superior understanding of the value of each hat based on market demand & supply. S/he preys on the ill-informed participants who might let their unusual hats go for below market rate.

The other is typical of most games - the farmer who spawns multiple accounts in order to collect more items over time. The game here I guess is volume, as the price of the TF2 commodity "metal" is fast falling and their margins must be getting slim.

Whilst some of these traders are likely to be college age or older there must be more than a few who are in their teens, or possibly even younger.

I wonder how many traders are monitoring their P&L, cash flow and margins over time? They may not know the terminology but I'm pretty certain that the serious traders are running profitable ventures. How many will use this experience in future as they become "real" business owners, managers, and participants in "real" world markets?