Stats about game abandonment on F95zone

[aze123451]

I was very curious about the true ratio of abandoned games (especially Ren'Py) on F95, so I went and made this table of the most prevalent game engines :

​

Engine​	Completed​	Abandoned​	On Hold​	In Development​
Ren'Py​	25%​	27%​	2%​	46%​
RPGM​	55%​	18%​	2%​	25%​
Unity​	47%​	18%​	1%​	34%​
Other​	75%​	8%​	1%​	16%​
Total (of all games, not just the ones with the engines above)​	47%​	19%​	1%​	32%​

​

We can already see that Ren'Py games have a higher "In Development" and "Abandoned" ratio compared to the other games. The latter is even higher than the "Completed" ratio meaning that Ren'Py games have a (slightly) higher chance of being abandoned than completed. It would be even more interesting to have a proper study that breaks down the "Abandoned" games by version/duration of development/tags to see what is the likeliness of a v0.01 Ren'Py game reaching a certain version number and/or being completed.

Here is an accompanying table :

​

Engine​	Ren'Py​	RPGM​	Unity​	Other​
% games​	32%​	18%​	14%​	22%​
% of all On Hold games​	48%​	24%​	7%​	10%​

​

When it comes to games no longer "In Developement", 71% are "Completed" (all engines) compared to the 29% "Abandoned".

 

[DaClown]

It would help for statistical analysis reasons to have the absolute numbers.

I would guess from what I've already seen that while Ren'py might have a slightly higher abandonment vs completion rate by percentage this might disappear if relative portions of absolute project numbers are compared. More Ren'py games are started in absolute number I think than all other engine types.

Making a game in Unity I expect to be something which can only even be attempted by people who have some experience with launching and using game engines and traditional sources of documentation and programming.

Lower threshold for entry means more amateur and hobbyist attempts. Higher threshold for entry means more professional-like attempts.

I could be wrong about that. We'd need more detailed stats about the devs to do really good quality statistics on the set.

 

[SpanishPlaya_Dev]

I love this! I always wondered about this statistics.

I thought that games completed in RPGM would have a lower percentage. I should check them more often.

 

[Obscure]

RPGmaker is probably bouyed by the influx of completed Japanese games.

 

[Guntag]

RPGmaker is probably bouyed by the influx of completed Japanese games.

"Other" as well

 

[wyldstrykr]

you should add how many of them is using patreon or something similar. also you should split those to japanese game and english games since japanese games have higher chance to complete than one in english

 

[DaClown]

you should add how many of them is using patreon or something similar. also you should split those to japanese game and english games since japanese games have higher chance to complete than one in english

I think the big question is how to build a table of that information easily. I think for many of them the data is there and could be harvested with a script. Unless there's something about the database that I don't see at a glance, you'd need to make a thread crawler the finds the developer info for each entry and checks for a Patreon/Subscribestar or similar. "Japanese Game" is one of the tags so that part is relatively easy to pull in bulk.

 

[desmosome]

The very simple explanation is that Japanese devs often choose RPGM and they tend to release completed games right off the bat. The other major factor being that Renpy is quite a bit simpler for amateur devs to use than Unity. Lower bar for entry means more half assed projects being started on it.

 

[DaClown]

Lower bar for entry means more half assed projects being started on it.

Lower bar for entry means a lot more people getting way in over their head before they realize they're drowning and far from shore.

 

[laststarfighter]

I've always considered Ren'Py to be "baby dev's first engine." It's a good engine for beginners to dip their toes into coding. It's accessible and there's a lot of documentation on it.

That being said, I'm not really surprised by the Completed vs. Abandoned ratio for Ren'Py games. Coding in Ren'Py can get messy real fast without proper foresight. Especially if one's game grows exceedingly complicated or grand in scope. If we are to assume that most people using Ren'Py are beginners, it makes more sense why the ratio is the way it is. At least it does to me.

Anyway, I found this table to be very interesting. Thanks for sharing, OP.

 

[Keliadom]

Thanks for compiling this! As someone looking into developing something with a friend dev, it's motivating to see the actual number of releases/completion (and also helps the legitimacy of this forum, which I've discovered recently, as a place to post said game).

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Ren'Py has the lowest learning curve. I'd almost want a cross-index by art type--2d, 3dcg/DAz, 3dcg/Honey Select, 3dcg/other. The absolute lowest/easiest thing to put out would be the Renpy/Honey select combo. The hardest would either be original 2d art with a Unity engine, or maybe original 3dcg with unity or something like unreal engine.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Just because something is harder to use doesn't automatically make it better. Most Unity games on this site suck ass compared to even the most amateurish Ren'py game. Using Unity only makes sense if you really know what you're doing or if you're using it as an opportunity to learn for a real game dev job. Even the good Unity games here often lack features every shit Ren'py game has like rollback. I like rollback.

 

[Keliadom]

Just because something is harder to use doesn't automatically make it better. Most Unity games on this site suck ass compared to even the most amateurish Ren'py game. Using Unity only makes sense if you really know what you're doing or if you're using it as an opportunity to learn for a real game dev job. Even the good Unity games here often lack features every shit Ren'py game has like rollback. I like rollback.

A tool is only as good as its user, for sure.