SMAC Forum Age Survey

[RedFred]

Life, the universe and everything --> 42.

[Capt Dizle]

I think part of the answer is some of us grew up with black and white television, reading big thick books and playing complex wargames with cardboard counters where turns lasted hours; others were playing nintendo as toddlers and have enjoyed the age of instant gratification whether their thirst has been for fun or information.

[Velociryx]

Well said, JT!

And 33 here....34 in September. Made it through another one!

-=Vel=-

[Drago Sinio]

My 46th birthday was earlier this month. Eagerly looking forward to 1000 more years of Smac playing , why, even a couple of hundred more would be pretty nice..... .

[Adalbertus]

30.6883 after 49 posters.

[Chaunk]

It's amazing what rounding errors can do for you... Just added all the ages up again, averaged and came up with 30.102. Half a year out!

Adding my age in (18), average is now 29.86 with 50 ages averaged.

[Adalbertus]

Chaunk,

I'd guess these are errors in calculation and/or different interpretations of age. I know that once I calculated the age for one as he stated in days, but usually I took "be 42 next week" as 42 (if it's already been, happy birthday Mongoose, otherwise wait a few days )
and people like Vel as 33.
Writing from remembering, rounding errors should go in as the square root of the number of added values times the average individual rounding error. With 50 ages averaged, this should be around 7 in the last digit.

[Sikander]

To get the best number you have to also consider that those of us who posted earlier in this thread are somewhat older now. Plus of course the rounding errors, ie the average person who is 18 years old is really 18 and a half.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

This whole thread explains much.

The average age is ~30 for SMAC. This generation is not the best target audience if you wanna sell abazillion copies.

I submit the 15-25 market is considered the target and hence the CIV3 product we see today. Also explains a bit why the SMAC(X) titles were considered a mild success or even a disappointment from a sales POV specially considering the game is kinna at odds with its audience. On the one hand its SCIFI which normally I would suspect appeals to the younger generation. OTOH, it is complex with a steep learning curve lending its appeal to a more mature audience. Result is it got the tweener market.

Would be intereting to see a market development report on the demographics.

Og

[aaglo]

Quality of the players beats the quantity of the players. No game producer says that, but who cares...

I think you hit the mark, Og

[Phil_de_geezer]

I'm 18

I bought SMAC not long after it came out and before that i had worshipped Civ2 for many years. Unfortunately, i missed out on *sob* civ1 and colonisation *sob* - although some of my mates have played both games.

Two of my mates worship SMAC and they're both 18 - you could add them if you like. Or not.

Hey, am i a geek? Oh well!

[Shai-Hulud]

All I know for sure is that we will all be considerably older when this thread is over

[Magnus Nilsson]

I'm 37.
At least one more week!

With that age I have passed, CIV (the original from 1992!), NETCIV (a PC version of Civ1 that had the same beautiful graphics as the Mac version!), CIVII, ToT, SMAC, SMAX and CIVIII.

Are we over 30 again?

/Magnus

[Kirnwaffen]

I'll throw in 16 and leave the math to somebody else.

[Phobos]

18 and counting....


Phobos - The biggest lurker of them all.