Somebody must have reminded Raptr that a new year has arrived, as they just sent me a summary of my 2012 gaming as tracked by them.
Since tracking my gaming is pretty much the main reason for my using Raptr, I was interested to see what they had to say, even if the calendar was already well into February 2013. (Compare this to World of Tanks, which sent out its 2012 summary in mid-December of 2012. Which is better, early or late?)
Anyway, on to see what they had to offer. It turned out to be just a few simple metrics.
It started with my top three most played games, out of the 36 games Raptr tracked me playing in 2012, and which were… not much of a surprise.
They happen to be the same games I have listed as “The Games I Play” on the sidebar of the blog, Rift, EVE Online, and World of Tanks, which ate up 71% of my Raptr tracked gaming hours.
Actually, World of Tanks might be a bit of a surprise, as I only went back to that with the 8.0 patch that included the big physics update.
Then again, I am not sure what else might have contended for third place. It certainly wouldn’t have been Raptr’s most tracked game of 2012… which is also not much of a surprise.
I have gotten this far in life and have never played a Call of Duty game. Shooters just aren’t my thing… except for tanks I guess.
A little more surprising is my achievements. Well, sort of surprising.
I think it is mostly a reflection of the games that both have a lot of achievements and have their achievements wired into Raptr. Rift’s achievements are not tracked by Raptr or I would guess that they would be on the top of the list.
As for the games, I did play a lot of Torchlight II. Probably more than I played Diablo III. And while I did not play a lot of World of Warcraft, the whole unification of achievements across characters meant that all of my tracked characters earned at least a few. So WoW probably doesn’t belong on the list.
And Little Big Planet was all my daughter. The PlayStation 3 account is tied into my Raptr and LBP was her game until Minecraft came along.
Raptr also let me know which was my rarest achievement among its users, which turned out to be a Defense Grid achievement.
Not as rare as all that I guess.
And then Raptr came up with a bit more data on when I actually played the most in 2012.
My Most Played Times
I play on Saturdays. That makes sense, what with the instance group and all. I played the most in November of 2012. And, November 17th was my busiest play day of the year.
Then they followed up with the same data for all users.
Most played times for everybody on Raptr
While Sunday was the busiest day of the week overall, not Saturday, the month of November lined up with my own busiest month and, oddly enough, November 17th was the most played date of 2012 over all, again matching my own profile.
Which makes me wonder, what was going on during that week that made Saturday, November 17th, 2012 such a busy gaming date?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
re: November 17th – it would have been the first Saturday after Black Opps II released. It came out November 13th I believe. Amazing that the most played game came out so late in the year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops_II
LikeLike
Don’t know about Black Ops, (I’m not a shooter fan – the last one I played regularly was the original Planetside, or Tabula Rasa if you count that as a shooter) but I usually get in a lot of gaming in early November because I know I’ll be busy the last month and a half of the year.
I work as both a musician and IT consultant, so I rarely get to sleep from late November to January, much less play.
LikeLike
Huh. I got my summary email the other day and all it said was that I had a few hours of Civ5. Very odd, since I’ve played a bunch of SWTOR, TSW, and Rift as well as various other games from time to time and I know they’ve been tracked becuz I see them in the weekly updates they send (most weeks, anyway).
My rare achievement was in Civ5 — Capturing a Spanish city with the Dutch Sea Beggar unit.
Hm. I didn’t remember what the achievement was called or how rare it was, so I went looking and they updated it to be a lot more complete now. Go figure. Hs Civ5, SWTOR, and TSW as my most played games of the year. Makes sense, since I didn’t pick Rift back up until the expansion.
The achievement was “Capture of Brielle” in case you wonder. 0.2% of raptr has it, apparently. Whoopdedoo!
LikeLike
I just find it odd/amusing that my own biggest day of game play should coincide with the Raptr-wide day.
I think that might have been the Guild Wars 2 free play weekend as well. I might have been trying to get in some extra time on that.
LikeLike
You should read your own blog, since the blog you linked pretty much answers your question:
“I did not spend 15 hours playing Guild Wars 2 [on Nov 17].
Raptr is mis-informed.
I have spent about four hours playing. The rest of that time was spent patching or just letting the launcher sit there idle. It seems that Raptr flags the game as active when launcher is active.”
LikeLike
@Beleg – I did. At least 11 of those 15 hours were on Wednesday and Thursday when I patched. I made a point of mentioning that and the patcher counting that time. The rest was split between Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So that really doesn’t explain that particular Saturday being my biggest gaming day of the year.
So I was clearly doing something that Saturday, but Guild Wars 2 wasn’t the whole story by a long shot.
LikeLike
@Wilhelm I was suggesting that Nov 17 was a giant day for Raptr because it counted all the people queuing/patching GW2 as well as actually playing the game.
Combined with the COD theory, you could have a rational explanation for Nov 17.
LikeLike
@Beleg – Ah, I see. Actually, I was pretty satisfied with just COD as the explanation, it having made its usual sales records and reached the “most played game” on Raptr even though it was only launched in the last month and a half of the year.
I am sure GW2 having its open weekend helped, but I think COD was the weight.
LikeLike
@Wilhelm Yeah, it’s hard to say. I feel like “free to try!” crushes “have to pay” in terms of hours (especially if you count patching/lobby time!). On the other hand, COD:BL2 crushes GW2. Hmmm
LikeLike
@Beleg – The only other data point I can find at the moment is Nosy Gamer’s Digital Dozen. His historical data shows that, while GW2 got a bump in tracked time, but WoW was still pulling in bigger numbers. So “free to try” wasn’t winning there.
Now NG tracks Xfire, and does it on Sundays, not Saturdays, but you take whatever arcane data points you can find in this sort of thing.
LikeLike
@Wilhelm – I think that data somewhat supports my argument (assuming XFire *didn’t* count patching/lobby time), doubly so if XFire had a different date for their “most played day”. Even a small uptick in hours played indicates that at least some people played on the free weekend, it was more than normal, and suggests that some of them are new (and would have to patch/lobby/queue). In addition, I would suspect that some people that already owned GW2 may have been interested in COD:BL2, would not be enticed by a GW2 free weekend (since every weekend for them is free), and may have purchased and played COD on Nov 17 (instead of GW2). This (alleged) decrease in population was offset by the (alleged) influx of new players, whose patching and lobbying-while-blog-writing time drove Raptr’s “play time” to the max. Maybe?
Finally, I accept your XFire data if you accept my wild conjecturing.
LikeLike
@Beleg – In my experience, Xfire is as likely to count the patcher as Raptr. What I was saying was that it looked like WoW, with nothing special going on, still had more impact on play time numbers for that weekend.
Anyway, COD:BL2 on its first weekend after launch still seems like the most likely explanation. Remember, Raptr can also hook into and count XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 play time in addition to the PC. You’d need something pretty damn significant to top that.
LikeLike
@Wilhelm – You are probably right Who am I to argue with Wilhelm Arcturus, gaming legend of SAY 100 fame, anyway? =/
LikeLike
@Beleg – Well, I wasn’t trying to bludgeon you into agreement. Just the more I thought about it, the more that COD:BL2 seemed to be the main factor.
And I prefer “The Honorable Wilhelm Arcturus” at first mention, and then “His Honor” in subsequent mentions.
LikeLike
@The Honorable Wilhelm Arcturus — Haha, you got it :)
LikeLike