This game is pretty good... funny, well drawn, etc.

Would be good with some beer or grass... alas, I am at work and am unable to obtain either until I get off.

That's certainly interesting. Thank you for The Shivah recommendation. It looks like something I'd want to try out. :)

Gotta tell ya, walking into a public establishment and walking out with a gram of bud is surreal. Never thought it would happen this soon in this country.

I love my state. Go Broncos!

True enough. While I spend a lot of time out west, I'm really hoping this trend hits the eastern states sooner rather than later.

Thank God. I was just thinking that GOG needed another short, budget point and click adventure title!

Hey neat spreadsheet. 185 games added to GOG last year; a busy year indeed.

I played and finished that game in spurts around Christmas, but it really was a pleasant dose of freeware and took priority over some games in my backlog that I actually paid for!

That's really a cool mine of information. I downloaded the spreadsheat and for each year calculated the difference of the GOG release date and the original release date, obtaining something like the game age in days.

You can then calculate something like mean and median (point where 50% of data lower and 50% of data higher) or make histogramms out of it. Here are some results:

2008: 65 games released with 8.7 yrs mean game age and 8.4 yrs median game age
2009: 114 games released with 8.7 yrs mean game age and 7.5 yrs median game age
2010: 79 games released with 9.5 yrs mean game age and 9.2 yrs median game age
2011: 85 games released with 12.6 yrs mean game age and 12.3 yrs median game age
2012: 160 games released with 8.0 yrs mean game age and 7.7 yrs median game age
2013: 183 games released with 6.4 yrs mean game age and 1.6 yrs median game age

Interesting observations:
- 2011 was a superb year for really old games
- 2012 and 2013 saw twice as many releases as the years before on average, the onset of newer games on GOG
- consequently the mean age, but especially the median age went down tremendously

I also made a histogram (in 100 days bins) of the game age upon GOG release and attached it.

You can see the broad peak between 1500 and 6000 days (5-20 years old), the classic releases. For games older than 6000 days (20 yrs, aka pre 1990-1995 era) probably the games aren't playable anymore or there just aren't that many. However the period of 1995 - 2006 is very evenly covered.

There is a drop in the region of 300 - 1000 days translating to 1-3 yrs old games. These are underrepresented on GOG. Maybe the publishers don't want to sell their newer games DRM free yet.

And finally the big peak in the 0-100 days bin, the indie/new games/0-day releases on GOG a growing significant part of GOGs games.

One could roughly have two categories: < 1 yr is new game and >3 yrs is old game. Then the relation is as follows:

2008: 0% new games, 95% (=62) )old games
2009: 0% new games, 99% (=113) old games
2010: 0% new games, 92% (=73) old games
2011: 2% new games, 98% (=83) old games
2012: 21% new games, 67% (=107) old games
2013: 45% new games, 47% (=86) old games

So in 2013 the percentage of new games has doubled compared to 2012 and is roughly on par with the old games. In absolute numbers the number of old releases kind of stayed constant. One could conclude that they actually did what they promised: continue to concentrate on old games while also introducing new games. But the perception that new games get more and more important and seizing a larger and larger part of the new releases and the cataloque as a whole (currently 17% new games and 76% old games) is also true. In the future most probably at least 50% of the releases will be day1 or just a few weeks/months old.

I just want to say that GOG should keep up the good work and not lessen their efforts of bringing as many good games as possible to this place. Maybe they can concentrate especially on the 1-3 yr old, where they seem to have a deficit.

And finally my guess why 2011 was a good year for very old games. They started with old games and worked their way backwards through the cataloques of the publishers they had. So the average age got older and older. In 2011 they realized that this strategy is going to end at some point, so they decided to go for newer/indie games. It turned out that the flow of old games didn't come to a halt just yet and the flow of newer titles could increase to a comparable strength so that they could double the number of games released per year. Maybe the average quality of the games dropped during this process, maybe not. This is beyond my analysis capabilities.

Looking forward to repeat this in 5 years. :)

Very glad to see another person doing such an analysis :) Will be adding it here on the summer promo.

Also, 2011 had an increase in old game releases due to EA being signed up. Out of 57 classics, 19 (I think? May be more) were EA titles, so 33% of GOG's classic releases in 2011 were due to EA.

And I think yet another release thread has been officially derailed ;)

Interesting read. Thanks :).

Oh we can easily rerail it again. The Bed Bites is the lowest on the current GOG bestselling list and there is not a single review so far, even The Meteor Hunter sells better... all in all not very good signs.

But looking at the bottom of the game cataloque I wonder who is responsible for Aqua Kitty? This introduction is so crazy and far-fetched, I really don't know if it is very bad or very good or some sort of satire.

"Due to a sudden shortage of milk, cats around the world are forced to seek out new sources to get their fix. You and your team of milk mining kittens have overcome a fear of water, to drill down under the ocean seabed and begin extracting vast reserves of what seems to be naturally forming full-fat milk. Get ready for fast paced submarine action, defending the kittens from disruptive mechanical sea creatures."

THE MILK MUST FLOW!

So this is the tale of the Meowsatz Haderach? :D

Wow. Crosmando wrong again. Who would have thunk it.... :)

GOG usually release 4 games a week actually, two on Tues and Thurs, so they're still slacking.

Also, are you stalking me bro, just waiting for the clock to tick over and if games got released all ready to reply to some flippant comment I made m8?