To find the previous four studies, search for Failure inside this
newsgroup.

The data for this comes from:
http://thelist.roguelikedevelopment.org/
which I have been theoretically maintaining.

Much thanks to Slash's Temple of the Roguelike for keeping up to date
with roguelike releases so I can update in swift time.

I have decided for this year that roguelike pages that go to direct
downloads or dead pages when I first try to view them are not
recorded.  This cut the number of 7DRLs down this year.  People are
encouraged to use Roguebasin if they want a permament reference page
for their 7DRL.  I decided this after the 1kbrls, so they mostly made
it in these numbers.

First, the meaningless bargraph.

1    #
1  # #
1  # #
1  # #      #
1  # #      #
1  # #      #
1  # #      #
1  # #      #     #
1  # #      #     #          #
1  # ##     #    ##          #
1  ####     #    ##          #           #
1 ######    ##   ##          ##          #
1 ####### # ##  ###          ##          #
1 ####### # #######  #  #   ###          #
1 ################## #  #   ### # #      ##
1 ################## #  ## ######### ##  ##
1 #################### ### ######### ##  ###
1 000000000111111111122222222223333333333444>+72
1 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012>

This tracks the number of roguelikes by last release date.  The first
column has a # for every roguelike released in the last month.  I have
omitted the last column which would have all the roguelikes over 42
months old or without known release dates.  There are now 72 such
roguelikes being tracked.

The peaks at 4, 16-17, 28, and 40 month marks are due to the 7DRL
challenges.  The peak on the 11th month is due to the 1KBRL challenge.

Next, we will look at the cumulative totals for the last year.

Numbers: (July, 2009)
Month   #   Total  Percent
1       6       6       2%
2      16      22       8%
3       7      29      11%
4      17      46      18%
5       8      54      21%
6       6      60      23%
7       5      65      25%
8       3      68      26%
9       5      73      28%
10      3      76      29%
11     14      90      34%
12      6      96      37%
Rest  166     262     100%

Copying from the last five year's reports:

Numbers: (July, 2008)
Month   #   Total  Percent
1      11      11       6%
2       5      16       8%
3       6      22      11%
4      12      34      17%
5      14      48      24%
6       6      54      27%
7       1      55      28%
8       5      60      30%
9       2      62      31%
10      2      64      32%
11      4      68      35%
12      2      70      36%
Rest  127     197     100%

Numbers: (July, 2007)
Month   #   Total  Percent
1      10      10       6%
2       6      16      10%
3       9      25      15%
4      11      36      22%
5       9      45      28%
6       5      50      31%
7       5      55      34%
8       3      58      36%
9       3      61      37%
10      2      63      39%
11      1      64      39%
12      2      66      40%
Rest   97     163     100%

Numbers: (July, 2006)
Month    #    Total   Percent
1        9        9       7%
2        3       12       9%
3        3       15      12%
4       11       26      20%
5        5       31      24%
6        1       32      25%
7        2       34      26%
8        3       37      29%
9        1       38      29%
10       3       41      32%
11       4       45      35%
12       2       47      36%
Rest    81      128     100%

Numbers: (July, 2005)
Month  #  Total  Percent
1     15     15      15%
2      3     18      17%
3     10     28      27%
4     12     40      39%
5      2     42      42%
6      1     43      42%
7      5     48      47%
8      2     50      49%
9      3     53      51%
10     2     55      53%
11     3     58      56%
12     2     60      58%
Rest  43    103     100%

Numbers: (July, 2004)
Month  #  Total  Percent
1      6      6      10%
2      5     11      19%
3      2     13      22%
4      3     16      27%
5      0     16      27%
6      0     16      27%
7      4     20      34%
8      0     20      34%
9      0     20      34%
10     1     21      36%
11     2     23      39%
12     2     25      42%
Rest  24     59     100%

The increasingly meaningless Percent Actively Developing Roguelike has
maintained its position despite what would seem an inevitable trend to
zero.  This year the 37% of tracked roguelikes were updated in the
last year, up from last year, despite an increasing number of 7DRLs in
the list.

More interesting is the absolute number of touched roguelikes.  2006
seems to have been an anamoly as we've continued to see growth in this
area with 96 roguelikes updated in the last year.

This chart shows the number roguelikes touched in the last 6 months,
12 months, and the percentage the twelfth month number comprises of
the total number of roguelikes being tracked.

I have added a new column this year for Old.  These are roguelikes
that have been tracked for at least one year and have been touched in
the last year.  The number is simply the 12 month total minus the new
listing number.   This hopefully discounts the coffee-break effect of
the myriad 7DRLs and lets us see how many "real" roguelikes are
currently being updated per year.

Year    6     12     %     Total   New  Old
2004   16     25   27%        59     -    -
2005   43     60   42%       103   +44   16
2006   32     47   36%       128   +25   22
2007   50     66   40%       163   +35   31
2008   54     70   36%       197   +34   36
2009   60     96   37%       262   +65   31

So where does six years of data put us?  We are doing very well for
roguelike creation - five new tracked roguelikes per month, a new
peak.  The new Old column, however, I think shows where some of the
sense of stasis in the genre comes from.  The early increases may be
due to sampling effects as existing roguelikes were largely added to
the list.  But for the last three years we've seen a balance at about
30 roguelikes being actively worked on.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)

--
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
 -- Albert Einstein

Originality: 5
Rigor: 3 (needs moar autocorrelation!)
Relevance: 1 (unless you only consider the RL game development domain,
in which case: 5!)
Advice: for *every* other domain: gnuplot/jgraph ftw. But for RL? I
shudder to think that maybe ascii graphs are ok...

Interesting that the TOTAL category has increased not only steadily
year over year, but that it also increased dramatically this year.
Still, these increases are not reflected in the OLD field. This leads
me to believe that 7DRLs are becoming increasingly popular, while
roguelike development in general is staying fairly stable. We've
experienced a flood of 7DRLs this year, which I think partially
explains the dramatic increase of 2009 over 2008 in terms of total
number of roguelikes. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to track 7DRLs in
their own category?

Great work again, Jeff! I can't wait until we've got 10 years of
data :)

--
Darren Grey