The mysterious 2019-07
r/DCSS rank started a sharp decline in 2019-08. Let's look at what other games did in the same time period, because many of them have cliffs up or down close to that date, which is a big anomaly.
https://frontpagemetrics.com/r/dcss#compare=slaythespire+nethack
r/Nethack shows the same drop.
r/ftlgame declined at the same time as r/DCSS.
So did r/roguelikes, to a smaller degree.
r/SlaytheSpire shows a jump slightly preceding that point. Looks like competitors took a chunk of the old generation's market share.
r/worldofwarcraft showed a spike at that time.
r/cataclysmdda also shows a spike at the time of r/DCSS's cliff, but didn't hold the users.
This change doesn't seem to be driven by a macro-event. r/Gaming, r/politics and r/conservative showed no change. It's before COVID19. The Hong Kong protests were too local to affect it.
My conclusion is that Slay the Spire hype moved people past an obsolete generation of games, and they didn't come back. Nethack was hit harder than DCSS, but Nethack had already been declining for a long time. DCSS was holding steady until suddenly it fell off a cliff.
I'm kind of a big deal
This was a surprise:
https://subredditstats.com/r/dcss
Looks like I'm the only person to have been gilded in r/DCSS, and twice at that? I'm also the 15th top commenter by score sum.
[–]mojonixon 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (1 child)
[–]Leo_Littlebook.23 only. Prophet of Zin.[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)