Valve Software has published some of the statistics they have collected via Steam for the game play patterns of Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and there are some interesting facts that one can glean from the data. Between June 10, 2006 and June 23, 2006, 774,520 sessions of the game have been played. The completion time, as tracked by Valve, averages 4 hours, 57 minutes, which is very close to the advertised 5 hours of game play from the content. It would have been interesting to see the median completion time as well, so that one could get an idea of where the top half and bottom half of the completion times lie, but the data graph seems to bunch around the 4 hour mark, with a few stragglers hanging out at around 10 hours. Average total playtime is also interesting; at around 2 hours, this suggests that a number of people aren’t finishing the game, and may be leaving off or getting bored at around this time. It’s a little hard to make any real conclusions because there could be a number of recent purchasers of the game in the list.

Having statistics like the number of registered serial numbers versus time would be interesting, since Circuit City offered Episode 1 for $7.99 this week, one wonders if that generated a spike in users. Other numbers not included, possibly because they would be too proprietary or business model related, would be the general split between Steam downloaders and retail purchasers.

Still, the chart showing number of deaths per map is interesting, if only to show which levels seem to be the hardest for gamers to complete. There are definitely areas where the difficulty level doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference, but there are some where the spread between easy and hard is immense. The deaths per map also speaks somewhat to the pacing of the game; there is a definite arc to the challenge of the game, interspersed carefully with “breather” levels that allow a player to regroup. The data showing the highest level played also is interesting; nearly half of the players with the game have played to the final level, and there doesn’t seem to be any strong drop-offs that might indicate frustration with the game play, causing abandonment.

There’s a ton of data in the graphs presented, giving more insight into how people play games, and how game design can impact player experience.