I never thought to do this, but now that I have…

Here's a look at various card games and the size of their Reddit community:

Magic - 50,231 Subscribers / 4 years old

Yugioh - 6,704 Subscribers / 2 years old / This includes all things Yugioh and not just the card game. Somewhat of a misrepresentation.

Pokemon - 1,988 Subscrubers / 2 years old

Netrunner - 1,199 Subscribers / 1 year old

Legend of the Five Rings - 235 Subscribers / 1 year old

Star Wars LCG - 94 Subscribers / 4 months old

Star Wars CCG - 22 Subscribers / 1 year old / DEFUNCT

Shadowfist - 22 Subscribers / 6 months old

Vampire - 20 Subscribers / 1 year old / DEFUNCT

The Spoils - 20 Subscribers / 1 year old

AGoT - 10 Subscribers / 9 months old

This list even surprised me a little. There are two defunct games that have more interest on Reddit than A Game of Thrones. Magic has 5000 times more interest than AGoT. Netrunner has 100 times more interest. Star Wars LCG has 10 times more interest. Even the two defunct games have twice the interest. I'm not totally shocked Pokemon is higher than Netrunner, but I was mildly surprised.

I wonder how these numbers would change if the active AGoT community actually moved over there.

I've lways thought of Reddit users as just a hair above 4chan users in the internet hiearchy, so I'm kind of relieved that it isn't bigger over there. The top games do not surprise me in the least.

I think this is a direct reflection on the type a person that uses Reddit versus the type of person that plays AGoT. AGoT is typically an old man's game, where Reddit is for the young'uns.

I don't even know what Reddit is and how it makes a difference between any of the games.

Bomb said:

Reddit is simply a massive forum with a vast number of sub-forums, of which these are all one. The numbers give a clear impression of the sizes of the community.

There is no implicit reason to assume all is not equal. There is theoretically no reason for any given user to be on Reddit. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that the proportion of AGoT players on Reddit is the same as any other card game. If you accept this reasonable premise, the numbers are astounding. If you do not accept this premise, what is the proportion of actual gamers to reddit users for each game that you are assuming? Even if you assume that the proportion is 100 times higher for AGoT than Magic, you have a vast difference in the community size. 100 times seems unreasonable to me.

I don't use Reddit, nor am I particularly familiar with it. Should I be?

If it's anything like other forums, the numbers are probably a reflection first of all of how good other locations are to share/discuss it (in this case, cardgame db and agotcards are quite good), how many people initially signed up in order to provide it with the needed threshold of people to make it worth being a part of. That initial "activation energy", if you like, is probably the deciding factor representing your numbers.

Surely a popularity check on the internet would be better accomplished by comparing the number of users or daily activity on the top-used sites by that community? Even that has it's inherent biases, but it sounds to me like because the agot community never got started on reddit, it has no reason to be there or grow there.

And other factors - the size of the tournaments (batalla por el muro in Spain just last week had 73 participants) suggests nothing anywhere near as alarming as your reddit numbers suggest.

Redid this using BGG over Reddit (which I also never thought about doing):

Netrunner - Fans 1086 / 3677 Voters

Magic - 718 / 12813 voters

Game of Thrones - 321 / 2762 voters

Star Wars LCG - 268 Fans / 637 voters

Vampire - 133 Fans / 1481 voters

Star Wars CCG - 101 Fans / 1429 voters

Legend of the Five Rings - Fans 82 / 1054 voters

The Spoils - 45 Fans / 131 voters

Pokemon - 37 Fans / 1043 voters

Shadowfist - Fans 21 / 327 voters

Yugioh - 17 / 449 voters

You'll see the gap closes significantly, but I would also argue BGG is heavily skewed away from games like Pokemon, Yugioh, and Magic. There's essentially no reason to ever log onto BGG if you want information about those games. It's useless. Netrunner is one of the few popular games for which BGG actually appears to be the preferred method of communication. It's interesting to note that after the big 4, Game of Thrones is number 5 on BGG (it's obviously still a smaller community by comparison).

I still think the Reddit version is far more telling. Reddit is for everyone. BGG is for people who like board games. Netrunner is surprisingly popular considering that fact.

-Istaril said:

LoL. Yes. If you don't know what Reddit is you aren't really in touch with the online community. I don't mean that to be offensive, but Reddit pretty much IS the online community. If you've never checked it out, you should. The front page is actually pretty neat.

This is a pretty good article on Reddit: http://www.blueglass.com/blog/could-reddit-be-the-worlds-most-influential-website/

That article gives you an idea of what it is. It also shows you the size. There are communities with hundreds of thousands of people.

Reddit is like the little brother of 4-chan. That's not a compliment.

If Reddit is the "online community," then I might just have to leave the internet.

Reddit sadly, is not for everyone. It caters to a particular type of internet user that I haven't been since the downfall of Digg. That isn't to say that it's not a popular site, but it's hardly an accurate measurement.

Facebook would be a far more universal guideline, but since AGOT doesn't have a centralized, official page like MtG has, it's going to be difficult to compare.

sWhiteboy said:

I've always thought of them as the bastard red-headed stepchild myself.

Although, it's a community of retards… and Magic is top.

My hatred of MTG players knows no bounds.

Prejudiced much? Yikes. Anyone can use Reddit for any reason. I'm not sure why anyone would compare 4chan to reddit… 4chan is totally anonymous and so is easily filled with crap. Reddit isn't… Reddit also has pretty consistent moderators depending on what subreddit you're on.

"According to Google DoubleClick Ad Planner's estimate, the median U.S. Reddit user is male (72%), 25–34 years of age, and has a college education. The analysis also shows that many of the top ten audience interests are in the tech field, suggesting a computer savvy demographic."

mdc273 said:

I don't get all the hate you guys have agaisnt us reddit users. sure there's all the annoying memes and rage faces and whatever but you can unsubscribe from content you don't like. it's been a while since I even saw a lolcat because I unsubscribed from all the stupid stuff.

I wasn't aware there was a got lcg sub reddit can I get a link please?

Robby Stark said:

There are literally two posts, LoL. I wouldn't recommend going to it. CardGameDB and these forums are obviously the primary places to go. BoardGameGeek gets a little traffic. Maybe I'll actually try and get the AGoT one moving… by just copying over interesting topics from CGDB and these boards.

Why does it matter if people are typing about Thrones on these sites? isn't game related content (for an admittedly niche product) diffuse enough already?

i ceratinly wouldn't go any further afield than I already absolutley must.

Egads! Stags is alive!

Yawn - I suspectedt you might make that comment. Indeed - and I have been lurking somewhat - but these boards were stultifyingly slow - and it turned out I had to upgrade by Internet Explorer. Kennon - you should know how slowly I adopt to such changes.

The new FAQ revived my flagging interest - adn with regionals season and the return of the excellent HBO adaptation, I felt the call of the abnners.

Ah, my apologies. Good to see you, though.

Word count on Agot wiki page: 7171

Word count on MtG wiki page: 10896

Word count on Yugioh wiki page: 5246

As we can clearly see Agot is far more popular than Yugioh, but not as good as Magic. SCIENCE!

Kennon said:

And you as well old friend.

Alando said:

Great assesment! That definitely got a laugh out of me.

Alando said:

My amusement aside:

1) Why is this post still floating? LoL.

2) I'm still surprised the extent to which people discredit Reddit's subscriber numbers being statistically significant. It doesn't make any sense. All the extremely popular games have larger Reddit communities that are active. It stands to reason that growing the Reddit community would grow the general AGoT community. Anyone being resistant to the significance of Reddit is effectively dismissing an incredibly powerful tool for bringing people into the game and the community.

@StagLord - It was just to take a look at numbers. I was never suggesting migrating anything there for content. Reddit is not a site for new content, it is a site where millions of people can quickly find information on just about anything they'd ever want and where people post interesting things so that other people can/will see it.

mdc273 said:

Oh, I've heard of that one! Google?

mdc273 said:

Remember that correlation does not imply causation . I s Game X popular because of the size of its Reddit community, or is the Reddit community for Game X large because the game is popular? Much more evidence is necessary to prove that the former is true.