I’ve been doing the Decay Rates analysis for 4 years now… it yields some intriguing information. I’m not sure my work here is statistically sound (in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s bogus number crunching) but it’s interesting. (That’s your cue to smile & grin knowingly.)

Anyway, what I did was to take the top 350 games (percentage of plays-wise) from the last thirteen years – the cut-off number ended up being an average of 1.95% or better over time. For comparison…

• 2009:  2.04%
• 2008: 2.08%
• 2007: 2.00%

I’m inclined to believe that this number remaining pretty consistent over the past four  years means something – not sure what, though. (Speculation is, as always, welcome.)

For this particular exercise in determining decay rates of games, I then set aside games with 4 or less years on the list… leaving me with 263 games. (Again, for comparison, there were 250 games in 2009, 239 games in 2008 and 230 games in 2007.) To do the decay calculation, I:

1. Took the largest percentage played number from each game.
2. Compared it to the current (2010) percentage played number for each game.
3. Divided that amount by the number of years since it had first appeared on the Five & Dime Lists.

Two games showed no rate of decay whatsoever – they have appeared on the list for 5+ years and their highest percentage played is in 2010:

• Arkham Horror
• Hive

There were three games in 2009 (Arkham Horror, Descent: Journeys in the Dark & Glory To Rome), two games in 2008 (Tichu & Chicken Cha Cha Cha) and three games in 2007 (Downfall of Pompeii, Hive & Uno). This is the first year that a game has returned to this position – actually, BOTH games managed to do that!

Here’s the chart with the rest of the top 20 games… that is, the games that showed the least decay over 5+ years time. (There’s actually 21 games on this chart, as the final 2 games were very close in percentage.)

As you can see, the list is remarkably stable… the only completely new game (hasn’t ever appeared in the top 20 before) was War of the Ring.

In case you’re not completely overwhelmed by the statistics, here’s a chart with the 20 games who’ve shown the highest rates of decay. (Note – to show a high rate of decay, you have to start from a high position.)

I’m not sure I’m really qualified to comment beyond the numbers… but this list of highest decay rates is holds almost as still as the list of the lowest decay rates. There are only two new games on the list (Thurn & Taxis and Ticket to Ride: Marklin)… and both of them just became eligible for the list (this is their fifth year on the Five & Dimes.)