Playdate Community Census 2024
Summary presented by
Mac Vogelsang - vogelscript�Donald Fraser - Guv_Bubbs
With additional help from
Paulstraw, BitUniverse & Crabaret
September 2024
Data and Methodology
Census Details
648 responses
Over the period July 1st, 2024 to August 1st, 2024
⏷ down 107 responses from 2022
The census was publicized within the Playdate communities on Reddit, Discord, Twitter, Mastodon, BlueSky Resetera, and the Dev Forum
Methods
The data was exported from Google Forms and processed in Python and visualization with the Pandas and Plotly libraries. Depending on the question type, different data cleaning methods were applied:
Numerical free response (i.e. pricing questions): removed statistical outliers (outside 3 standard deviations)
Short free response (i.e. top games, dev tools): Normalized write-in responses by removing punctuation and capitalization. ‘Other’ was assigned to any write-in category less frequent than 3 occurrences.
Long free response: Volunteers read responses and assigned relevant tags. Since comments could receive more than one tag, the data is presented as a bubble chart rather than a pie chart. Comments that didn’t fit into any of the 5-10 predefined tags were given an ‘Other’ label.
Crosstab sheet (see previous slide for link): Data was grouped into demographic groups of reasonable size (typically >=100 responses), which meant grouping non-North America continents together and non-Male gender identities together.
Biases & Shortcomings
Community Demographics
Who are we?
Demographics
Gender Identity
Age
Continent
Since 2022, we’ve seen a slight increase in respondents who identify as female and non-binary (about 2% each).
There has also been a notable increase in European players, by 6.6%.
Languages we read
Demographics
* The Playdate OS is still only available in English.
Where do we get our Playdate news?
Demographics
Since 2022, Twitter as a news source has dropped ⏷ 37% in percent of responses, from 61% to 24%. Discord also overtook Reddit as the most selected source for news.
*multiple choice allowed
32%
81%
of respondents have used the Playdate Wiki
of respondents have used it in the last 12 months.
And itch.io is still going strong despite Catalog’s release, as
In the last 12 months,
News continued
Community Demographics
Playdate Hardware
Almost everyone has at least one Playdate; 6% have two or more
When asked about the stereo dock, 48% gave a rating of 4 or 5, indicating about half of respondents are interested
In 2022, when asked about the dock, �41% of respondents said yes they’ll order one, �and 35.3% said maybe.
Playdate Orders
Playdate Hardware
“Couldn’t care less” “Take my money!”
Ordering Trend
Over 200 people
(less than 1/3rd of total respondents) submitted order and device activation data, the timeline of which is plotted below.
One line per response, sorted by order confirmation date.
PCB Versions
Two main versions of the Playdate hardware exist: “Rev A” (STM32F746) and “Rev B” (STM32H7B0). Within this, there are additional PCB versions:
The PCB version can be found by connecting a device to the Playdate Simulator, or by using this online version check tool.
PCB version breakdown (153 responses)
See version over time on the next slide
Shipping time and hardware revisions over time
Playdate pre-orders began on July 29th, 2021 and customers were put into shipping groups based on order time. The small gaps in the wall of red dots on July 29th show the group splits, although it would be easier to see the group boundaries if we had more responses.
Over time the wait between placing an order and receiving it decreased until November 2023, when orders began shipping in days rather than months. By this point, all devices are on revision B, 0x13.
Note that some dots fall outside the trend since a few respondents guessed their order confirmation date, or put the same date as the shipping email.
Shipping time distributions
The following histograms show the shape of the shipping times. Across all orders (below), the average time until shipping was 7.24 months, but to be expected, this average shifted significantly to the left after pre-orders ended.
Preorder Shipping Time��Shipping time distribution in months - Pre Nov. 2023
Buy Now Shipping Time��Shipping time distribution in days - Post Nov. 2023
Satisfaction with Build Quality
Playdate Hardware
Overall build quality satisfaction is good, with an average score of 4.28. This is a decline from 2022 (below) where build quality average was 4.55.
“Not satisfied” “Very satisfied”
2022
Quality Issues
Playdate Hardware
369 out of 629
respondents with a device experienced build quality issues (57%) and the most reported issue was crank discoloration (160 times). �
Only 28% of people with a quality issue contacted Panic, so most were probably manageable. ��When Panic support was contacted, they resolved the problem 80% of the time.
Game Purchasing
91.8% of respondents have purchased a game outside of the Season. This is ⏶ up 18% from 2022.
We also asked for an estimated money spent on games outside the season:
Catalog shoppers slightly prefer using the web interface. Mostly+only web captures 43% of responses and mostly+only device has 30%.
Total spend (USD)
69%
29%
of respondents would buy another season of games
⏷ down 6% from 2022
would buy if the price was right
⏶ up 5% from 2022
Almost everyone would consider buying an official Season 2 from Panic.
Season Satisfaction
Game Pricing
Feelings about season delivery system
“I hate it” “I love it”
Expected Season Pricing
Game Pricing
Price (USD)
Price (USD)
How much would you expect to pay for a season of 12 games?
How much would you expect to pay for a season of 24 games?
Average ⏶ up $1 from 2022
Average ⏶ up $2 from 2022
Playdate Games
Session Length
Playdate Games
How many hours per week do you spend playing Playdate games?
What is your preferred play session length?
Wishlisting & Audio
Playdate Games
Games wishlisted on Catalog
Audio preference while playing
Game Tags
Playdate Games
Top 20 tags most closely associated with desired Playdate content
Percentages of the 648 total responses: multiple-choice allowed.
Compared to 2022, the top 20 is mostly the same, but the distribution is more spread out across the board. ��E.g.: the top tag “Arcade” was voted by over two-thirds of respondents in 2022, but this year it was just over half.
This likely indicates less eager vote participation rather than a shift in tastes.
Game Tags - Continent Differences
Rank Changes in Preferred Game tags:
North America vs. Outside of North America
Data was sliced by North America (66%) and everyone else (33%). Tags assigned a rank order (1 for most popular, 75 for least popular) and these ranks were subtracted from each other. Absolute rank changes < 7 were excluded to make the chart more readable in a small size.
This chart shows the difference in ranks between the two groups. For example,
the “Dating sim” tag is 21 ranks lower for North Americans than those outside North America, meaning it was 21 ranks closer to the top of the list (most popular tag).
Due to small sample sizes, small changes in absolute vote counts can lead to large increases in relative rank. This is good to keep in mind when reading these charts.
Game Tags - Gender Differences
Rank Changes in Preferred Game tags: Male vs. Female, Non-Binary, & Other
Data was sliced by males (81%) and all other respondents (19%). The three other gender identifications are grouped together since they are individually small group sizes, which can create exaggerated changes in rank.
Tags were assigned a rank order (1 for most popular, 75 for least popular). Absolute rank changes < 7 were excluded to make the chart more readable in a small size.
Game Tags - Age Differences
Rank Changes in Preferred Game tags: Under 26 vs. 26-35 and 26-35 vs. 36+
Data was sliced by age groups: under 26, 26-35, and 36+ . Absolute rank changes < 9 were excluded to make the chart more readable in a small size.
Top 25 most mentioned “favorite games”
1485 total votes over 648 respondents “In no specific order, what are your top 3 Playdate games?”
Considered all three responses per person equally and removed capitalization and punctuation for more accurate counts.
Development
What general engines or systems have we developed for?
Development
381 Responses for “Other systems/tools developed on”
Multiple selections were allowed. ��Any write-in with less than 3 occurrences was assigned “Other”
37.5%
of the 648 respondents
develop software for the Playdate.
This is ⏶ up 5% from 2022.
Most developers primarily use Lua
And they estimate an average of 6.8 hours per week spent developing
Other includes a couple mentions of Rust, Zig, and Nim
Development
Playdate-specific Development
Common Playdate Dev Tools
Development
121 Responses for “Have used other playdate tools or frameworks”
Multiple selections allowed.
Developer Satisfaction
Game Pricing
Are you satisfied with the developer experience for the Playdate?
“Not satisfied” “Very satisfied”
Developer excitement to continue
“I have stopped developing & don't plan to return”
“I'm excited to keep developing for the playdate and have no plans to stop”
Closing Thoughts
Overall Playdate Satisfaction
Closing Thoughts
How happy are you with the Playdate as a product?
“Not satisfied” “Very satisfied”
Since 2022, all pre-orders have shipped and there are more respondents with a console. From the last census, the average satisfaction was 4.63.
Satisfaction has remained high despite the increased number of respondents with devices.
What We’d Like to See in the Next 12 Months
Closing Thoughts
474 Responses for “Like to see in next 12 months”
% of total responses with tag
“A Playdate Season 2 and Stereo Dock!!”
“The ability to rearrange the order of games on the Home Screen and make additional categories”
“Aggressive efforts to expand the player base”
“More support for localization,
more and better multi-language
fonts and improved automated tools for
converting to bitmap fonts.”
“I would love to see more customisation options. I think unique lock and unlock animations would be cool.�Oh, some new clock faces and whatnot would be great too.”
“More games that actually feel like full experiences and not just tiny
throwaway mini games.
A lot of games are good,
but Playdate is sorely missing
games with grander scopes.”
“An official accessory
or backlight option”
“more Playdate podcast episodes!”
Feedback for Panic
Closing Thoughts
“I've been having a ton of fun in Pulp, but I would love to see it receive some updates and bug fixes..”
370 Responses for “Feedback for Panic”
% of total responses with tag
“I need an educational package to buy these for my classes, �which my employer is blocking due to tax complications”
“As software gets worse and worse, and what should be our cyber-utopia is quickly becoming a slow, buggy, feature-glutenous drag,
the Playdate stands as one of the few things that's well-done.
Something I'm excited to share with people.”
“Be more selective about what comes to catalog.
A small amount of really great games on offer is better than a large amount of really bad games..”
“I might be happier with new seasons if they were
smaller. By the end of season 1 I was rather fatigued
by too many games and I didn’t give Ratcheteer a
fair shake even though it’s a strong game.”
Further Reading
Thanks for reading!
For detailed breakdowns of a few of the categorical questions by various demographic groups, check out the cross tab here.
To explore your own data analysis, the raw data is available here and a more processed version is here.
To further compare with earlier census results, find the 2022 Census here.