Current Polls
I made a poll the other day about how long members play their neighbourhoods in response to a post in the Help section I think. I posted the link in my sig. However, the number of people who post regularly over there is not large and I have only about 10 answers each. So, as it's a pretty interesting question, I thought I'd post a link here and ask you to go and vote. A bit of explanation - this resulted from a conversation with Jo about hood corruption and how I thought concern about corruption was more important here since we tend to play neighbourhoods for longer periods of time than the game developers likely designed for. I'll post the results below as they develop - there's an interesting pattern already emerging and I'd like to see it develop some more. So here they are:

How long on average do you play a hood for?
http://www.strawpoll.me/10908815

How long have you been playing your longest lasting hood?
http://www.strawpoll.me/10908842

I thought this thread might be a good place to post results (which I will do below) and post information about any other polls and stuff about the users here at MTS TS2 boards.

Older polls:

Ages of MTS Sims 2 Board Posters - no lying. So how old are you?
http://strawpoll.me/7108027

I made a poll about how long members play their neighbourhoods. A bit of explanation - this resulted from a conversation with Jo about hood corruption and how I thought concern about corruption was more important here since we tend to play neighbourhoods for longer periods of time than the game developers likely designed for.


Average: 25 months
Median: 18 months, lower quartile 9.5 months; upper quartile 48 months
Range: 59 months
Mode: 9.5 months
SD: 22.49
See discussion starting at post 11


Average: 3.13 years
Median: 2 years, lower quartile 0.66 years (i.e. about 8 months); upper quartile 5 years
Mode: 2 years
SD: 3.04
See discussion starting at post 11

An earlier question was about the age of MTS TS2 board members. Here are the results of that poll. I posted this earlier but I thought it might be good to post it here so we have poll results all in one place.

Ages of MTS Sims 2 Board Posters - no lying. So how old are you? 149 replies

Average: 35
Median: 30.5, lower quartile 21; upper quartile 42.5 (based on the middle value for each age division)
Range: 56
Mode: 30.5
SD: 15.32
See discussion starting at post 11

better reserve another answer for future results

The main board is a good place to get results. Thanks for showing, poll has been taken by me

Interesting. I've now done both polls. I have never stopped playing and abandoned a 'hood, so all the 'hoods I've ever played are still "open" and I intend to play them in the future. So it's hard to say how long I play them on average. I've been playing Veronaville since the day I first started my game in late November 2012. I started playing both Pleasantview and my custom 'hood of New Desconia in January 2014, when I was having difficulties with Veronaville. A little later that year, on 14th July (Bastille Day) I started playing Strangetown. Those are the only neighbourhoods that I have really "played". My other neighbourhoods are test 'hoods and Sim-free building 'hoods so I haven't counted them. All my neighbourhoods are "playable". I am currently actively playing Veronaville and New Desconia, but I fully intend to resume playing Pleasantview and Strangetown at some point in the future, restarting from where I left off. I don't do repeat "play-throughs" -- what has happened in each 'hood has happened. I won't start them over again to play them differently. I am so much in love with Veronaville that I fully intend to go on playing it as long as I'm able to click a mouse. Though New Desconia is really just escapist nonsense, I also intend to keep playing it indefinitely. And on a more occasional basis, Pleasantview and Strangetown, when the fancy takes me. What I really don't know of course is when the Grim Reaper will call for me. I think that will put a final end to all my 'hoods.

So it's really hard to say how long I play a 'hood on "average". How long is a piece of string? I've answered "3-5 years". I hope that's ok.

Seems reasonable Andrew - I think I was just asking what you think. People naturally play in many different ways (one of the great strengths of TS2). I've been playing Little Carping since the game released though the version I now play I remade in 2007 so that neighbourhood is 9 years old which is what I put in answer to that question. However, the idea of it has existed since 2004 when the game released. I haven't loaded that neighbourhood for a while but, like you, I intend to get back to it. I mostly work with Polgannon at the moment.

PS the numbers are going up nicely now - I'll post an interim result in a couple of days.

Thanks Maxon for these polls .

I've redone my hood a couple of times.
I have had my current one for I think about 1 year now. It is a redo of Rematra which has existed in some form or another since I first got the game. Reincarnated due to corruption fears most recently, failing to copy game data originally.

Even during my involuntary break from the game Rematra Village continued to exist and grow on paper. So while I've restarted the hood many times it still feels to me like the same continuous hood.

I'll wait to vote, since I'll be jumping age groups real soon. Interesting results as you say though.

Scrap that, it's an old poll. Ok, voting on the others now.

Voted

Voted! This seems interesting.

OK - I did some calculations and here are the results and my initial comments. The charts are up in the top posts but I thought people might like to comment as well.

Age
This is a later version of the age poll which people have continued answering.
Ages of MTS Sims 2 Board Posters - no lying. So how old are you? 149 replies

Average: 35
Median: 30.5, lower quartile 21; upper quartile 42.5 (based on the middle value for each age division)
Mode: 30.5
SD: 15.32

As we expected, generally the ages of board members tend to be older (I would guess) than average gamer ages. The average age of members is 35 years (with the mode being 30.5). This is not perhaps as old as we might expect since it is reported that average of a gamer nowadays is 31 years (though this figure is much disputed - the age ranges will depend on the genre of game, I think. One source . Also, there are other sources of statistics that calculate this figure differently though most give an age in the 30s). Nevertheless, TS2 gamers here would seem to present a mature profile, especially since the older ages (36-49, 50-64 and 65-79 - sadly we have no players over 80 posting here) represent 38% of the population (and the upper quartile is 42.5 years). Standard Deviation is quite large compared to the range which means there's a fair amount of variation in our ages.

How long members play their neighbourhoods
A bit of explanation - this resulted from a conversation with Jo about hood corruption and how I thought concern about corruption was more important here since we tend to play neighbourhoods for longer periods of time than the game developers likely designed for.


Average: 25 months
Median: 18 months, lower quartile 9.5 months; upper quartile 48 months
Range: 59 months
Mode: 9.5 months
SD: 22.49

This I think is interesting since it clearly shows members of the board here (who answered my question) play neighbourhoods for extended periods. I calculated this in months. The average is 25 months (just over 2 years) and the median 18 months with a lower quartile of 9.5 months. That's quite high I think. My notion is that the game designers thought players would only play neighbourhoods and families for short periods of time, say 1-2 months at most. That seems to be their approach to TS4 for example. It's a noticeable feature of players here that we have some people (including me) who play the same neighbourhoods and families for extended periods of time - really extended periods of time. This relates to the original reason I created this poll which is my observation that there is a higher level of concern here about hood corruption - and given that result, there is a good reason for that. The fact is, if you want to play for a long period with the same sims and neighbourhood, you need to take care with how you set it up and how you play it. I wonder if we would see the same pattern if we looked at other TS2 communities (not that there are very many of them around nowadays). I think also this is likely a symptom of the fact that TS2 is now what is called a 'legacy' game. That is to say it is no longer being developed and the franchise has passed on to higher iterations. I would speculate that the type of population that plays these games tends to stick with something they like and stay with it historically (so to speak) - that is, it's a (relatively) aging fan base. Many members (like me) have been playing the game for long periods. This means, I think, a high level of familiarity with the game and a tendency to play the game in ways the original developers might consider unusual. However, I'm not sure that's going to be entirely true either. Maybe the next poll we should have is 'when did you start playing TS2?'


Average: 3.13 years
Median: 2 years, lower quartile 0.66 years (i.e. about 8 months); upper quartile 5 years
Mode: 2 years
SD: 3.04
This one is also interesting too, not least because you can see that there are some players who play neighbourhoods for very long periods indeed. The average length of survival of a hood is over 3 years but the highest level is 12 years - the age of the game itself. Mode is two years.

Interesting stuff - comments?

I am wondering if the 12 year old hood is played often. Because I could say I have played a hood that I created 10 years ago but only pop it open to play it once every year for a day. If it is played often I am very fascinated and impressed it has survived for so long.

As for length of time playing a neighborhood, some of the numbers are pretty impressive. I can honestly say that my interest in a neighborhood normally starts to wane in about a year...sometimes sooner. So, I chose 7-11 months.

I really wish I had saved my old neighborhoods from my old computers should hav saved them onto a hard drive or something... would be really cool to see what 10 year old me did as a sims noob. lol.

Well, i did want to play my hoods longer than two to three years, but ...

In all fairness, though, not all hoods went "kaboom", though a couple of them did. I nuked a few of them when I started with Windows 7 and realized I corrupted them all anyway, so I might as well start fresh. (You know the alien parent thing that happens if you remove the custom PT mods while doing a 50/50? Well ... )

Very interesting - thank you, maxon, I do enjoy statistics.
Hehe, Gazania - I would also still be playing my first hood if it did not do that vanishing into space thing

Well, I can't answer that. For one thing, the way I asked the question was hardly 'scientific'. If we'd wanted a more concrete and valid answer, I'd have to design the questions better than that. Also, that's not my hood. Although Little Carping was first conceived in 2004 when the game released, I remade it in 2007 (to avoid corruption issues - that's the period when our knowledge about game corruption was just starting to coalesce into a definite protocol to avoid corruption and the first cleaned up templates were available). So anyway, my answer is 9 years. What I can tell you is that I've not played Little Carping for about a year but will probably go back to it once I've dealt with Polgannon and the various modding projects I have on the go. I'd guess that's common for long-lived hoods - you do need a break. Perhaps the person who voted 12 years could comment.