State of the Market

[Tad Carlucci]

As we're all aware, it's quite common to complain about the state of the market. Those complaints are based upon perceptions such as whether the prices seem to be falling, whether one seems to be selling more, or less, than normal. But the question is, does any of this reflect what's actually happening?

Occasionally, I take a look at the actual performance: how many cats are out there breeding, and how many boxes are they producing.

For KittyCatS these numbers are a bit hard to produce because, while the information is there on the web pages, it's hidden from normal view. In addition, it's run through what we call a "block cypher" .. an attempt to obscure the meaning. Luckily, the scheme used is weak and can be analyzed to produce generally usable data.

I don't do this often because, quite frankly, it doesn't really change all that much for KittyCatS. If you're looking at the population dynamics KittyCatS are just plain boring! Populations are fairly stable. Players come, and some go, but most tend to stay and play a long time.

Anyway, I just took a quick look at the limited data I have available and can make the following estimates:

To date, about 1.2 million KittyCatS boxes have been created.

At present, and in general, over the past many months, there are about 30,000 to 32,000 KittyCatS breeding. This appears to have been the case for most of the past year. There were brief downward spikes around the past September. I attribute those to outside influences .. most likely something to do with other breedable products being opened of testing or going to market. Spikes like this generally are due to competitive actions or systemic problems (such as servers going offline for a day).

Those breeding parents produce about 2,000 boxes, per day. This rate has been very stable over most of the past year. There is a slight downward trend of -0.018% to this rate, but it does not appear statistically significant.

In general, KittyCatS populations are extremely stable and, while we often see complaints about the state of the market, the data strongly indicates that those perceptions do not reflect reality.

[Saga Felix]

*Is, as ever, in deep admiration of Tad's analytic mind*

Thanks Tad - that's actually very interesting info!

-Saga

[Tad Carlucci]

It popped into my head that it had been a while since I'd asked myself how many cats there are out there. And I remembered commenting on it some time ago. So ...

Five months on:

About 1.44 million boxes have been produced.

That's about 1/4 million boxes over about 150 days. That works out to about 700 boxes a day. That's a bit lower than my 2000 a-day estimate from five months ago, but don't be too concerned about that .. KittyCatS sequence numbers are grouped into 16 sequences so it's difficult to get accurate numbers .. and I don't check very often because KittyCatS are such a stable market, so it's likely differences are more due to seasonal factors and sampling error than any other cause.

[Deer Thistle]

(05-01-2013 05:51 PM)Myrtle Myrtle Wrote:  If the owners wanted this information public it wouldn't be hidden and You wouldn't have to hack into their info.!

[Tad Carlucci]

The information is visible on your screen with every Pedigree page.

If they wanted it hidden, they would not have put it there for you (not just me .. ALL of you) to see.

While I probably could convert the number from it's 1-of-16 encoding to an actual sequence number but it's not worth the effort since precision is not really required.

[Ethereal Hurricane]

(05-01-2013 06:46 PM)deerylou Resident Wrote:  

(05-01-2013 05:51 PM)Myrtle Myrtle Wrote:  If the owners wanted this information public it wouldn't be hidden and You wouldn't have to hack into their info.!

Oh you

[Rocky Balzibo]

The question I ask myself is if your original post has anything to do with the state of the market, about peoples complaints about falling prices and selling less cats?

Seeing as you claim the market is stable in numbers of boxes produced, clearly price drops dont got anything to do with more cats breeding, its same as always, traits get old and bred out.

Also I'm loving the super accurate -0.018% downward trend but then you say its hard to get accurate numbers and we're down to 700 boxes a day, from 2000. Made me smile

Looking forward to your next set of numbers.

[Tad Carlucci]

The market is controlled by a number of forces. One of the primary forces is the sheer number of specimen for sale .. the Supply. While it's not possible to segment supply by trait, it's fairly easy to get a rough estimate of the gross supply.

The downward trend cites in the original post was a regression test based upon the population estimates I had available at the time; which indicated that populations were extremely stable.

The numbers I most-recently collected are a different data set. They're still relatively stable, but the boxes-per-day estimate came out different.

How do I get the numbers?

First, go to your Cattery. For a BOX, note the date shown. Click on the box and examine the URL in the web browser bar. The cat ID number there is a sequence number. Repeat for many boxes. (Which is why my data set changes every time I look .. Charm will, of course, have a lot of new boxes, and she often goes through and Menageries a number as well.)

What you'll notice is the numbers don't SEEM numbers (there's a letter) and they don't seem sequential. That first character is a hexadecimal digit (0 to 9, and A to F) so it has 16 values. What I did was sort the data by the date in the Cattery, then compare the order of the cat ID, for each of the hex digits. You'll note that, for a given hex digit, the remainder of the cat ID is sequential over time. Therefore the cat ID number is a sequence number with a 1-of-16 "salt" value. That "salt" digit is probably deterministic .. meaning I can probably determine what it encodes and could come up with a true sequence number for each cat and box. I've not because, for my purposes, it doesn't matter (and it'll take a bit more data than I can capture from the Cattery and Pedigree View pages I have available.)

So, I plot the values for each of the 16 sequences, average the plots, and do some analysis. To convert from the numbers my charts work in to the full population, I simply multiply by 16.

---

Another market force is Demand. Demand is almost certainly related to the number of players. You can get those numbers from these Forums. What you can't do is determine if the player is actually playing. So, when I look at Demand (the number of players) I simply presume that any player who has not accessed the Forums (that means, also, accessed a Pedigree View) in the past month is "not playing" and those who do "are currently playing".

[Winter Phoenix]

Owning Secondlifes only windmill powered, gear driven,
kitty squishing menagerie press,
a.k.a THE SOYLENT GREEN GENERATOR
(if you push the red button, the rollers kick on!
YAH, WE PLAY ON THE EDGE!
IF I COULD BREED A KITTY WITH A MOHAWK I WOULD!)

I'm wondering, "what is the percentage of kitteh born vs kitteh menageried?"

Other ponderings. . .

nOObs will purchase anything that is cute,
A blue eyed COCO will do it.

More savvy buyers are looking for 'trait cute',
they are noticing boo boo ears and a cool tail.

Some have become trait snobs,
where only a 9 will do.

Breeders may be grabbing starters looking for the newest stuff,
or grabbing recessive traits to breed over,
or bidding on a grey pandie just for a head start
on their insideous plan for trait domination
and another notch on their auctionhouse belt.

There are tons of plain old, plain olds hanging on walls and shelves
all over the monster malls out there.
Anybody who puts two of em together
ends up with a garage full in a few months.
Supply is kicking demands ass.
Hense your not selling as many as you would like.

I own a shoppe strictly for the social aspect.
I enjoy talking to people who like cats!
I sold two the other day!
First ones Ive sold all week.
And they went pretty cheap.

Do it cus you love it,
do it cus you like that thrill when the teacup or mega pops out.
You seek success? Find your niche and go from there,
maybe you will find some magic bullit.
But overall. . .the days of the resellers getting rich over it are over.

Kitty with a mohawk,
TIME FOR SOME NEW TECH!

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(05-10-2013 03:13 PM)Winter Phoenix Wrote:  ...
Do it cus you love it,
do it cus you like that thrill when the teacup or mega pops out.
You seek success? Find your niche and go from there,
maybe you will find some magic bullit.
But overall. . .the days of the resellers getting rich over it are over.

Kitty with a mohawk,
TIME FOR SOME NEW TECH!

I agree if we do not love to breed, regardless eventual earnings, it makes no sense to do it in my opinion.
Therefore I never mind sales or the state of the market I will breed anyway as long as I like to do it.
But that is how I think about most things in life.
We better do those thing which make us happy in one way or the other