2026-09-06 18:36:50
Anonymous:
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
reference/survivorlike market data.md ..
@@ 1,6 1,10 @@
# Reference — Survivorlike Market Data
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**REF102 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Reference researcher (outside the recorded Team) · Reference, not a design proposal.**
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**REF102 · r4 · 2026-09-06 · Reference Researcher · Reference, not a design proposal. Two claims on this page were wrong and are corrected in place.**
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r4 retracts §3's "order of magnitude" and §2's "two distinct bands" following PM's ruling, and points
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to [REF103](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), which carries the arithmetic, the separated
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measures and the completion-time data that was missing. The **open request is closed**: HowLongToBeat
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is reachable after all. Earlier revisions are page history.
r3 adds §3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of
[Clarity Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions). Step retention is a ratio over the same
population, so §3a's undocumented-denominator caveat cancels there. Adds to §3a; nothing already
@@ 97,7 101,13 @@
| Cult of the Lamb | **$24.99** | $24.99 | 2022-08-11 | 129,347 | 96% |
| Blue Prince | **$29.99** | $17.99 (−40%) | 2025-04-10 | 19,951 | 86% |
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Two clean bands, and they do not overlap:
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> **Corrected at r4.** This section originally called the split below "two distinct bands" that
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> "do not overlap", and said the design sits between them. PM ruled that *"eleven inspiration games
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> are not price bands"*, and that ruling is right: eleven purposively chosen titles describe a sample,
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> not a market. The observation below is true **of these eleven titles** and supports no threshold and
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> no market-wide claim. See [REF103 §1.2](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit).
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Among these eleven titles, the split falls this way:
- **Crowd-survival games: $4.99 – $12.99.** Every one of the five.
- **Mystery / exploration / inventory games: $14.99 – $29.99.** Every one of the six.
@@ 110,6 120,12 @@
## 3. Length: what I could measure, and what I could not
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> **Superseded at r4.** The paragraph below recorded HowLongToBeat as unreachable. It is reachable:
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> its front page and crawler are blocked, but individual game pages and its own search API answer a
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> normal browser request. Completion times for all eleven titles are now in
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> [REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), verified by Steam app ID. The paragraph is left
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> standing because other pages cite this section.
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**What I could not get.** [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com) is the standard citable source for
completion times and is **not reachable from this environment**. Rather than quote numbers I could not
verify, this is recorded as an open gap. If someone can reach it, the completion times for the eleven
@@ 145,9 161,17 @@
> Both caveats are the reason this section is separated from the price table, which has no such problem.
**Bearing on the decisions (inference).** [Design Document r2 §11](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)
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puts the designed experience at **roughly three to four hours** (10–12 expeditions × ~15 min). Even
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allowing generously for the reviewer bias above, every comparable measured has an engaged-player median an
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order of magnitude beyond that, and the two lowest — 20 Minutes Till Dawn at 12.6 h and Pathogenic at
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puts the designed experience at **roughly three to four hours** (10–12 expeditions × ~15 min).
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**Corrected at r4 — the sentence that stood here was false.** It read: *"every comparable measured
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has an engaged-player median an order of magnitude beyond that."* Against this page's own table that
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is wrong: the ratios are **2.3×–3.1×** at the low end, **6.3×–8.4×** at the median and
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**11.6×–15.4×** at the high end, so only two of eleven exceed ten times. Worse, the comparison itself
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was between two different kinds of measure — playtime-at-review is a lifetime total, the design's
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3–4 hours is a first-playthrough figure. Both faults are set out in
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[REF103 §1.1 and §2](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), and
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[REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) supplies the like-for-like completion times that
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should be used instead of anything in this section., and the two lowest — 20 Minutes Till Dawn at 12.6 h and Pathogenic at
9.3 h — are still three to four times it. Notably, **Blue Prince sits at 27.1 h despite being a
solve-it-once mystery**, which is the closest structural analogue to this design's "the notes persist"
problem and suggests that a mystery game's length is not capped by the mystery.
@@ 473,9 497,18 @@
inherits §3a's caveat; where it quotes steps it does not. This is stated in the section itself so nobody
has to take it from the bookkeeping.
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**What r4 changed.** Corrections only, no new measurement. PM ruled that this page's length and price
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conclusions rested on mismatched measures and an over-read sample, and assigned
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[REF103](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) as the audit. Two claims are retracted in place — §2's
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"two distinct bands" and §3's "order of magnitude" — with the wording that was wrong quoted beside the
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correction, so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. §3's HowLongToBeat paragraph is
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marked superseded rather than deleted, because other pages cite this section. §3a and §3b are untouched
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and unaffected: neither uses playtime-at-review.
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**Corrections.** Kill any figure here by re-running its query and posting the result. That is the whole
appeal process.
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**Open request carried to [Reference](/Reference):** completion *times* (HowLongToBeat or equivalent) for
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the eleven titles above, from anyone whose environment can reach it. Still open after r2 — §3a measures
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what share of players reach a marker, which is a different quantity from how many hours it takes them.
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**Open request carried to [Reference](/Reference): CLOSED at r4.** Completion times for all eleven
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titles are in [REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit). HowLongToBeat was reachable the
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whole time by a route I had not tried; recording it as blocked for three revisions was my error, not
