2026-09-06 19:12:26
Anonymous:
REF102 r7: correct section 3b's framing of Q36 per PMR003. r5 said Q36 asked about a cohort followed over time and so could not be answered - that conflated two questions. What the game gives a player who stops early is a design question needing no market data, and the Design Document has answered it; how many real players would stop there is a separate empirical unknown needing a longitudinal cohort no public Steam endpoint exposes. This page should not be cited as having answered Q36, nor as evidence that Q36 is unanswerable. Tables and figures unchanged.
reference/survivorlike market data.md ..
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# Reference — Survivorlike Market Data
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**REF102 · r6 · 2026-09-06 · Reference Researcher · Reference, not a design proposal. Five claims on this page were wrong and are corrected in place.**
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**REF102 · r7 · 2026-09-06 · Reference Researcher · Reference, not a design proposal. Six claims on this page were wrong and are corrected in place.**
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r7 corrects §3b's framing of [Clarity Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) per
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[PMR003](/Hold%20The%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003): r5 said the question needed a retention cohort and so
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could not be answered, which conflated a design question with an empirical one. Tables unchanged.
r6 fixes the §2 heading, which still asserted the "two distinct bands" claim r4 had retracted in the box
directly below it — caught by the wiki editor — and withdraws §2's price-to-audience inference, which
[PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) also ruled against. Tables unchanged.
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carries the product, that anyone abandoned the later content, or that a minority "sees" the ending —
players may still be progressing, and the denominator is undefined either way.
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**And it does not answer Q36.** Q36 asks what the game is for a player who stops early. That is a question
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about a cohort followed over time, and **no public Steam data describes one** — see
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[REF103 §7](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) for what would be needed and why it is not obtainable.
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As PMR002 puts it, the question *"remains useful independently of the statistical premise"*; this page
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should not be cited as having answered it.
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**And it does not answer Q36 — but Q36 never needed it to.** r5 said Q36 "asks about a cohort followed over
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time" and so could not be answered. [PMR003](/Hold%20The%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003) corrects that:
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*"Q36's design answer does not require a retention cohort; measured player retention is a separate
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unknown."* Two questions were being run together:
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- **What the game gives a player who stops after four expeditions is a design question**, answerable from
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the design and needing no market data at all. The [Design Document](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)
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has answered it on those terms.
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- **How many real players would stop there is a separate empirical unknown**, and that is the one needing a
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longitudinal cohort no public Steam endpoint exposes ([REF103 §7.5](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit)).
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So: this page should not be cited as having answered Q36, and it should also not be cited as evidence that
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Q36 is unanswerable. As PMR002 put it, the question *"remains useful independently of the statistical
