Nostalgames Player Survey Results

This autumn, 1,424 respondents took our latest survey, and we read more than two thousand detailed answers.

Thank you to everyone who took the survey. You gave us your time, honestly told us what annoys you, many of you wrote out your ideas over several paragraphs, and some answers have already influenced our games.

Language

59% of you play in Russian, 38% in English. The remaining 3% play in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, French and Japanese, often through Steam Workshop translations. Special thanks to the authors of those translations.

Four out of five of you named Crisis in the Kremlin: The Cold War our most interesting game. Russian- and English-speaking players answered the same way here.

What you love about our games

The top two answers are alternate-history freedom (79%) and historical depth and accuracy (73%). Isn't the charm in breaking the bones of unchangeable history?

This is confirmed by the question about real Cold War events like the Afghan Civil War and Operation "Cyclone": 69% answered "love it, want more", another 23% answered "it's good".

What gets in the way

And now for the criticism.

The main drawbacks you chose were lack of content (45%), balance (39%), high entry barrier (37%) and the economy (37%).

The economy turned out to be the most controversial topic of the survey. 60% say they like it or that it's their favourite part of the game.

But among requests to "change one thing", the economy came up most often, in roughly one answer in five. And you almost always asked for the same thing — not to simplify the economy, but to make it understandable. So you can see why revenue fell, what each slider does and where the money goes. Wish granted!

A split between audiences

We didn't expect the answers about the entry barrier to diverge so much. Among English-speaking players, 59% say the game is "a bit steep, but worth it". Among Russian-speaking players, 35% ask for more tutorials, almost twice as many as among English-speaking players (20%).

We don't know the exact reason yet. The author of this article's guess is that among the Russian-speaking audience we reach not only fans of complex historical strategy games, but also people who simply feel nostalgic for the USSR or are interested in its history.

Or the sample is simply small, and with more responses the gap would shrink to within the margin of error.

At the same time, the difficulty doesn't push people away. Of those who called the game "too complex", 89% are still satisfied with it. That said, the author of the survey admits the wording of the answers wasn't entirely successful, and we will try to offer more specific answer options in the future.

Where to go next

Among the options offered, the most popular were the late USSR (29%) and Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact countries (22%). English-speaking players put Eastern Europe first (28%).

The question about specific events, leaders and scenarios received more than 800 free-text answers. Most often you ask for 1917, the Civil War and the 1920s, as well as the USSR after Stalin's death. Next come the 90s and post-Soviet Russia, the Stalin era and World War II, playing as the USA, Latin America and Cuba, the August Coup, the Middle East and Yugoslavia. Separately, there were many requests to add Iran, Greece and Vietnam to Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall.

Mods

The built-in mod editor is already in the game: events, modifiers, impulses and endings without programming. 15% of you will definitely try making your own mod, another 29% say "maybe". And 43% don't play mods yet but are interested. So modders will have people to support them. In the future we will definitely hold a contest for the best mod.

You want to take part

60% are ready to actively take part in development decisions: voting on features, answering themed questions, joining beta tests. Another 19% would like to at least watch. Only 7% are against. This survey won't be the last.

85% of you follow our news on Steam. Next come VK (25%), Discord (24%), Telegram (16%) and Reddit (13%).

DLC, prices and platforms

41% buy all our DLC and ask us to keep going, while another quarter would prefer expansions less often but bigger.

Only 3% of respondents called the prices expensive. English-speaking players more often answered "great value for the content", Russian-speaking players more often answered "fair".

Two thirds think the PC is perfect for the genre. Another 28% would like to play on a phone or tablet.

A few words from you

In the last question we asked what else you wanted to tell us. About a third of the 700 answers were a simple "thank you". We value it a lot too. There were also stories like these:

"Thank you for 150 hours of fun, and for bringing together people from different corners of the world".

"Thanks to your games I became interested in the history of the second half of the 20th century — of our country and the world — and discovered a lot of new things".

"Thank you very much, your games influenced me to study diplomacy".

"The game sometimes feels like I'm trying to extract state secrets from a Soviet archivist, which does have its charm".

Thank you once again

1,424 people found the time to help us make our games better. We read all the answers and all the comments, including the harshest and the funniest.

See you in the next survey!

Nostalgames team