We Are The 99%: Big Data – Part Two

Calculating the total amount of Cookies in circulation & players

In my previous blog article, I discussed cloudmario’s wealth and explained how much that is exactly in various ways. While I was calculating all these comparisons of his money, one question popped into my mind: How wealthy was he compared to all players on the entire server? What percentage of all Cookies were his? I figured it would be impossible to know this, but I figured it had to be high. I had no idea of where to start looking to find out how much money was in circulation on RoF. To get this kind of information, I’d need to be an administrator or someone else with “inside knowledge”, right?

As it turns out, this is not the case. Using /money top Cookie 2, you can see the second page of the richest players list. Type /money top Cookie 3, and you’ll see the third page of richest players. And on and on it goes- until there are no pages left. When I discovered this, I quickly realized two things:

1. If I keep loading more pages, eventually I’ll have seen everyone’s money and be able to add those up to determine the total amount of Cookies in circulation
2. The total number of players on this list is equivalent to the total number of players on RoF

However, I also realized the following:

3. Retrieving this data & formatting it for analysis in Excel would take a lot of work

I figured there had to be hundreds of pages of /money top. This could take hours or even days, I imagined. I also had to save all of the pages at once (or in a short time span, anyway) as to not skew any data. Formatting and editing the saved pages to make them fit for Excel analysis could take even longer.

So I did that. Using the chatlog mod, I saved all the /money top pages. It took me 22 minutes and 45 seconds to save all pages, saving 741 pages or 7403 players. Another 6 hours later, and I had a full list of all players’ wealth, ready for analysis.

Ready for the big data drop? Alright- Let’s go.

18,061,785

That’s the total amount of Cookies in circulation on RoF. 18 million 61 thousand 785 cookies. 

7403

This is the total number of players who have joined RoF since it launched on the 29th of September, 2012.

Those are both big and interesting numbers, but let’s try to put it into perspective. How about a few observations, starting with the total Cookies in circulation?

The first thing I did was calculate the average wealth of all players as well as calculate the mean. The mean (average) is 2439,79 Cookies while the median is 56 Cookies. The difference between these two is laughably big. Usually, the mean and median tend to not differ much from each other, unless there’s a terribly big imbalance and inequality regarding distribution. The first thing I thought when I saw the average was: “Wow. That number is a lot bigger than I thought. RoF, in general, is much richer than I expected”.

But just looking at the average isn’t a reliable way of determining things. Let’s put it into perspective: The average (of 7403 players) may be 2439,79 but there are only 427 people who actually have more than 2439 Cookies.. That’s right- Only 427 people on RoF have more money than the average, leaving 6976 people in the dust. This means there are a few really big numbers at the very top skewing the results- There’s an immense wealth gap.

The median is a more realistic representation of the average RoF player, albeit a bit on the low side. It’s the “halfway” amount of money; there are an equal amount of people who have more than that as there are people who own less than that. This number is a lot lower when compared to the average, significantly so.

The mode is 24. For those who don’t know, the mode is the value that appears the most often in data. So in this case, this means there are more players who have exactly 24 cookies than there are players who have something else. There are 791 people on the server who own 24 cookies- That’s 10.54%!

The second mode is 25, with 384 people or 5.11%, and the third mode is 0 with 121 people or 1.61%. The fourth mode is 23 with 107 people or 1.42%, and the fifth mode is 45 with 103 people or 1.37%. The sixth mode is 52 with 101 or 1.34%, and the seventh mode is 5 with 99 people or 1.32%.

These results surprised me, especially the first mode. I was completely sure that 25 would be the mode, for one very simple reason: This is the base money that people start with when they join the server. I figured a lot of people never spent their money, or logged in and logged out without ever playing the game, etc. It made the most sense to me. But surprisingly, 24 emerged victoriously- and by a difference of over 400 people, too. I have two theories as to why this is the case:

1. Most players tended to check out the shop and maybe accidentally or intentionally buy one item (all Player items cost 1 Cookie) but never actually finish any rounds
2. I believe there was something in the Tutorial once in the older days of RoF which could be bought for 1 cookie (cake?). This probably resulted in a lot of people buying that item and consequently having 1 less Cookie.

Here’s a table of the first seven modes:

Mode number	Money	Amount of players	Percentage
1	24	791	10.54%
2	25	384	5.11%
3	0	121	1.61%
4	23	107	1.42%
5	45	103	1.37%
6	52	101	1.34%
7	5	99	1.32%

Although the details were a bit surprising (24 being more prevalent than 25), the mode(s) in general are not all that surprising. It makes sense that there are more players with the (near-)default money or other low amounts, as a lot of players don’t ever actually play or leave soon after first playing.

Proving wealth inequality
The wealth inequality is especially obvious when you begin actually analyzing the data here. Consider the following: 1% of RoF (74 players) owns 78.18% of all the Cookies. This is… one of the biggest economic disasters one can have, period. In the US, the top 1% own 40% of all money, and stuff is already pretty bad there. The top 1% of RoF has double that. In comparison: The poorest 1000 players own 15,665 cookies combined, or 0.086% of all RoF money!

There are 118 players on the server who have more than that on their own—The richest 118 players on the server have more money each than the poorest 1000 combined. Those are some insane statistics. The poorest 5000 have it just as bad: They own a mere 219,181 cookies or 1.21% of all money. The poorest 7000 (out of 7403!) are in possession of only 6.59% of all money with 1,190,701 Cookies! This also means that two players on the server both own, on their own, as much as the poorest 7000 combined.

Perhaps even more striking: The top 0.1% owns 9,333,643 Cookies, or a little more than 40%. The ten richest players own 10,073,345 Cookies or 55.77%. There are also 677 players with more than a thousand cookies to their name. Wealth inequality on RoF is a lot worse than I initially thought—It’s clear that the economy is very unbalanced.

Remember the reason I started collecting and analyzing this data- calculating what share of all Cookies cloudmario has? Well, I was able to calculate this too, and it did not dissapoint: One single player owns 20.76% of all money in the game. I think that says enough about wealth inequality and the state of RoF’s economy.

To keep in the spirit of my previous blog post, wherein I calculated what spending possibilities cloudmario had, I did the same for the total amount of money in circulation:

• It would buy four diamond picks for every RoF player to have ever joined and still have 58,000 to spare
• It would be able to get 318 players all the way from Player to Grandmaster
• It’s 4.8x cloudmario’s wealth

Note that this list I created of all people’s money includes banned players, too. Two people I recognized were Jubjubers (47th richest player on the server) and Bastix38 (105th richest).

Players
Knowing that there are 7403 players on the entire server, there is one very interesting thing we can calculate too: The amount of new players that have joined each day since launch. Since September 29 2012, 5.82 new players have joined RoF each day—a way larger number than I expected.

Conclusion
So, to sum up (rounded numbers):

• There are 18 million cookies in circulation on rof
• 7403 people have joined the server since September 29, 2012
• The average wealth of a RoF player is 2439,79
• Meanwhile, the median is 56
• The mode (most commonly occurring money a player has) is 24
• Wealth inequality is real and a way bigger problem than expected
• The richest player owns 21% of all money
• The ten richest players own 55% of all money
• The 1% (74 players) own 78% of all money
• The poorest 1000 players have 0.086% of all money combined
• The poorest 5000 players have 1.213% of all money combined
• The poorest 7000 players have 6.592% of all money combined
• There are 677 people who have more than 1000 cookies
• Since the beginning of RoF, 5.82 new players have joined each day

If anyone has an idea of something else I should calculate with this data, or if you would like to know your position, feel free to tell me. Keep in mind that this data was retrieved between 00:11:22 and 00:34:07 on march 23 2016, and is thus already outdated. It will get more and more outdated and less reliable as time goes by. Also keep in mind that this list completely ignores supercookies—A good thing, probably, because I can’t even fathom the wealth inequality percentages if I’d add supercookies to the data.

If anyone is interested in having the raw data/Excel spreadsheet, shoot me a PM on the forums.

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This is the second part of a two-parter in which I analyze RoF’s economy. If you missed Part One, check it out here!