Methodology
Overview
ShooterDigest tracks the health of competitive FPS titles using 3 data sources: Steam player counts, Reddit community activity, and Google News coverage. Each title gets a composite health score from 0 to 100, updated weekly.
The score captures whether a game's ecosystem is growing, stable, or declining relative to its own historical baseline. It is not a ranking of game quality.
Data Sources
Steam Web API (Player Count)
Weight: 50%
Current concurrent player count from Steam's ISteamUserStats/GetNumberOfCurrentPlayers endpoint. Compared against the title's 30-day average. A ratio of 1.0 (at average) maps to a sub-score of 50. Above average pushes toward 100; below average pushes toward 0.
Reddit Activity
Weight: 30%
Post volume (top 25 posts over the past week) and hot post count from each title's subreddit via the Reddit API. Volume is compared against historical average. Sentiment is computed using VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) on post titles, producing a compound score from -1.0 to +1.0. Positive sentiment adds up to +15 points; negative sentiment subtracts up to 15.
Google News RSS (News Coverage)
Weight: 20%
Article count from Google News RSS search. Filtered for gaming relevance (non-gaming articles like sports are excluded). Compared against historical average. More coverage relative to baseline pushes the sub-score higher.
Score Composition
| Source | Full Data | Limited Data |
|---|---|---|
| Player Count | 50% | N/A |
| Reddit Activity | 30% | 60% |
| News Coverage | 20% | 40% |
Limited Data Titles
Some titles (Valorant, Escape from Tarkov) don't have Steam player counts because they're distributed through other launchers. For these titles, the player count weight (50%) is redistributed proportionally: Reddit becomes 60% and News becomes 40%.
These titles are tagged with a "Limited Data" badge on the dashboard and title pages. Cross-comparisons between full-data and limited-data titles should account for this difference in signal depth.
Score Ranges
Above-average player counts, active community, strong news coverage.
Solid engagement across most signals. Stable or growing.
At or near historical baseline. No strong trend either way.
Below-average activity. Possible seasonal dip or sustained decline.
Significantly below baseline across multiple signals.
Update Schedule
The data pipeline runs weekly (Mondays, 5 AM ET). It fetches fresh data from all 3 sources, computes scores, and writes weekly snapshots. The email digest goes out at 8 AM ET the same day.
Historical trends are built from these weekly snapshots. The more weeks of data available, the more accurate the trend baselines become.
Tracked Titles
ShooterDigest tracks 12 competitive FPS titles selected based on Steam availability, active subreddit communities (50k+ members), and competitive relevance:
* Limited Data: no Steam player count available.
Questions about the methodology? Reach out at michael@michaelpyon.com.