Welcome to the fourth annual Museum of ZZT stats article! This has become a tradition at the start of the new year to take a look at what got added to the Museum over the past year, and what may be in store for ZZT's future. As always, I tell myself that these articles will be quick and short, as in theory, the scripts that produce the data do 90% of work for me in. Then I start writing and they become gargantuan as I want to talk about more and more things. I'm already at 11,000 words so let's just get right to it. Starting with the traditional disclaimer about the data presented here!
The data collected for this article is the result of a few different scripts performing work on the Museum database both nightly, as well as at year's end. These scripts are to the best of my knowledge producing accurate data, however there is always the possibility of errors being introduced. Do not read too deeply into any charts or numbers seen here. Several of them are for curiosity's sake more than anything else, or just kind of tradition from being included in older articles.
Additionally, many sources of data assume file modification dates are correct when determining when a file was released. These dates are known to often be inaccurate, used solely because no other source for a release date exists. Files which are re-saved in ZZT have their timestamps edited, and in some cases these re-saves are the only known copies. Files exist that have been updated and republished leading to dates where the first entry in a series is more recent than its sequel.
This information is updated to be as accurate as possible when new information is discovered, but only new releases uploaded after the launch of the Museum of ZZT can be assumed to be correct. Worlds dated as from the 1990s can vary significantly from their actual release dates. Worlds from the 2000s are typically more reliable due to centralization of the ZZT community on the z2 archive. Essentially, the more recent the date, the more likely it is to be the actual day of release.
View counts for articles and pages on the Museum have been deliberately omitted. These are sourced from Google Analytics, which many visitors choose to block. These too are a best estimate, and any inclusion or omission from these lists should be taken with a grain of salt.
In short, enjoy the numbers, but do not dwell on them.
Uploaded Files By Release Year
How many files were uploaded to the Museum in 2024, and when did they originate?
For 2024, the shape of the chart isn't all that different from 2023. Brand new titles continue to outperform any past year, with worlds of unclear date following (very) closely behind. Yada yada yada, you can't trust file dates completely yet they remain the only source of data for the vast majority of worlds which were unceremoniously uploaded and published in the 90s. Later years are more verifiable thanks to Quantum P.'s diligent support of keeping previous ZZT archive z2 looking just as it did when it was last redesigned in maybe 2004.
One thing that is appreciably different compared to 2023 are the number of files that were uploaded. From 186 in 2023 to a whopping 220 for 2024. The cause of this increase? Wildcard streams. I took over streaming unpreserved worlds to be uploaded on the Museum back when asie no longer had the time for it. This was back in 2022, and while the format hasn't changed, the worlds left to choose from for those streams have changed quite a bit.
Big names and big games are pretty much absent from the list now. There are no more epic sized worlds that can be the lone subject of a Sunday stream as seen previously with games like The Forbidden Island or Yoshi In Eggs. No more should we expect four and a half hour adventures on the scale of The Land of Traseel either.
Instead, we're on to the riffraff of ZZT. The games that felt too short to reserve space for or too difficult to tie in to themes. Four worlds was the traditional goal size for what to showcase when not focusing on something sizable. Now, we get Wildcard Stream Vol. 103, where nine games made an appearance due to low board counts and quick play times.
Don't expect the trend to last into 2025. Though WiL's admirable contribution of dozens of incomplete games from the turn of the century is a much needed shot in the arm for the stream format, the private queue typically being pulled from is down to about two dozen, with at least a few in the batch being best off published... quietly.
Uploaded Files By Platform
What kind of files were uploaded in 2024? ZZT? ZIG? Weave?
Huh. Well, when these stat articles first started this chart showed a variety of uploads to the Museum that weren't just plain old ZZT games. But now the surge in collecting creations made for ZZT clones that never went anywhere has long since drawn to a close. 2024 also didn't see any new console ports of the ZZT engine to put Atop the Witch's Tower on, so it's now turned into a chart of the ratio of Weave to non-Weave releases. For every new Weave creation, there are ten times as many ZZT worlds being uploaded.
That's not a very fair comparison for Weave, putting it up against any files from the past 30-some years when basically all of Weave's history has been directly uploaded to the Museum. Actually looking at just 2024 release dates, Weave is slowly becoming a juggernaut with a bigger ratio of .ZZT files expecting to be run with Weave than ever before. That's the power of mass appeal. Weave's got a lot going for it whether your want to go all out with your ZZT ideas, simply want to reduce time spent programming complex engines that vanilla ZZT can do, or just think #board is preferable to duplicating player clones onto passages in some sort of twisted ritual to trick ZZT into doing more than Tim Sweeney asked of it.
Uploaded Files By Author
Whose files showed up the most in 2024?
This is a fun one because if the chart was generated on Christmas instead we'd be having a different conversation here.
WiL showed up and delivered this year. Dozens of recovered games led to a surprise explosion of uploads that nearly took us to a third page of files in the upload queue! Without him, the story this year would be a lot less interesting. While I hope that WiL's efforts to convince others to make peace with their weird history and share it with the world to better demonstrate where they've come from and where they are now, I'm sure we all know that it's not so simple. I think we're in agreement that that kind of mass uploading and commentary on so many abandoned projects is a good thing, and we'd all love to do the same.
Step two though, is actually doing so. And just because you want to upload your ZZTing history, doesn't mean you can. Even having access to computers and backups from decades ago is a hurdle that unfortunately many people can't clear. Systems die, CD-Rs go missing, and as somebody who does have a bunch of personal stuff that needs to be uploaded (once the wildcard streams are over, I swear), it's difficult to actually do the grunt work of packaging it all together, and slapping even the most basic descriptive label on it. Doubly so when your work in compiling releases is being distracted by reminiscing about the lofty ideas these worlds were meant to capture. It's too easy to waste time thinking about those incomplete ZZT games about running ice cream trucks, trees getting revenge on lumberjacks, or six part epics about a robot becoming sentient.
Nostalgia aside, BigTimeDudeProductions continued to be a prominent part of the contributions this year, following the trend of many a ZZTer before, retiring and returning in an on-again off-again cycle as making ZZT games is just too dang fun to actually stop. Though for 2024, the releases were confined to May and December, in contrast to previous years where you never knew when a BigTimeDude release might drop. Best wishes if you're reading this.
It was also a good year for the historic worlds of Mark McIntyre. Mark had a noticeable number of games on the private queue that needed to be featured in wildcard streams, and this was the year where they finally got to show up. I had been saving them, knowing the name was one with a reputation, and something folks would definitely be excited to see. Sure enough, even these early titles had some gems. The previously mentioned Forbidden Island was a ton of fun to play, absolutely charming, and really captured that anything-goes spirit seen when young authors create big worlds. A bit of Zelda, with some homage to Animaniacs, and a detour to your local 7-11 were well mixed with some fun dungeons, creative landscapes, and a few pretty scenes of southwestern mesas at sunset. And of course it's always a treat to see everyone's Town-adjacent creations, when they think ZZT has a structure that needs following, and getting to watch as they realize they have absolute freedom to create whatever kind of game they want.
Only 3 releases from me this year? That's rough. If I can get my bearings after a busy winter, I might try something for February or March...
