The number of tracks published gives good insight into the health of Free Rider HD. We know the game is on the decline, and looking at how many tracks are being created is one way to understand how much it’s declining. A few years ago, Radium published a project called decade (track / spreadsheet), which recorded the number of tracks published each month since FRHD was created. His data shows 10 years of track upload patterns, from 2013-2022. Since Radium left, I decided to continue the project myself. You can view the spreadsheet here: FRHD Track Tracker Spreadsheet How does this work?I use a script that shows me the time and date each track is published (in GMT). Then I find the first and last tracks published each month and put their track IDs in the spreadsheet above. Finding the correct tracks just takes a little patience and guesswork to search through IDs until I find the right ones. Data visualization and analysis (the table on the right shows the % change each year) Some takeaways: The data has a repeating pattern: the strongest months happen in the spring and fall, and the weakest months are in the dead of summer. This creates the repeating hump on the graph. July typically has the least activity The strongest months happen during the typical school year in the northern hemisphere (big surprise) The standard rate of decline seems to be between 20% - 40%. 2024 is an outlier, with half as many tracks published as 2023. The game was incredibly strong in 2015-17, before a big decline in 2018. This is really interesting to me, because the game had been consistent before then. I have two main theories: I suspect a lack of content and updates was one factor. The last major update introduced the Blob in May of 2018. I suspect another factor was due to schools implementing web blockers, making it difficult or impossible for players to access the game. Since a large portion of players are children, I think this was troublesome for the game. My school implemented web blockers around this time, and free rider was quick to be blocked. 2020 and 2021 saw a massive resurgence in activity due to the pandemic. I find this encouraging, because it shows people will come back to the game if they have the time and opportunity. Not all games had a resurgence during Covid, which shows that FRHD still has/had appeal. 2024 was the first year since 2014 to have a month with less than 1000 tracks published. So far in 2026, every month except March has had less than 1000. Why did I do this?decade was a great project, and I thought it should be continued. The game has shrunk considerably since 2022, and I find it cathartic to document it. Measuring tracks published is one of the few ways we can actually measure activity, since we don’t have access to better statistics. I also wanted to 1 up Radium, since I found his data slightly inaccurate; his spreadsheet was off by almost 7000 tracks. Most of his monthly totals were off by one track, I’m guessing because he subtracted wrong. There were some months that were off by hundreds or thousands; in two cases, he skipped a month, in others I can only guess. I am quite confident my numbers are correct.
i found pretty much the same data although i couldnt find the data giving the exact date and time so i just made it average out everything for each year which made shtty data. your findings are better than mine though. its crazy to think that this game was once literally 10x more popular. i wanna make a bot that pings every account that ever played even though that's definitely against tos. Maybe it would bring back a few people u never know
Andy's "good old days" quote from The Office really applies to me for this one... at this game's peak I was still a kid and genuinely under the impression that FRHD could never lose popularity. Even more naively, I thought so many of the top trackmakers/artists would never leave the game (because obv why should they have their own lives and obligations and interests beyond FRHD?). Looking back, I just wish more recognition went to the artists who really pushed the game forwards. Several times I've tried explaining to the uninitiated why FRHD art is so cool, given the harsh limitations of the editor, the need to satisfy player expectations, yada yada yada.. and after a certain point their eyes sorta glaze over and they nod in agreement but deep down I know they don't really get it. You have to put your hours in making tracks first to understand. To add an anecdote on the game being 10x more popular - I used to consider a track a failure if I didn't wake up the next morning to see it have 1-2k plays. Ideally 4-5k. I believe my personal record was 15k on the first night but I might be tweaking. I was so addicted to seeing my sub count go up I became a professional sh*tposter, bc I knew exactly the minimum amount of effort required to garner the most attention lmfaoooo. Those were the days, truly.
Funny, I try to steer people into checking out FRHD when I'm having a conversation in art discord servers, like in a conversation they ask "What program you use?" then I talk about the wonderful freerider.app, although uh my attempts have not succeeded...
