Why Is Every Game Dying?

if you've been paying attention over the past couple years to the world of video game reporting you may have noticed a trend concerning the health of recent releases let me show you what i'm talking about halo infinite steam player count falls below halo master chief collection apex legends revenue figures reveal massive drop in popularity star wars battlefront player count is poor dominated by fallout 4. new world has lost almost 90 percent of its players since launch need i go on yeah okay realm royale lost about 95 of its player base the division player count has dropped 93 for honor now has 95 of its player base lost worse than division one anthem's player account paints a very grim picture lost arc peak players down 80 elder ring concurrent player count has dropped dramatically almost 90 percent losses we are obsessed with concurrent player counts in games specifically we're obsessed with how many people are leaving a game and how many people are still left and it's not just games journalists and youtubers looking to clickbait although there is plenty of that for sure but also just go to the forums or reddit page of any game released in the past few years do a quick search and you are guaranteed to find plenty of threads talking about the number of people leaving the game and raising the question is this game dead and if you were to base your opinion on these discussions these articles and these youtube videos the answer would always be yes the game is dead um every game in fact appears to be dead or dying so like okay what's going on here because that you know that doesn't make a lot of sense right well i think there's a lot of different elements that go into this fixation on player count but also many reasons why we continue to see example after example of new game comes out is popular for a time but then loses 70 80 90 of its players shortly thereafter some of the reasons are simple like you know people just stop playing games but some of them are a little more complex and one assumption that i just want to clear up immediately is this idea that player count decline is a direct indication of a bad game just no no no it's not it can be the consequence of a bad game if you release something that people are at first excited for and then they jump in and realize it's not so great yes they will leave and that is some of what is taking place here but also it doesn't matter if a game is total trash or if it's fantastic most nearly every game actually will have a rather dramatic decline in player count eventually there are of course some exceptions games that come up and post-launch will steadily grow fortnite was one such a case when epic released the battle royale spin-off of their pve horde mode game in july 2017 not a lot of people were playing at first but then in the following months it saw massive growth becoming at least for a time one of the biggest games in the world but these are outliers and not every game can have fortnite or minecraft or vanilla world of warcraft levels of post-launch growth and even those that do inevitably see a decline as well the record for largest peak player count ever recorded on steam goes to pubg the game launched in march 2017 and then later that year in december reached a staggering peak of three million two hundred and thirty six thousand concurrent players now today it is down nearly ninety percent pathetic right well no no not actually because that still puts them at an average daily peak at roughly 350 000 concurrent players which most days has pubg still in the top five most played games on all of steam so percentages can be deceiving like yes it has dropped 90 but 90 of the highest recorded player count on the platform ever is still a very large number and while we don't have steam player count numbers for every game we can use google trends as a barometer as imperfect as this may be it does give us a general sense of things for example take a look at minecraft which to date is the highest selling video game in the world ever it peaked in popularity in july 2013 which was about two years after release it then progressively dropped down to an 80 decline which occurred in october 2018 and although it has started trending up since then it is still at the moment a mere 50 percent what it was at its peak we know from back when blizzard published subscriber counts for world of warcraft that that game peaked at the end of wrath of the lich king in 2010 that was a solid six years of growth which is very impressive but ever since then it has been a downward slide so as you can see even with amazing games even with some of the biggest most popular titles in the world they all follow the same trend of losing massive amounts of players over time we just have example after example after example in fact i think a perfect recent showcase of this would be eldon ring while some people may argue otherwise this is clearly a great game it is no doubt gonna make its way onto most top 10 lists this year and it's also bound to rake in many game of the year awards as well this should be one of those titles that we can all point to as one of the better games to come out in 2022 nevertheless there are currently a bunch of articles and youtube videos pointing out the fact that the game has lost a significant number of players which is an accurate observation eldon ring peaked at about 953 000 concurrent players on march 3rd a week after it launched and then a month later that dropped down to 450 000 peak and as of today it sits around 50 000 peak concurrent players which is roughly a 95 decrease dead game right no no not a dead game it's just a game that a lot of people played and then finished whether or not they completed the game or not they played through it they had their experience and then they put it down they moved on as is the natural progression for most games on the flip side of course though we've got plenty of examples of bad games that see a decline in player count but that's just my point great game or bad game most games will see a decline it's really just a matter of when and for bad games that decline is likely to happen a whole lot sooner okay so now that we've established that this is gonna happen no matter what great games crappy games uh decline is gonna happen what's with the fixation why do we keep talking about these massive percentage drops why is it always brought up why is it used to reference and call games dead games let me touch on this there was recently an article posted on pc gamer titled fixating on player accounts and dead games is making gaming worse the main takeaway from this was pretty much that we care way too much about player counts and we should instead just enjoy and play the games that we find fun regardless of how many other people are playing and i agree to an extent like i agree that it shouldn't matter if there are 20 000 or 20 concurrent players in a particular game if i am having a good time while i'm playing that is what counts right yes of course back in the day when i went to my local blockbuster to rent a copy of metal gear solid uh like a full two years after this released i had no idea or care for how many other people were playing simultaneously and had today's trend of reporting on percent player count drops been a thing back then almost certainly i would have seen headlines in a magazine like metal gear solid massive flop 99 player count decline and had i let that influence me and not rented the game i would have missed out on one of the best gaming experiences of my life similarly today had i seen a 90 player count decline in eldon ring as a sign that people didn't like the game and not played it i would have been doing myself a massive diffs surface so i agree that we shouldn't let player count declines necessarily determine if we are interested and wanting to play a game that should not be a primary factor however while i agree with that there is a big distinction to be made between that kind of game and these online only or games as a service titles because player counts and growth or decline tend to tell a bit of a different story and have different implications here ones that are becoming ever more relevant for gamers as the years go on today's gaming landscape is very different from back when i went to blockbuster to rent metal gear solid in 2022 a large proportion of all of the new games coming out each and every year fall into the live service games as a service always online category games that require a constant internet connection and further support from the developer to get all of their content and to even continue existing they tend to follow a similar formula they will launch with a base and promise continual support and additions over time the game comes out it is more or less incomplete with the promise of completion coming later on there will be a road map of regular planned updates seasons that will bring in new content and progression goals weekly events to keep you coming back so on and so on this is the case in just about every genre aaa fps titles like call of duty apex legends and overwatch looter shooters like destiny division and warframe you got the mobas league of legends and dota mmos world of warcraft final fantasy 14 eso guild wars 2 so on and so on but even games and genres you might not expect like some mostly single-player rpgs turn-based games card games nearly everything has become a live service that is tied to a server and promising that there will be more of the game to come and for these titles if there isn't an active player base spending money or new players buying the game to fund further development update plans might get delayed or even cancelled altogether that content roadmap that they launched with if not enough people bought and are playing the game just forget about it and might as well have been a hallucination so when a new game launches and the player-based tanks there is a significant chance that promises the developer made about what the game will include later down the road they are going to change and for this reason it is probably best not to purchase a game based on what is promised to come based on what is currently in the game but it's also for that reason that i think players are so keenly interested and constantly talk about concurrent player counts but not getting like some future promise updates or content patches or dlc or expansions that's one thing even worse is games just getting shut down being a lifelong fan of mmos i have seen this a lot games that i've had an absolute blast playing over the years like wildstar warhammer online firefall everquest next landmark all of these and many more are dead but not like lol the player base is dropping haha dead game rip xd no like literally dead as in they don't exist anymore in most cases of course this happened because the game didn't have a large or active enough player base to fund and sustain the game's development and yeah this has been occurring in the mmo space for a long time we are used to it but recently in the past few years it has started to creep into other more mainstream parts of gaming as these always online titles in other genres have reached the end of their financially viable to keep afloat cycle just last month ubisoft announced plans to shut down online services for 15 of their games these include five assassin's creed titles far cry 3 splinter cell blacklist prince of persia the forgotten sands and a handful of others and we've seen some other very high profile examples of games from big studios shutting down in recent years epic shut down paragon in 2018 2k shut down evolve in 2018. 2k also shut down battleborn in 2021 we saw ubisoft shut down hyperscape in 2022. there's also a long list of games that while technically not shut down might as well be valve's artifact is a great example of this i mean it is as good as dead and that's just covering some of the aaa examples from these massively successful developers and publishers that everyone knows about the list of double a and indie and early access games that have just vanished from existence over these past five or so years it is very large and it is ever growing so when a game comes out and we see an immediate decline in players i think that is a genuine cause of concern for people is the game gonna knock at the support that they're saying it's gonna get or worse yet is the game going to shut down people are worried about this and rightfully so and along these same lines when it comes to player count it has something to say about the health of a game just like review scores and user scores player count is another metric that people are using to help determine is this game good and is it worth checking out as we've covered it is of course natural for people to stop playing every game eventually but especially for games that are designed to be played over longer periods of time and built to be logged into every day like the developer the publisher they are designing these games for people to come back day in and day out how much and how quickly a player base drops in these titles is noteworthy and a clear indicator of an issue for potential players if a new mmo launches and loses 90 of its player base in a single month that tells a story it could be that the game is having a lot of server issues people can't log in so they stop trying it could be that the game is full of bugs glitchy laggy or could be that it's simply not fun to play and after giving it a shot people quit sooner than later or let's say we've got a game that comes out numbers are strong they grow even initially in the first couple of weeks but then they start heavily declining after a month or two this could be an indication that the late or the end game content is lacking player count is just one factor like you you don't get the entire story just by looking at these numbers but if you take player count and you add in player experience the discussion that's happening online around these games then it starts to paint a picture of what the larger issues may be and what could be causing player decline beyond that natural drop that every game even the best games in the world all see and that is interesting for the current as well as the potential players and then there's just the fact that everything is vying for our attention and there is way too much of all of it there are too many live service games that want us playing every day all day and with how gaming is at the moment i think much of the fixation on active player count just stems from people not wanting to waste their time or their money as much as you can just enjoy a game for what it is in the moment there is a big draw for a lot of people to spend their time on something that will last like i really enjoyed firefall it wasn't perfect but i had fun playing over the course of a few years firefall no longer existing doesn't take away the fun that i had but on the other hand there's a functionally infinite number of games that i haven't played more games than i will ever play in my lifetime that i could have played so would my time have been better spent not on firefall but say playing final fantasy 14. i don't know maybe like with anything in life making a decision to do one thing is a decision to not do literally everything else so choosing to spend time playing one game means not spending that time playing any of the other games that is just a fact of being alive and having to make choices and i think with that there is a natural fear people have to not want to spend their time doing something that they feel in the end was a waste although i don't believe that experiencing a game that gets shut down or loses further development and functionally becomes abandoned i don't believe it becomes a waste if it's no longer playable but i do understand the aversion and like i said there is a long list of factors that go into this fixation that we have with concurrent player accounts and whether or not a game is dead or dying and i imagine what we've touched on here is just one facet of the entire picture and as more time passes and more great games release all in competition with each other for our time this isn't gonna get any better we are gonna keep fixating on player counts on discussions around forums and articles all of this this isn't 2004 you know when wow came out and there were like one or two other good mmos to potentially play nowadays there are hundreds if not thousands if not hundreds of thousands of great games that we could just boot up right now and play instead and that list will just keep on growing with time so there are tough decisions to be made and looking at reviews and everything around games and yes looking at active player counts and noting their decline and how quick that decline happens this is all factored into the decisions that we're making on what games to play and what games to spend our time on and there you go that is going to do it for this video this was fun a little bit different than my usual affair but nevertheless i had a good time i hope you enjoyed it it's kind of fun diving into a topic like this thank you guys so much as always for watching hope you enjoy the content i'll see you in the next one all right take it easy

Channel: Force Gaming

Views: 1,333,177

Keywords: Elden Ring Dead, World of Warcraft dead, Fortnite Dead, Minecraft dead, Why Is Every Game Dying?

Id: eJo_d9HyIDA

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022