this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Starfield
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Why would anyone think the playercount matters for a single player game? This article is silly.
It's the "forever game" brainrot. Nowadays people expect games to be updated and played forever as the one game they will play. Even single player games.
This mindset sort of originated from MMORPGs but leeched into other games including singleplayer ones. Just look at how people approach playing singleplayer Minecraft. Or Zelda TOTK. They act like the game is shit because they got bored of it like no shit, you have 500 hours in Zelda TOTK. Learn to put down a game. Minecraft is even more extreme. People are expecting the game to remain appealing in single player a good decade after it's initial release.
People need to understand that they're allowed to get bored of a game and move on to the next one. That their refusal to move on way beyond the games intended lifespan does not mean that a game is bad.
So the reason why the plummeting playercount is "bad", is because it makes it less likely for DLC and updates being pushed which are required to maintain a "forever game"
In general, media tracks the player count less to talk about content generation and more to talk about success of a game and its development. This is especially true with publishers that don’t release their figures or when the sales figures are somewhat irrelevant because of game pass. Player count is the bar by which games can be measured easily.
Also it sets up industry expectations for sequels and the overall health of publishers and developers. It’s a big deal when a recent Microsoft acquisition puts out a game to a very dull response and loses player count quickly. Add in the whole Redfall thing and it’s an embarassing turnout for Zenimax and Bethesda. So no, this is a big deal especially to people who work for those studios. It has far less to do with content extension for the game in question and more to do with how acquisitions are awful for the games industry.
Kinda disagree with the Minecraft comparison, I got it in beta a millenia ago, and still play it. no idea about all this new shit they've released since (as an example, I've never touched redstone), I just like to start a world in survival and go explore (and die. Lots).
That's kinda what the article says though
It can be an indicator of post-launch performance. In this case, it performed well at launch but has now stablised like most games do. By my metrics, 30k a day is pretty good at a glance. You'd have to find more actual comparisons to make informed conclusions though, which you sort of find if you go through Forbes' source which is a quote tweet of an article from GamingBolt ( just link the article lmao):
There are more paragraphs with the same vibe, with the obvious disclaimer that it's on game pass too. But there's a number of other things that would go into an actual performance analysis. e.g, are the "competing" games currently on sale? What other factors affect the current landscape of games played? What do each of these games' numbers look like in the same time period following their launch?
That's the kind of data the publishers have access to and do actual analysis on. I think this reporting is just chasing a trend for engagement. 22 - 30k is not bad for a singleplayer game without mod support (yet) which people will pick up, play, and put down. I don't see anything to indicate it's "in trouble" (we'd probably have heard by now of internal planning changes at Bethesda if that were the case).
Actually, the article linked is pretty much making the point that the player numbers don't matter that much. Or at least that all the trolls using those numbers as evidence are at the very least, premature.
It's one of the very few indicators we have, and pretty much the only one that's not controlled by the publisher or devs.