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It’s true. Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they’re raving about a new one before I’ve finished that last one. I’ve got a list of 20+ games that came out this year that I still haven’t gotten around to. I might get through 5 of them before the new year. And you know, if wouldn’t hurt my ability to play more games if more of them were shorter.

EDIT: I provided this anecdote as a reason contributing to the problems that the industry is experiencing. The article is about the trouble the industry is experiencing as a result of too many competing games being released in a given year. It is not about how I feel about trying to play through many of the ones I found interesting. Apparently Schreier had the same problem on BlueSky with people answering what they think the headline says rather than what the article is about.

  • eleijeep@piefed.socialEnglish
    23·
    6 days ago

    There are multiplayer games from 30 years ago that still have 30 people who play on the first Friday night of each month, and they will put that in their calendar and keep the game alive.

    The idea that multiplayer games need huge communities of players otherwise they are “dead” is what is killing multiplayer games.

    • missingno@fedia.io
      9·
      6 days ago

      There are three tiers of activity:

      • Active enough that I can queue at any time of day and find opponents close to my skill level with good ping
      • Active enough that I can queue at peak hours and find opponents
      • Need to schedule games via Discord matchmaking

      If I really love the game enough, I’ll put up with jumping through hoops to play it, but it does get frustrating when the games I like are a lot more convenient to play than the games I love.

    • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      I mean I get what you’re saying. I’ve been playing Sven-Coop for 26 years and counting. People are still playing. People are still making new levels for it.

      But it’s mostly people on the older side and it’s because it was a mod for a HUGELY popular game and the mod itself used to have a ton of players.

      But a lot of these new, good games never get that big following that allow for a small fan base decades later. Or even months later. Because there’s so many other options spreading gamers out.