Video game companies have a habit of chasing trends. Whether it be tie-in movie release games of the past, souls-like games, or battle royales, video game companies always seem to be trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible with every release based on what is currently popular. Online multiplayer games are no different. However, there seems to be a troubling trend that has occurred too often to ignore in the past few years. Almost every online multiplayer game that has been released recently has seemed to die and fade away within a year of its release.
Diablo 4 has been losing players and their interest since its launch, Halo Infinite came and went quicker than it should, considering the power the franchise used to hold. Redfall launched in such a terrible state it is almost deemed unfixable. So why have many of the online games released, outside of annual franchises like Call of Duty, failed to keep the average gamer invested in them?
To answer this, we need to take in a few different considerations, as there doesn’t seem to be one singular answer to this question. We often hear marketing speak from these companies that mention topics like long-term engagement, end-game content, seasonal updates, and battle passes. What used to be generally new ideas have now come to be buzzwords that every game must tick off like a checklist. Regardless of the work put in by the developers, it seems many of the games that were released with these features haven’t had nearly enough staying power to justify the updates and content they boasted pre-launch.
There does seem to be a pattern of sorts, however. It appears that the most popular online games with some of the aforementioned features already existed in some capacity. Games like Rocket League, Overwatch, Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, and Dead by Daylight have all managed to incorporate some of these popular features into their games after the fact because they already had a dedicated fanbase invested in their ecosystem.
Multiplayer games, as of late, especially those that are a new IP, have an incredibly high bar to overcome by asking players to re-invest much of their time and energy towards a new experience that may or may not last. The keyword here is time. While we would all like to play games all day, the reality is that most of us are limited in how much we can play each day. Asking a player to spend X number of hours grinding a battle pass for a new game or trying to convince their friends to play something new can be a big hurdle.
With so many games having their versions of tiered progression systems, battle passes, and exclusively-timed content, splitting your time between too many multiplayer games becomes a chore. There simply isn’t enough time to dedicate the time that these games expect you to put into every one of them. It is much easier for most people to pick one or two games they enjoy and stick with them and the updates they provide. This is also where another incredibly important aspect comes into play: the sunk-cost fallacy.
Naturally, with these games providing us with so much content, we are bound to acquire many items within its virtual ecosystem on top of being highly leveled. This unconscious investment into the games ecosystem can make the choice to drop it in favor of something new for more than a few weeks incredibly challenging. Not only are these games asking you to give up some of the limited time you have to play games at all, but also to give up on all the progress and everything you have gained within another game’s ecosystem.
The more we play a specific game, the better we get and the more we unlock. Browsing through one of your most-played online games often means looking at pages of cosmetics and unlocked options you have already paid for with your time or your money. Firing up a new game can feel more like looking at the start of a potential project. Little options compared to what you have in other games means that the calculation of the time of investment to get where you want to be often isn’t worth it. This, combined with the fact that many new games are released with so few modes, maps, and missing features, the justification for playing something new can be hard to make. Sticking with a newly released multiplayer game, waiting for new content, balancing issues to be fixed and exploits can be harsh, to say the least. There are so many of these new multiplayer games released every year that it can be difficult even to choose a new game, let alone dedicate dozens of hours of your time.
Saturation in the market is a reality. With so many of these companies chasing these trends, there are bound to be more than a few duds among the sea of online games. Headlines of games shutting down servers after not receiving the engagement they wanted are all too common. The truth is that even if your game is hotly anticipated and finds some success at launch, a dozen others are either more established in their content or have consistently strong player bases.
It is easy for companies to boast huge numbers at launch when they have the most eyes on their product and want to pump up the success of their title. “10 million players!” and other taglines have become normal in enticing you to think you are actively missing out by not engaging with that online game. The fact is, those numbers are so quickly bolstered by a variety of other metrics. Those 10 million players include people who have less than an hour of playtime, played the game once for free through a subscription service, played the game in a beta, or those who have downloaded the game without once starting the app. A good example is how Diablo 4was boasting huge numbers at launch, but recently, twitch streams for its predecessors have garnered more views than it has. Active players in a game matter much more, as the expectation for continued support from developers, is more secure, and you are more easily placed in a ranking with other players of similar skill.
Whether you think it is a good thing or a bad thing, a lot of the multiplayer games that are currently popular today will most likely continue on through this generation. Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and the like have all rooted their place in the multiplayer sphere.
Very rarely do games come along and enter the multiplayer space with enough to grab our attention and pull us away from our favorite games we are already playing. Even less so can keep us playing those new games instead of returning to old experiences we know and enjoy. This makes it difficult even to play a new multiplayer game because the immediate barrage of modes, unlockables, and content to catch up on can often be overwhelming. Perhaps it is more upsetting when games, like Marvel’s Avengers by Crystal Dynamics, put all their effort into online modes only for them to fail and fade away when the potential for success is massive. Assuredly, companies will continue to pump these multiplayer experiences out because, for every one that fails, the single one who succeeds has a huge potential to pull in cash for years.
The draw of steady income off a single product is too easy to ignore. Instead of rushing to the ideal end goal with these online games, companies should instead focus on building a solid foundation for their games and focus on expanding them along with the content they can provide.
Opinions expressed in this article are solely of the author’s and does not represent MP1st and the entirety of its staff.
