Why Do Online Communities Die?

Joel Taveras of DualShockers writes, "This is the question I kept asking myself during a recent romp in Uncharted 2 multi-player. Where, with a full party of 5 players, it was still taking us upwards of 2 minutes to find only a couple of players to go up against. Frustration began to settle in and that’s when the question dawned on me, why is it that community in an online game seems to disappear, and more importantly why do only a select few have any real staying power?"

[taz8080]

Online games are hot when they first release and then after a few weeks the amount of people playing quickly dissipates.

Gamers are very fickle and will go with the newest shineiest game of the week, only certain titles like an MW2 can keep their numbers online up but even games like MW2 lose its numbers with time.

[DasBunker]

people move to something else... i get bored of MP online within a month, then after that i just play it sporadically.. just cant play the same stuff over and over... like some casuals do with COD and halo

[AAACE5]

Sometimes it's just because the game gets old and has to be replaced! Sometimes, it's because people have seen through the smoke and mirrors and realize the game isn't much fun in the first place.

The games that really speak to fans are the ones that stick around for a while... People are still playing Rainbow Six Vegas 1 for god sake!

@booni3... Sorry to tell you, but fighting games, racing games and things of that sort are getting the short end of the stick! Popularity for these games are getting smaller. What I suggest is when you do find people in the games you like, you should try to add them to your friends list.

I had a similar problem when I tried to play DOA 4 online a few years ago. Shooters are popular, a few fighting games like Street fighter are popular and a few racing games are popular. But most people find it more fulfilling to play shooters online.

That's one thing I don't like about the direction the industry is going in. The most popular games on the market are shooters. Doesn't matter what type of game it is, you have some form of weapon and you are shooting something.

I'll believe there is innovation when other games stand out as much!

I know you can't blame the developers because they are trying, so is it us? Are we the reason games are moving towards being shooters and not platformers?

[booni3]

This is such an excellent topic, i simply must contribute.
I was thinking this same thing the other day. I popped in the original BlazBlue and it took me ten minutes to find an opponent, and after that? i had to create a room and occupy myself on the PC until someon joined.
I think the reason online communities die is because there is simply so much of the same available. Notice how almost all the examples were shooting games. You can get any flavor of shooter on any console two hundred and fifty times. By this point, the everyone wants whats new, hot or exciting in the genre, if it is for only one month. Because chances are by that time there will be a new shooter out that everyone wants to sink into. This particular genre (shootiers) cannot help but suffer this because at the end of the day, there are simply too many of them. The other day i popped in Unreal tournament 3. now i know this game is ages old, but i was simply baffled by the idea that i was the only person on the internet playing UT3 online on my xbox 360, it was really eye opening. Now on the other hand, when a game offers an experience that CANT be had any where else, it tends to stick around. a quick example is the beloved fighting game Dead Or Alive 4 for the 360. This game came out in 2005 and yet if you jump on right now, you will still find more opponents than you can handle. That kind of staying power is rarely matched, but it all chocks up to the experience. BlazBlue had a new release last month and im sure that is why the competition is so dry on the online, the series has always had a very dedicated fanbase. and like the example gears of war and halo, it does a good hjob of distinguishing itself from the drones and drones of monotinous shooter afairs.

[himdeel]

...in your level it's hard to find a match. I know this weekend I was playing with 3 pals all over level 60. We had no trouble finding a match. Then a pal joined us he was level 13, we made him leader just for fun and the game found multiple matches at his level. He left and they made me leader, I'm level 50 and there was almost no one in my level to create a match. Each time the game would find maybe 1-2 people and it'd split our party to make the games even :(

Likewise this brings up something I hate about games with online competitive components. You can only enjoy that part of the game while the online community is active :( This generation people move from game to game so quickly it's kind of sickening. I know this is why I fawn over single player only games and even games with cooperative experiences.

Final thought: I hate that every games seems to have to have an online component to it. I feel like I should be able to opt out of paying for a part of the game I don't want or don't want to engage in.

[SOAD]

I don't play with anyone in my group so I always find a match pretty quickly.

Edit: Also, teams made up of players of varying ranks will slow down the search of any game. Halo 3 had problems finding matches when me and my friend play. He's a Brig General, and I'm a Major.

[ThanatosDMC]

Taz nailed it. It's even worse on the PS3 because there's too many great games splitting the community. I've havent been playing my PS3 for a while because of Starcraft 2.

[Playerz8]

Hey I play Uncharted 2 online all the time, and as long as you play deathmatch or plunder, you'll always find people.

And I played Killzone 2 online last week, and there are still a decent amount of people online, you just have to find them.

[FamilyGuy]

This IS the case for Uncharted 2.

Your story is the perfect explanation of why one might have trouble finding a match. The game is currently filled (majorly) with die hards (people above level 60) and newcomers (people level 47 and below). If you fall in that dead zone you need to party up with someone who isn't and make that person leader.

Note*
I say 47 is low because it doesn't take long to reach that level compared to ANY level above 60.

[thevokillist]

Couldn't agree more. KZ2 & Uncharted 2 are such great games, it baffles me at how the lobbies are generally empty. They are starting to fill back up though because people are beginning to realize how crappy MW2 is becoming with all of the camping noobtubers.

[Hitman0769]

This is a major issue that I'm seeing more and more and if we are to keep buying these types of online Shooter games with the hopes that we will have a fun community to play with (including our friends) then we need to be realistic and realize that 10 or more games a year just aren't going to possibly ALL remain alive. Perhaps FPS gamers and online gamers in general need to take a serious evaluation on buying games for the multi-player component. But this is a good question, why do they die?

[Bedrockk]

i think part of the issue is fundamentally entwined in what the game is at its core, i.e. campaign vs multiplayer expereicne. for as long as there are multiplayer shooters there will be active forums (look how long it took to get Halo 2 off the grid). But with a game like Uncharted 2, despite whatever secondary dlc or multiplayer components they attempt to tack on, its still fundamentally a 1-person campaign experience. like a movie: great to talk about when it first drops, and old news by the time the next blockbuster hits.

[ShadyDevil]

Online communities die because of lack of a supporting gaming system in multiplayer. A prime example is Wolfenstien that game was great and the online was cool but nobody plays it at all now. Then theres your mediocre games like Rogue Warrior and Punisher No mercy.

[-Judge_Fudge]

bingo, give this man 1 delicious point

[Fanb0y]

They don't support COD multiplayer at all.

Millions still play it.

It's not to do with the support, I believe it's the fundamental gameplay itself and how it fits in with competitive multiplayer.

[sankthetank42]

cause theyre bad

[dkblackhawk50]

Wow nice and short hello there...

[Games4M - Rob]

Its because i kill them all

[Chadness]

I wont buy a game based solely on multiplayer, like a lot of people do. If the MP is good without sacrificing single player game elements, like Uncharted 2, then great. It ads more value to the game. But no matter how good the MP is, I won't buy it unless the single player campaign or story is worth it to me. I guess this is why I don't own any FPS games...

[Rich1631]

Ditto! I buy a game for the single player. If it has good online then it is even more bang for my buck, but like you, I won't buy a game just for the online modes regardless of how good my friends say it is.

There are some games out there that I felt had great single player and multiplayer though...Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War, Uncharted 2, Red Dead Redempetion, GTAIV, Halo 3, Killzone 2.

I don't bother with games like Unreal Tournament 3, Battlefield: Bad Company, and Rainbow Six Vegas, where it is just a generic throw away offline mode.

[blahblah]

Demon's souls. single player=multi player and both are even more awesome since they are incorporated into one entity. best multi player ever.

they only made one mistake multi player wise (very big in my opinion). in Pandemonium they should specify "most hosts killed" instead of "most black phantoms killed". all the Pandemonium wannabe n00bs (mostly in groups of 3) are now camping at the level start and try to back stab you as soon as you spawn. this makes invading way rarer than it would be if host kills would count. invading is way harder than defending, often you get into 1 against 3 fight. you have less hp (more than 50% less if you don't use cling ring) and you are weaker unless you use second ring for "Foes ring".

simple mistake like this can cost multi player a lot. instead of constant invading you get rare invaders which only get to fair 1 vs 1 in about 10%.

[taz8080]

Another problem some of these communities have online is that people quickly exploit the games and then the devs dont fix, i.e. Infintiy Ward style. Another issue I see is that you have to constantly patch your game if they do fix some things, last night I spent a good 30 minutes updating UC2 and then had to make room on my HDD just to play for a bit, if I was strapped for time I would have just skipped it all together.

[Ninferno]

i remember with Gamecube. The Warppipe community died quick

[Hitman0769]

LOL! Gamecube, ah Gamecube... if only your online wasn't an experiment in tunneling gone to hell. Before you people jump on me PS2 is the same issue in my book!

[dkblackhawk50]

People get bored of it, online games/communities need to be consistently updated.

[Xander756]

Uncharted 2 multiplayer wasn't that good. That's probably why it's dead.

[ATLGAMER]

More than 50,000 players daily...still a very strong online game

[-Alpha]

Unfortunately the number is still around 6000 players at a given time. I question if 50K is unique users. They changed it up for a reason.

It's unfortunate because the MP is solid great fun. But UC2 is a SP game and it was advertised like that. I hope they advertise the MP too for the next game, it really is good.

[mantisimo]

.....and have never had a game with just 2-5 players 6 is the lowest number of UC2 players I have had and still a strong community.

(I can see my friends playing in the friends menu but don't see them in game unless we party up.)

Can be slow sometimes to get into a game but not all that often.

[Theonik]

It used to be good until the Beta went public after that it seems that with each DLC and patch they break more and more things.

[-Judge_Fudge]

"it was still taking us upwards of 2 minutes to find only a couple of players to go up against." wow someone cant wait 2 whole minutes, thats off topic though online communities dont die look at the starcraft community after 12 years witout a sequel and they were as strong as a sliver turd crapped out by chuck norris himself

[ExPresident]

I think a lot of it has to do with what customization exists for the game, along with the obvious factor of how fun it is. An additional personal opinion is that console communities don't last near as long as PC ones. I'm a console gamer now but was previously a PC Gamer and loved the years of enjoyment I got from the starcraft community, its just epic. Part of that is being connected to the PC all the time allows quick posting, chatting, etc where as consoles aren't as quick to allow those things, ie alt+tabbing to post some stuff on a team forum and then hopping back into the game.

simple things like that imo.

[TheIneffableBob]

Because most of the game industry is more focused on profits rather than supporting a community. It's like, why create a bunch of free content for Uncharted 2 to keep the online community thriving when we can make Uncharted 3 and make way more money?

[jagstatboy]

WOW says hi.

[Mmmkay]

that is a free game right ?

why would you pay $15 a month and not play the game`?

stupid motherF says HI back.

[jagstatboy]

Hello to you too.

[Rubberlegs]

Some games are just better built for multiplayer like your Halo and Call of Duty games and those are the games people keep on going back to. These type of games also have better community features too (Halo Waypoint).
Uncharted 2 has an amazing sp campaign and even its multiplayer was fun but its nothing that never got me hooked. Really besides Gears of War you don't see to many third person shooters that have a strong multiplayer following that last long.

[punisher99]

Warhawk stayed hot for a very very long time.

[Hitman0769]

True that!

[jdktech2010]

It has to do with how fun the game is...this isn't rocket science. It also depends how much variety and how deep the multiplayer is.

I'm sure I'll get disagrees but a prime example is Halo. There are so many playlists (if you have map packs) with different gametypes such as CTF, Slayer, Griffball, action sack (just a bunch of hilariously fun gametypes with no exp)....add that to endless support by Bungie up until their next game (way longer than some devs support their games) and you have a game that still has 100000 on at any given time 3 years after launch.

I played UC2 multi and while fun, it just didn't have that deep playstyle or variety to keep me coming back for more again and again like Halo does. It's all due to preference but just because you or some fanboy thinks that a certain game (like KZ2 or UC2) is aces doesn't mean the general consensus agrees. It truly is a good game if you have people playing it as much as Halo and the various CODs have playing them even up to 3 years after release

[Fanb0y]

Spot on. Bubbles.

[il-mouzer]

I bought Shattered Horizon but none of my mates wants to invest in it - it's a fun game to play which on the other hand is surprisingly very demanding.

But I think that this is an isolated case in PC gaming, hell some people on my Xfire still play Wolfenstein:ET.

[comp_ali]

yeah the writer compare a 5k budget pc game with AAA titles like uncharted 2 and say look both games have no people. heck hadn't he hear of L4D or starcraft 1 (not even starcraft2) On pc , there are always people playing 24/7.

[kasasensei]

Too many games.

[ndibu]

Halo, or COD, or RDR or Killzo...woops

[Fanb0y]

Red Dead is still up there?

[kdalnation]

There are way too many online games and even call of duty communities die over time, we need to see a focus on Bigger and better online ideas or just less of them and more single player games before this issue goes away.

[Kornholic]

Seriously, Killzone 2 community is alive and well, Socom: Confrontation is one of the most played game online on PS3.

The reason why it takes two minutes to find players in Uncharted 2 is because the MATCHMAKING SUCKS. Matchmaking sucks in every game, really.

[BuIIetproofish_]

Even the day before they killed the servers for Halo 2 I found games fast.

[thesithfreak]

some games die so fast. i was in the resistance 2 beta and even played the game for a few weeks before i left it. i came back just months later and its a barren wasteland. same for ut3. only a few people on at any given time, and its the same people. not to mention nobody ever has mods so if you want to use mods your stuck by yourself.

[hankmoody]

... but I consider popularity and ease of use to be the main points of what makes communities come and go. If a game plays damn well and offers great gameplay online under a setup that doesn't make the casual gamer feel like they need a degree in neuroscience, you've got an almost surefire hit. A shoddy interface and weak matchmaking will also kill your game without a doubt.

[comp_ali]

That's pathetic , you compare top games on consoles with a mediocre game on PC. Look at counterstrike , there are +4000 servers on my list and you are lucky to find a free place, Even Alien swarm (free game) released recently has nearly 500 dedicted servers and the games get populated quickly.

[XactGamer]

UC2 although a great game it's MP however just doesn't have legs. What is surprising is that games people would think the community is gone is still active like Warhawk and Shadowrun. Halo, Counter Strike and CoD are extreme examples of how the MP community will never die. People still played Halo 2 up until MS pulled the plug. On PC MP games are always alive, you can still find matches for old games like Delta Force, UT, Quake 3 and Counter Strike. Kllzone 2 had a great community of gamers at first and I thought they would stick around like CoD and Halo but the numbers drop daily. It really just depends on the game and the gamer.

[drsnobby]

If we,re comparing game communities on XBL and PSN,then look at the data on which is the most game played online for each major title,from halo to UC2 to KZ2 and so on.we all know what online community rocks 24/7 day in day out.folks will rep what is hot,plain and simple