When Do Player Count Numbers Matter? | Cold Take

The only player count that matters is "how many of my friends are still into this"

As someone that has their phone propped up on their desk while they do some data entry at work, the little "gimme your attention" whistle to look back at my phone screen made me feel way too predictable because I had just looked away again 😂

I remember the article of how Elden Ring’s player base dropped significantly after a couple of months, like people stopping playing a single player game after they completed it was somehow big news.

Destiny has millions of players. None are having fun

HD2 breaking active player records: "OMG HD2 BEST GAME EVER FOREVER" HD2 losing most of it's players after a very healthy quarter: "OMG HD2 FELL OFF" Stop it get help

Years and tons of quibbling about player numbers but I still find Titanfall 2 matches quick as hell.

Usually those numbers have a snowball effect where declining playerbase counts causes a mass exodus, fighting games are particularly hit hard with this.

With each cold take video, I get more into it and impressed. Add me to the "Came for Yahtzee, stayed for Yahtzee and also now Cold Take" pile.

1:30 You didn't have to call me out like that

I'm glad Frost understands people are here for his monologue and calls our attention when the images matter.

Player counts hugely matter for live service games because if you like the look of a game but it has the "stench of death" that some new games I will not mention have - will you really invest your time in something that will be shut down six months from now? I still miss Fractured Space...

It’s nice to see a video acknowledge that video games are a business, and there is a place for passion in that business, but at the end of the day, it will always be a business

Okay that second monitor comment actually got me. I literally heard it and thought "Oh shit, sorry, I'm paying attention.... wait... " Nice job, heh.

Player count numbers matter for games that heavily rely on ranking matchmaking for so-called "eSports". The bigger the spread of skill levels among players, the easier it is to connect people together. Its when you get a low population of nothing but sweats that said matchmaking falls apart and then the ranks dont really matter anymore aside from a fancy number and title. I really hate it though because the ridiculous crutch of matchmaking does nothing but destorys communities and tries to fold ALL COMMUNITIES together into one big pile instead of just letting people foster their own fun in the game. other than that, it only matters for multiplayer because it gives you a vague idea of how popular it is and whether youll even get to enjoy the game modes or not.

I remember something I saw on a Folding Ideas video, where he briefly discussed "dead" MMORPG numbers, and basically stated that 50, 500, 5000, and 20,000 were effectively the same number for MMORPGs, because it was the sign that the game was only being played by a dedicated fanbase with no growth, and the game was being sustained by a secondary company that bought it from the original dev and then stripped its costs to the studs and kept it running to keep draining those few players.

Playing Xcom 2 on my main monitor and this on my second. 'Look at the monitor please'.....I look miss click and my heavy blows up my sniper.

To me, a simple baseline is this. Singleplayer game -> Sales numbers matter more Multiplayer game -> Player numbers matter more As this video brings up, there are a lot of nuances to this depending on the POV you're looking from (publisher, developer, player, etc.) but I think for 95% of people of there, they'll be looking from the players pov.

Frost goes on about unique events that occur within a game, things that can't be replicated, events that get remembered, and I remember the show the introduced me to Frost in the latter days of the Escapist was "The Stuff of Legends," which talked about this sort of event. After the switch to Second Wind, that went away, but then a new show called "Chronicle" came out that looked like it was covering the same kinds of topics, but so far only one has been made. And I know "Cold Take" is Frost's main show, but if we could get a new "Chronicle" periodically, even just as few as three a year, that would make me immensely happy.

The explains how Wube the creators of Factorio can have "low" player count of 10,000 but still be hard at work building the expansion Space Age that suppose to release this year.

If player count mattered that much, then you would have to call that Banana game one of the most successful games of all time, and that just feels wrong