Why does no one play the same game anymore?

Kreeeee said:
Yeah, a lot play CSS just like a lot still play StarCraft and UT2k4. Doesn't seem to happen in recent games though as CSS is the last game with a large community iirc.
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Halo 3 is a recent game and has considerably more people still playing than CSS currently does. 804,672 unique players have played it just today. Of the 100 people on my friend list, many still seem to play it often.

Like your friends, I seem to find it hard to stick with one multiplayer game these days, compared to when I was a Quake 2/3, UT etc addict. I've just changed as I've got older and less competitive.

But looking at the stats, a lot of the more recent games are still very popular. There's 25,000 playing the PC version of CoD4 right now this minute, which is a very good number for a PC FPS. So people are certainly playing them.
 
Achievement points make people go on to the next game as well once all have been obtained for a title.

After all there a marketing tool really more than they are a feature for the fans.
 
It's not the raw number of players, it's how many stick with it long enough to form communities.
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True, but that many daily players is a reasonable indication that many people are sticking with it. We're talking 800,000 daily players for Halo 3. It's not like Halo 3 is still soaring in the sales charts; it doesn't even sell an 8th of that in a month. Even taking into account used sales I think it's fair to say that people are sticking with it and the community forums for the game are bewilderingly popular (pages of new threads per hour). It's still the game of choice for most people I know.
 
Kreeeee said:
It's not the raw number of players, it's how many stick with it long enough to form communities.
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But he's mostly talking about Halo 3, and with that many people still playing it now, I'd lay money on there being a notable community in it.

Even CoD4 has been out long enough now to weed out most of those who will move on the next shiny new game. I'd say there will be communities growing in that too.

Maybe you just haven't found these communities yet? I know it can be hard to find out where the real "action" is in a game when you first start it, and even now there seem to be a sizeable number of people in games like CS, that have no real knowledge of the larger clan scene as a whole. It just happens.

That, and as several people have said, I think the Live/matchmaking system is a bit rubbish for creating communities.
 
I play much more local multiplayer than online, so I don't actively seek out communities online but with CoD1, StarCraft, Halo 2 and a lot of old games I stumbled into them. I never do with CoD4 or Halo 3.
 
i reckon the point someone raised about LIVE etc not being personal enough is true

i loved using ASE to load up my MOHAA games, just because i knew who was who in the community and could often join a game with a couple of lads i could have fun with

it helped that i was in a clan, but that game had a real community and at the time was one of the best FPS around (just had no support)

with LIVE and notably COD4, ill get thrown into a server that is spanish, or has kids swearing or blaasting music down my headset... i cba with that and thus i try other games, never to find that experience of MOHAA that was the pinnacle of gaming for me
 
I don't think it's the lack of an inspirational game, I think it's being over saturated with FPS games, and being blessed with many good games.

As you well said, Goldeneye was ace, not just because of it was a brilliant FPS (it was... absolutely), but because it had no competition what so ever (in real terms).

Now take a look at the current market. In terms of FPS you have:

COD4 - Which is the leader.
BFBC
Halo 3
UT3
RB6V2
Gears of War
Condemmed
Ghost Recon 2
Darkness

All which are hugely popular and great games in their own right. If any of these games came out at the time Goldeneye did, it would make the same kind of impact (ignore graphics and power, we're talking hypothetically). That is the difference.

We're in an age where we're blessed with so many GOOD games and games where if released in the past would have been great games. It's more over saturation, rather than lack of quality in my opinion.

But you are right, we do tend to move away from games a hell of a lot more, this is down to new games being released every week in the same genre in my eyes.

Take WoW as mentioned above, yes it's a GOOD game, yes it encorporates a lot of different aspects which haven't been seen before, but there is no competition.

The closest I can recall (and I'm not a huge MMORPG fan), is when SWG was up against DAoC. And that was a while ago. If MMORPG had the same saturation as FPS games, then we also wouldn't play the same MMORPG all the time. Some days, you'd fancy being a jedi, the next a mage, the next an ogre and so forth. The same applies to the different environments within an FPS.

Also, I do believe the ranking systems within FPS now (COD4, Halo and BFBC) are trying to combat this over saturation and give you a goal to aim towards, just so you will play it longer. Rankings to at least half ofo us, mean nothing. But it is something to aim towards definately.
 
Left 4 Dead on pc and xbox360 will change all this and bring it back to the good old days. Your forced to work as a team to survive, and theres an achievement system that builds around it.
 
Theres a wealth of good FPS this gen. compared to last gen xbox live, though I know my friends group may go off to play vegas or battlefield for a week or 2 but always come back to good ol' halo :D
 
Great post hilly, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

As a general note I'm not on about FPS games but games in all genre's as they all have this issue to some extent (take SMK vs MKWii for example) but FPS games are a more potent example.
 
Don't think it's anything to do with there being so many games, there just isn't many decent online games for consoles tbh. Most of them are pretty dire. maybe fun for a quick mess around but not really anything that's a good competitive game that you can really get into and play long term.
 
In halo2 time there was no reall competition for console fps was there? Rainbow six 3 was the closest thing.

But halo2 and goldeneye are basicly cult games now which hold massive status. But they just don't exist this generation, mgs4 being the closest and the online following for that is comparativly meager.

For example, halo3, gow, RB6V and ut3 were all supposed to be these games and some were good enough but let down by competition and any inovations in them are not cared for by the masses (Forge and replay system in halo3), otherwise they're now all just another fps.

If i had gold i would still play forza2 daily though, nice following for that game online still, but nothing like halo2, forza1 and pgr2 used to be.
 
I play forza 2, Im just not any good at it :o

I always think ps3 and xbox players should be playing against each other, even better would be if it could be vs pc as well. I heard gta4 has a smart system where a group of 6 can join a game all at once if they like like a gang
 
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