Publisher Hype, Player Expectations and Final Disappointment(s)

That all looks normal to me honestly. You always, well for the most part, have more people playing (by a large, large amount) in your first month then you will ever have again. Amount of content, re-playability can have an effect on that but that wont stop the majority from leaving, especially on consoles.

Take Mass Effect since you know... Mass Effect. A majority of people never finished the game. Out of the ones that did the vast majority only played once. Now, plenty of people will still buy the next one even if they never finished the first one. Could be a number of reasons why they didn't finish it, usually time and then motivation from being away for so long.

It's a big issue with longer storied games. Say you got 2/3rds into the game after a few weeks here and there but due to whatever you haven't played for a week or 2. A break that long, the harder it'll be to work up motivation to get back - no matter how much you actually want to play it. Usually because I mean, what happened last time? Where were you in the story again? What kind of character where you playing (if that's important to you?). Not to mention your going to be rusty on the combat trying to hit up end game stuff... hmm, probably should restart a new character then.

You'll do that eventually... right? Right? - That right there is the number one killer of not finishing your SP games. Your average shooter can be knocked out over a weekend. So that's less of a 'thing' you have to deal with. As far as multiplayer most folks who aren't super into a specific MP game play for a week or 2 and eventually drop off because people are getting better. They're running into worse and worse opposition.

The funny bullshit that was kinda funny but you died a lot quickly turns into fuck, bullshit! probably cheating stupid assholes! God the games broken, meh, guess ill do something else. That or you realize you don't have the time to dedicate to not sucking as much as the people you get paired with and they ultimately do have the time.

All that aside you have the whole 'wants to buy all the new games' mentality you get with the console crowd (one of the many reasons it's the market for AAA titles). Get a game, play it, beat it in that week, maybe play some of it's MP buuut hey, new game just came out. Playing a new game means old games not being played anymore. Especially with time restraints.

This isn't some new trend, this has been going on since the 90s. It's still happening because shits the same. More games where coming out in last generation though, less AAA titles landing due to expense/time required. Either way, 10% of 4-10 million is still a pretty solid user base for MP like ME3. Think ME3 sold somewhere around 6-ish amongst all the platforms. Just shy 2M on 360, was plenty of games for that first year or 2. Still probably are, haven't checked.

Aaanyway I don't think it's much of an issue overall. It's just how things are.

I think that unless you think games like Civilization (where players can put 1000s of hours and play it for years because of how the game works), there's really not a damn thing you can do in order to stop people from buying new games after finishing one.


I finished ME1 and ME2 multiple times because of the 'promise' of multiple conclusions to the story. So I wanted to set-up multiple characters in order to see "different" stories which - in my mind - amounted to slightly different multiple games for a price of one.

I know that this isn't likely to happen with me and MEA, since BioWare and multiple other devs showed that you shouldn't take such visions (of multiple, recognisably different playthroughs) seriously. I may play it more than once - if it's a good game. But I will most likely just move on to MP if the community is good, or move to other games entirely.

Not always the case. Unless the game happens to be Halo or Call of Duty, the lifespan of certain games have a time limit involved community-wise. Tom Clancy games tend to die out within the span of a month, leaving only the "no-life" Multiplayer gamers in the mix. Even if the community of those games is still around, no n00b would want to bother playing the game if learning the overall design of multiplayer is an uphill battle. You're also forgetting the fact that servers shut down, making said games overglorified paperweights.

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Interesting that a pub like EA spends 80+ millions on a AAA title only for players to drop off after a month.

Could be that selling, getting game award(s)  and who cares about playing, is their focus and that the MP part of the game is the cash cow.

That is Sartoz's "thing."

He did it on the old BSN.