Pattern, or coincidence?

[jesus]

I was just taking a look at the game-monitor player numbers and I noticed something. The games that have the most people are modern warfare games.

In terms of online populations:

BF2 > BF2142 & BF1942
CoD4 > all the other CoDs, including CoD: WaW
CSS > Day of Defeat Source
CS > Day of Defeat
I compared the two counterstrikes to the two day of defeats because they're kinda in the same "series".

Crysis - futuristic, not many people playing
FFoW - kinda futuristic but this game just completely failed, and a shame, too
ETQW - futuristic, not many people playing
UT3 - futuristic, not many people playing

Only games I can't count are TF2 and L4D because I'm not sure what category these would fall under.

So is it just me, or do modern warfare games do better? I was actually really surprised by the CoD:WaW numbers. I played the MP beta and thought it was great. Can't say it's better than CoD4, but it's definitely not worse. It's just different. The gameplay isn't much different.

Yet at 11:00PM MST CoD:WaW has 1,782 players and CoD4 has 8,813 players.

Now I know game-monitor isn't 100% accurate but the difference between the numbers are too big to blame game-monitor for not counting all the servers.

[Eagle101]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

lol idk but modern warfare is a hell of a lot better than other genres imho

[iQue]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

Well people seem to have a strange affection for "realistic" games. If there's any tiny bit of unrealistic gameplay half the people that used to be interested disappears and goes back to their CoD4, that is so realistic Modern warfare you could call the most popular branch in this family of games. I guess people like the setting that you are familiar with and weapons that are used by real armies.

I think one of the factors also are that there haven't really been a great made futuristic/unrealistic game in a while. ETQW, UT3 and similar havent really had a big following. Crysis has always had the rumour of only running on supercomputers (which is far from true) and many other games have had similar fates. The modern warfare games that have been released lately have been mostly of great quality and they get more fans. As easy as that.

[=98=]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

Desert Combat > BF1942 (especially during the later years)

[Hawkers]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

I prefer modern combat, definitely.

[MrChris_CJ]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

UT3 isn't popular because 2004 and 99 are a billion times better

as for modern warfare yes I do prefer it, Crysis though is more or less modern warfare with some spice chucked in and I love playing Crysis wars

Battlefield 2 was up there as one of my fav online fps games ever, mainly cos it was modern warfare until it got raped

I would sooner shoot myself than play COD4 though...

[jesus]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

UT3 isn't popular because 2004 and 99 are a billion times better

as for modern warfare yes I do prefer it, Crysis though is more or less modern warfare with some spice chucked in and I love playing Crysis wars

Battlefield 2 was up there as one of my fav online fps games ever, mainly cos it was modern warfare until it got raped

I would sooner shoot myself than play COD4 though...

Then why is UT2004's and UT99's online population very small in comparison to the modern warfare games I've listed? Even all the Quake games have very low online populations.

Personally, I prefer modern warfare, and like other people have said, it's because the weapons are authentic, and so are the vehicles (at least, their names and what they look like).

[MrChris_CJ]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

oh yes ain't disputing that, merely pointing out that UT3 ain't exactly on the success bandwagon, especially compared with 99 or 04

nowadays modern warfare is a lot more popular as well, and I think it is what people want, certainly what I want to play when I go on battlefield tbh

[imported_Whiskey]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

I wouldn't be surprised if there is an actual preference for modern warfare games. It makes a lot of sense for people wanting to use current weapons of the day in realistic settings to get a better feel and immersion. Some people, especially younger gamers, don't have as much of an attraction to WWII games, and a lot of people find sci-fi/futuristic games to be too silly to play long-term. Well-made modern games fit nicely in between the two.

For some of the games in the example in the first post however, many of them just plain weren't very good and/or had technical issues.

CS has been out forever and runs on lower end PC's which still keeps a huge number of people playing it (plus it's a solid game), and BF2/COD4 are also good, well-designed products. All 3 are in the "modern" genre. If the same care/quality went into all of the games on the list, then modern still might win out, but the overall numbers would be a lot closer I'm sure.

[jesus]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

I wouldn't be surprised if there is an actual preference for modern warfare games. It makes a lot of sense for people wanting to use current weapons of the day in realistic settings to get a better feel and immersion. Some people, especially younger gamers, don't have as much of an attraction to WWII games, and a lot of people find sci-fi/futuristic games to be too silly to play long-term. Well-made modern games fit nicely in between the two.

For some of the games in the example in the first post however, many of them just plain weren't very good and/or had technical issues.

CS has been out forever and runs on lower end PC's which still keeps a huge number of people playing it (plus it's a solid game), and BF2/COD4 are also good, well-designed products. All 3 are in the "modern" genre. If the same care/quality went into all of the games on the list, then modern still might win out, but the overall numbers would be a lot closer I'm sure.

Yeah that's what I was thinking, too, maybe that it was just coincidence that all the high quality, solid games just so happened to be modern warfare. But looking at how all the call of duty games (except CoD2, but it's doesn't compare to CoD4's population), UT games, quake games and everything in between all have low populations. You'd think that there'd be at least one or two UT games that had a population that could compete with BF2...

[L3adcannon]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

Then why is UT2004's and UT99's online population very small in comparison to the modern warfare games I've listed? Even all the Quake games have very low online populations.

Cause they`re old as hell.

[jesus]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

Cause they`re old as hell.

What about counter-strike? It's very old and is the most popular online FPS to date.

[L3adcannon]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

What about counter-strike? It's very old and is the most popular online FPS to date.

Cause it`s CS. No other game will beat it, no matter how modern or awesome.

[Lemur]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

Well yes it is true that modern shooters are more popular than sci-fi or ww2 games right now, all of those games are made by excellent studios anyway

[Namakan]

Re: Pattern, or coincidence?

Then there are the people like me

I prefer 2142 to BF2 and I prefer Vietnam to 1942.
2142 was and still is one of my favourite games.
I also enjoyed FFoW as well