Where Is The Community?

[Starker]

I found a kaiju fighting game that could fill the void that was left in my soul after Pipeworks accidentally shipped the sewage from their office building and named it Godzilla: Unleashed.

I hurriedly checked SteamCharts to asses the health of the game and... my jaw actually dropped (I can't prove it, but it really did). What a punch to the gut. The game was as dead as the Tristar Trilogy. Unlike that bumbling iguana, it seems it was never even alive, with an all-time peak of 291.

The game-play looks good, really good. Mechanics and playstyles are varied. The monster designs are a perfect fusion of Nintendo stylization and classic kaijus. This clearly isn't some garbage jank game that looks more like a money-laundering scheme than a real product (like many indie games on Steam).

I have been tracking game development for most of my life and there is zero doubt that this game is below the elitism spiral threshold. It's not even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ close. That threshold is around 10,000 daily peak players for PVP games. For those unfamiliar, an "elitism spiral" occurs when high-skill players outnumber low-skill players, upset the MMR Bell curve, and cause self-feeding player loss. Some initial negative event (lying about features, incorrect pricing, server mishaps, etc) creates a sharp dip in player population. The MMR system becomes strained and brings low and high-skill players too close for comfort. High-skill players are forced to teach or stomp low-skill players. Most people are fundamentally selfish and rarely choose the teaching option. Low-skill players have no chance to learn because they are instantly dominated without feedback. Players who can't or won't dedicate all their time to one game move on to alternatives with healthy populations. Only those who "no-life" the game remain. The skill gap between the average player and the new player increases, toxicity increases, and the cycle continues.

Returning to Gigbash and my desparate question; what happened? I'd like for the community, rather, what's left of it, to clue me on why this game failed so catastrophically. Have the developers made any official statements regarding this? Do they have a plan to relaunch the game or switch to a free-to-play model? I can't let my nostalgic desire for this game to succeed blind me. I must accept that those are the options at this point.

I know what you're thinking: Epic Games crossplay. I, like many others who threw up in their mouths when they saw SteamCharts, hold out hope that this game was marketed successfully on "Steam At Home" (The Epic Games Store). I know it's a bit foolish to think this, but cut me some slack, my last kaiju fighting game was Godzilla: Save The Earth.

If the devs have gone silent and nobody can tell me anything, would you mind telling me that this is a bad dream?

[NeonHOBBIT]

I honestly don't know but I really love this game and I want it to gain some traction.

[Jesse Fett - Iron Mandalorian]

The Kaiju genre is pretty niche (at least in north america) it was never going to have large numbers. On top of a lack of proper marketing, I had never even heard of this game until it got Godzilla dlc. That and I've seen quite a few people mistakenly groaning about it being a Japan exclusive, dunno why they don't just check PSN and Steam, but you know... idiots.
Any ways, its a great game, I don't need other players to have fun. I just hope we get some more city maps, and a dedicated no time limit solo destruction mode. I just want to SMASH!

[Stan ♂ Next ♂ Door]

99% of indie games do not sell. There are way, way, way too many videogames in general and when you throw indies in there, it's a bloodbath for most. An indie game thats not $15~ too? Asking for death. The game is high quality, is getting support and somehow convinced Japan to lend the most famous monster IP out there for a DLC pack that was sure to have boosted sales. I think as time goes on and the game hopefully gets more Godzilla monsters where they can sorta start acting like it's a Godzilla game in general but with some of their own original monsters it'll pick up.

But there is no one singular 'reason' why this game, as you would put it, failed. Nowadays you need to stoke grassroots communities either yourself or hope you get that wonder user that does it all for you. Paying top streamers tons of money to show off the game that no amount of 'standard' marketing would reach normally and HOPE those players that get exposed to the game actually turn into buyers and then stick with the game.

Not many people played the ps2 gc xbox godzilla games, or king of the monsters or rampage to begin with, and the ones that did are probably old as hell now. So where is the audience? You kinda have to capture every little bit of whats out there, or you create the audience yourself. Free to play isn't a trump card, there's just as many free to play games out there that have little to no players, the cost of entry has turned into a very nebulous thing. One of my favourite games Knockout City went free to play and the player count barely moved, everyone tried it for a few days and it went right back to being a ghost town.

But that developer still does streams where the developers play, interact with fans, talk about the game and just has fun with the community. I don't know how deep this game is with it's gameplay(i don't own yet heh) where you can make videos or content off of it's systems and attract people that way, there's no story, there's no carrot on a stick to chase. The gameplay and the genre itself has to sell the game.

I don't own the game yet because I want more Godzilla monsters or just more monsters in general personally, or at least have onslaught be co-op online which I think they'll do sooner or later since it seems like the plan is always launch first, online later. That's actually how I heard about the game, I saw the trailer for the game years ago and thought it looked awesome but that was a long time ago. Had no idea it released, I saw the Godzilla DLC and thought of the old PS2 games and was about to jump right in but the monster count kept me back for the moment.

I personally don't think the cost of the game is too high as I don't think anyone with a passing interest is THAT dissuaded by the game being $30-$40 instead of $20. Throw a Megazord and King Kong into it and maybe that will bring people in? The developers I would trust since if they were able to get the Godzilla IP off of a 291 steamchart statistic, I think they know what their doing. Maybe.

[Darkestero]

A significant percentage of players cannot even log into the game due to an in-game sync error

[BuddySloth]

Put me down as another player who never even heard of this game until I got a youtube recommendation for the Godzilla DLC. I picked it up not long after that, and it's a great local game right now, and will continue to be even if it doesn't get further releases or if there aren't many players online, but I hope it does well enough to justify continued support and content.

[BIG DADDY]

It's fun as hell and the godzilla characters play great I think it's just that not many people even know about this games existence. I was bummed to finish arcade modes with them and jump online only to see that nobody else was even on

[nick]

It was intitially announced to be available on Switch and Xbox too and then they suddenly released only on Steam/PS which personally for me meant I am now waiting for it to come out on Switch. Also the larger fighters games need that competitive draw to keep people playing and this has local couch coop fun written all over it whhich generally perform terribly.

[The Kaiju Luau]

Originally posted by nick:

It was intitially announced to be available on Switch and Xbox too and then they suddenly released only on Steam/PS which personally for me meant I am now waiting for it to come out on Switch. Also the larger fighters games need that competitive draw to keep people playing and this has local couch coop fun written all over it whhich generally perform terribly.

I don't think it was initially announced for Xbox, but it definitely was for Switch. The devs on their Discord said that they had a lot of trouble getting the game to function on the Switch's inferior hardware, but they're chugging along with both ports right now.

[The Fondler]

could it be the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ start issues ALOT of us are having and not being addressed so we aren't gonna waste our time with a game that doesn't even start up with only 6 hours of gameplay?

[The Kaiju Luau]

Originally posted by The Fondler:

could it be the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ start issues ALOT of us are having and not being addressed so we aren't:deadrat: gonna waste our time with a game that doesn't even start up with only 6 hours of gameplay?

I don't know if I've heard of this on the Discord. Have you reported it?

[The Fondler]

Originally posted by Brutzkrieg:

Originally posted by The Fondler:

could it be the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ start issues ALOT of us are having and not being addressed so we aren't gonna waste our time with a game that doesn't even start up with only 6 hours of gameplay?

I don't know if I've heard of this on the Discord. Have you reported it?

no ♥♥♥♥ sherlock NO S
H
I
T
and yes.

[gojifan54]

youd think godzilla being in it would help boost its popularity

[The Kaiju Luau]

Originally posted by gojifan54:

youd think godzilla being in it would help boost its popularity

It did for a while. The highest peak we've had was post-DLC. Unfortunately there's only so much that you can do in this game. A fair amount of the game modes can only be played locally (as of now, this may change). I love GigaBash, but I haven't played in a while because 'match with random people of various extreme skill levels' does eventually get repetitive. Currently, I'm waiting for another content drop, either DLC or not.

[1evilmonkie]

♥♥♥♥ you for calling godzilla unleashed sewage

[Mesarthim]

Community is here but people play offline or with friends on the same machine I think.