There was only one person in the world playing Babylon's Fall on PC earlier this week

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

First noticed by VGC News, SteamCharts shows that the worldwide concurrent player count on PC for Babylon's Fall, the embattled live service game by Square Enix and Platinum Games, fell to just one player on Tuesday night, before stabilizing to its more typical but still anemic 20-50 concurrent players.

Player counts are not the end-all be-all of a game's health. They ebb and flow, with inevitable peaks at launch or the release of an expansion and contractions during dry spells of new content. That being said, it's alarming to see a live service game by a long-established publisher and well-liked developer reach such a critical level just two months after launch.

As VGC points out, frequent "dead game" candidates Marvel's Avengers and Outriders have managed to maintain audiences several times the size of Babylon's Fall. It's unclear how the game is doing on PlayStation and Xbox, but I doubt it's much better given Babylon's Fall's frosty recepti

At the end of March, Platinum insisted that "there are no plans to reduce the scale of development on Babylon's Fall. Content up to the end of Season 2 is now practically complete and we have started work on Season 3 and beyond." However, it's hard to imagine development being allowed to continue for much longer if the team isn't able to turn this situation around.

Square Enix made headlines this past week as it sloughed off its North American studios and properties, with the company claiming the shift "enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including blockchain, AI, and the cloud."

For its part, Platinum's CEO has publicly stated that the studio will shift to live service games in the future, as opposed to the single player character action games that put it on the map. Babylon's Fall's disastrous launch may give the company pause before committing to the hilt, however.

This is the future of square enix and the first sign of its downfall. Like they said they simply don’t care about ganes anymore and babylons Fall resembles exactly that


https://www.pcgamer.com/there-was-only-one-person-in-the-world-playing-babylons-fall-on-pc-earlier-this-week/

[Menzagitat]

Sad story.

[Castyles]

And it was the main developer. Sad.

[my new friend]

It was me. I was really bored.

[sfnhltb]

I guess the move towards more live service games is going to end up like this - a few big winners that make massive amounts for extended amounts of time, and lots of big losers that don't catch on. It presumably will be more or less a repeat of when MMORPGs were the big thing and most of them rapidly bombed, while a few made massive profits.

People only have so much time, so if games are designed to suck all of it up to try to justify spending so much time/money in a single game by continuously adding new content to it, then it can only really end in much more of a winner takes all situation for the genres involved.

[gugnihr]

Babylon's fail

Personally I have never been a big fan of Square, nor a big fan of Platinum games either. I just liked a lot Final fantasy 7 and that's it. I don't think I have ever liked any game made by Platinum.
Speaking about Square, even if I liked Final Fantasy 7 (and Paper Mario 1 too), more generally I find it a bit hard to even consider jrpgs "games". To me it feels like they usually do everything they can to kill actual gameplay. The gameplay in jrpgs for the most part is more similar to the menu interface of other games than the actual gameplay of other games. I never understood their success amongst so many gamers so as far as I'm concerned Square never cared too much about games. I know this is just my biased opinion based on my taste but really, deciding to play a game and playing a jrpg just feels a bit weird to me.

[Χάρης]

didn't know about this game until I read this thread. I think Square Enix should hire a dev team to work on the next Deus Ex.

[my new friend]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Χάρης:

didn't know about this game until I read this thread. I think Square Enix should hire a dev team to work on the next Deus Ex.

Too late. No longer their property.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/2/23053107/square-enix-tomb-raider-deus-ex-studio-sale-embracer-group

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

Deus ex is finally in good hands

[my new friend]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Mr Jt (Justice for Johnny):

Deus ex is finally in good hands

Hopefully.

[Kamiyama]

Most MMO's have this same sad feeling where they have you grinding levels and gear forever all the while you can't interact with the game world in a meaningful way.

A lot of recent popular games like Rust, Conan Exiles, Valheim all let players set up their own servers where they are basically the dungeonmaster of their own game world. Build castles, set towns on fire, murder every NPC. Whatever you want you can do it.

Developers are terrified of giving that level of control over a MMO because they know the players will set the game world on fire. But when you look at examples where they toyed around with the idea like the WoW halloween event where players could spread a zombie plague they loved that because it made them feel powerful for a small amount of time.

Like I said in my perfect MMO thread, the first developer to pull off a world like Overlord is going to fulfill a niche that no-one has really explored before. I think it will do well, but yes it will run into problems. The first iteration of anything runs into problems.

[crunchyfrog]

Unsurprising.

Sqaure Enxi have fallen one hell of a lot. I never understood why they bought Eidos in the first place and seemingly they didn't either.

I love Final Fantasy of old and the PS1 era for Squaresoft was a sheer delight, but they are a pale shadow of that now. Things change.

And frankly this game was doomed to fail because it's like so many things they turn out these days.

[sfnhltb]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Kamiyama:

Developers are terrified of giving that level of control over a MMO because they know the players will set the game world on fire. But when you look at examples where they toyed around with the idea like the WoW halloween event where players could spread a zombie plague they loved that because it made them feel powerful for a small amount of time.

Well compare to those browser based city building games - nearly all of which rapidly become intensely hostile to new players as you just squished as soon as you appear (or as soon as you leave the newbie area or your noob immunity wears off, whatever way any such protections are implemented).

I guess the main way to get around it is sort of like EVE Online does it - new players are resources or resource generators feeding their effectively feudal overlords in exchange for protection from other players. But the game has to be careful designed to make systems like that work (and continue to work, for example having sufficiently valuable resource sinks), and even then it is difficult to make playing the game at the bottom of the heap fun enough to keep people engaged long term.

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

Babylon fall doesn't even look nice. Especially when you compare it to games like nier automata which has a lower system requirments and is also a platinum game published by square.

[iza]

NieR: Automata = amazing
Babylon's Fall = :puke:

[Χάρης]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από my new friend:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Χάρης:

didn't know about this game until I read this thread. I think Square Enix should hire a dev team to work on the next Deus Ex.

Too late. No longer their property.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/2/23053107/square-enix-tomb-raider-deus-ex-studio-sale-embracer-group

good