Starfield [XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[GhostofWar]

What Bethesda have tech wise would have been a better fit for a stargate style scifi setting. Exploring could yield gate codes to access different worlds for side quests etc and the story could run you through the gates you need etc. I'm surprised no one has taken the concept into a gaas style game by now honestly. No mans sky kinda used it but using a teleport gate as the core travel system to stitch together a universe i'm not sure has been done yet right?

 

[mr magoo]

Two months after launch, Starfield has fewer players on Steam than Skyrim, which is 12 years old

The Starfield Steam player count has dropped below that of Elder Scrolls Skyrim, just two months after the new Bethesda RPG first launched.

www.pcgamesn.com

The article is a ripoff of Reddit thread with same name. Anyway as others stated it’s perfectly normal behavior same trend can be seen for Baldirs Gate 3 and yet no one is making any lament about that.
Starfield become easy clickbait hate farming subject. I hated this when it happend to CP2077 I played launch version on PC and it worked fine. Yet the internet was spammed with threads and articles about how utterly broken and bad it is.
This is disgusting tbh yes the game has issues like many other games realased this year but it didn’t deserve shit it gets.
There it is, my whole rant and it’s not even about starfield but the whole industry and community in general. Clickbait’s cringy hate farming YouTube content and shitty people that can ruin game studios becouse of clicks and likes. That’s quality content this days.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The article is a ripoff of Reddit thread with same name. Anyway as others stated it’s perfectly normal behavior same trend can be seen for Baldirs Gate 3 and yet no one is making any lament about that. Starfield become easy clickbait hate farming subject.

This is seemingly what passes for gaming journalism now, regurgitating press releases and scrapping social media for "stories". I really feel like the only person doing actual investigative reporting is Jason Schreier now at Bloomberg, e.g. getting developers to talk about crunch and other unacceptable and abusive behaviours inside studios.

Gaming journalists love to leach onto any perceived stumble. Cyberpunk obviously had a rocky launch on consoles, and didn't live up to the hype and promises in a number of ways, but it was exaggerated for impact. Similarly, Bethesda is another studio that has been placed a pedestal, only to be quickly pushed off.

 

[hughJ]

same trend can be seen for Baldirs Gate 3

BG3 has fewer players than BG2 or DOS2?

 

[mr magoo]

BG3 has fewer players than BG2 or DOS2?

Declining playerbase over time

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And the graphics for the first two months from launch for Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3:

Starfield, 8 September 2023 to 8 November 2023



Baldur's Gate 3, 8 August 2023 to 8 October 2023



The all-time and 24 hour peaks are quite interesting. Noting that BG3 launched a month ahead of Starfield, so you may (or may not) expect a greater fatigue drop-off in number of players, Starfield's Steam player base has dropped to 7% of it's peak in two months, and Baldur's Gate 3 has dropped to 14% of it's peak in three months.

I'm assuming the bumps in the graphs are probably weekend play blips.

 

[hughJ]

The article/reddit post is pointing out the numbers relative to Skyrim, not merely the fact that the numbers are declining. Every graph of every game ever released is going to see a downward trend; the curious part is despite all the added crafting/survival and NG+ mechanics, Starfield apparently is less sticky than a pretty bog-standard BGS single player RPG. While one might look to the more developed modding community as an explanation, I think it may just be that the Skyrim quests and world are more engaging to play and explore.

 

[pcchen]

The article/reddit post is pointing out the numbers relative to Skyrim, not merely the fact that the numbers are declining. Every graph of every game ever released is going to see a downward trend; the curious part is despite all the added crafting/survival and NG+ mechanics, Starfield apparently is less sticky than a pretty bog-standard BGS single player RPG. While one might look to the more developed modding community as an explanation, I think it may just be that the Skyrim quests and world are more engaging to play and explore.

I don't think that's completely a fair comparison though. It's very hard to believe people are still playing Skyrim simply because it's quests are "more engaging." I mean, according to Steam, the last time I launched Skyrim was in 2013, and I played it for more than 260 hours. That's more than 10 years ago. I guess the majority of people still playing Skyrim is playing some kind of heavily modded versions. On the other hand, there are still no such crazy mods for Starfield yet. There might not be enough interests for them to appear, I don't know, but it's still too early to say IMHO.
Furthermore, as mentioned Starfield is also on Gamepass, so "the numbers are now fewer than Skyrim's players" is probably not correct either.

 

[arandomguy]

I feel general the Skyrim comparisons need some perspective.

Skyrim was not just a game of the year level candidate, nor just a game of the generation, but an all time game candidate. That is an extremely high bar for success.

The article/reddit post is pointing out the numbers relative to Skyrim, not merely the fact that the numbers are declining. Every graph of every game ever released is going to see a downward trend; the curious part is despite all the added crafting/survival and NG+ mechanics, Starfield apparently is less sticky than a pretty bog-standard BGS single player RPG. While one might look to the more developed modding community as an explanation, I think it may just be that the Skyrim quests and world are more engaging to play and explore.

In general fantasy has wider appeal is more popular and mainstream than scifi (especially the less "science fantasy") as a setting.

 

[eastmen]

I don't think that's completely a fair comparison though. It's very hard to believe people are still playing Skyrim simply because it's quests are "more engaging." I mean, according to Steam, the last time I launched Skyrim was in 2013, and I played it for more than 260 hours. That's more than 10 years ago. I guess the majority of people still playing Skyrim is playing some kind of heavily modded versions. On the other hand, there are still no such crazy mods for Starfield yet. There might not be enough interests for them to appear, I don't know, but it's still too early to say IMHO.
Furthermore, as mentioned Starfield is also on Gamepass, so "the numbers are now fewer than Skyrim's players" is probably not correct either.

I feel general the Skyrim comparisons need some perspective.

Skyrim was not just a game of the year level candidate, nor just a game of the generation, but an all time game candidate. That is an extremely high bar for success.



In general fantasy has wider appeal is more popular and mainstream than scifi (especially the less "science fantasy") as a setting.

I think a lot of people look back at Skyrim with rose color glasses. Even on steam today you aren't loading launch day Skyrim. You are getting the updated version they did a few years ago. The original sykrim I remember ran at poor frame rates, had huge loading times when entering any building of any type and have a bunch of fetch quests. I think a lot of people are also willing to over look BG3 flaws while harping on the flaws that starfield has .

As a person who has played bethesda rpg's since the start this has to have some of the best quest lines from them so far.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

In general fantasy has wider appeal is more popular and mainstream than scifi (especially the less "science fantasy") as a setting.

Does it really? Fantasy covers a broad spectrum but when it comes to that classic medieval period fantasy, it doesn't feel like games like Elder Scrolls, Elden Ring, the Witcher, Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age are out-numbering seemingly endless numbers of sci-fi genre games except in the RPG game space. In the TV space, if feels about even.

 

[eastmen]

Does it really? Fantasy covers a broad spectrum but when it comes to that classic medieval period fantasy, it doesn't feel like games like Elder Scrolls, Elden Ring, the Witcher, Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age are numbering seemingly endless numbers of sci-fi genre games except in the RPG space. In the TV space, if feels about even.

I think for TV / Movie products its a lot easier to make Medieval fantasy shows/movies than it is for sci fi. Just put someone in a field and give them some leather armor and a sword and boom you got fantasy.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I think for TV / Movie products its a lot easier to make Medieval fantasy shows/movies than it is for sci fi. Just put someone in a field and give them some leather armor and a sword and boom you got fantasy.

You should market that to Netflix, you'll have a two season show deal by Friday lunchtime.

 

[Malo]

You should market that to Netflix, you'll have a two season show deal by Friday lunchtime.

Which will be cancelled after the first season.

 

[RobertR1]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1716740/eventcomments/3976177262470571442/ official dlss update is now live along with XGP version.

 

[eastmen]

You should market that to Netflix, you'll have a two season show deal by Friday lunchtime.

It would be just like the B movies of my childhood

Which will be cancelled after the first season.

Very true.

 

[arandomguy]

Does it really? Fantasy covers a broad spectrum but when it comes to that classic medieval period fantasy, it doesn't feel like games like Elder Scrolls, Elden Ring, the Witcher, Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age are out-numbering seemingly endless numbers of sci-fi genre games except in the RPG game space. In the TV space, if feels about even.

If we want to go into more specific sub genres something worth keeping mind also is that even with Sci-fi there does seem to be a correlation of how science fantasy it is and wide appeal as well. It's somewhat more that swords and magic has wider appeal than guns and technology.

If we look at notable studios that have gone into both relatively close to each other it seems like there fantasy properties tend to be have achieved wider popularity, whether that be Bethesda with TES, or Blizzard with Warcraft, or CDPR with the Witcher, or Bioware with Dragon Age.

One thing here is also demographics. Fantasy seems to appeal to a wider range of demographics which is what gives it a higher ceiling. Without stereotyping too much here, scifi is likely more popular with the more "geeky" male demo especially of a certain age range but things witch around quickly as you move away from that demographic. This does mean the demographics of this board is likely not representative of the current broader gaming population.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

For gaming Fantasy may have wider appeal, but for the general public Sci-Fi is far more popular. Looking at TV and movies Sci-Fi performs better and more movies and shows that are Sci-Fi based are made.

For games, you could make a case either way depending on genre as well as IP. For example, if we look at Games Workshop games, their Sci-Fi based games are far more popular than their purely fantasy based games.

When it comes to game developers, it's harder to draw any conclusions. For example, is CDPRs Fantasy games far more popular because that's what they basically built their reputation on for the first decade+ of their existence (starting in 2007) or is it because Fantasy is more popular than Sci-Fi (first title in 2020)?

Likewise, for Activision, if you look at their history is Sci-Fi performing significantly better for them because most of the games they made were Sci-Fi or is it because Sci-Fi is more popular.

Regards,
SB

 

[arandomguy]

But aren't we talking about games due to the context of looking at Skyrim and Starfield?

Also we might be getting into a semantics and sub genre definition arguing here. I have this general issue with what I feel are too broad and dated genre archtypes but I won't go into it too much here. But to I did mention we do need to keep in mind how a lot of science fiction is really science fantasy, and that latter half distinction is important. Let's go with the W40k example, W40k and Skyrim both have elves and orcs, Starfield does not.

I'm not saying Starfield is extremely hard scifi but especially in terms of the aesthetics and some of the core mechanics I feel while it might appeal to some demographics more, it appeals to less of the overall modern game demo that's expanded versus 10+ years ago.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Witcher? For sure Fantasy is more popular overall.

In gaming:

Final Fantasy, Zelda, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Quest .... all of which are ahead of the biggest selling SF franchise of all time - Halo at 81 million sold. It's not even close really.