January 2008 Entries

How many players do we need?

What’s our obsession with player numbers? WoW has 10million subscribers, Second Life has around 60,000 people logged inat once and Planetside has 3, all stuck in a Mexican standoff. Eve had, at its high point today 41,444 online for its western servers and 3,862 for it’s Chinese one. When I was playing Eve today I think I talked to 25 different people. The other game I played today was Burnout Paradise, a decidedly non-massively multiplayer game. In fact the highest number of people that can be playing together at once is a mighty eight players. The strange thing is...