The internet, once again, is going through one of those moments. If you have been in the world of social media for a long time, then you know how this drama unfolds. A single tweet is enough to ignite a debate of opinions, and just like that, everyone pegs themselves as experts in the game analytics field. This time, the topic is Battlefield 6 or, as others prefer to call it, BF6, and the rumored decline in the number of players as well. A tweet from ArcRaiderAlerts made the following announcement, “The Battlefield 6 falloff needs to be studied,” and together with it, there was a screenshot revealing some stats, and wow, that just exploded the whole debate.
The first thing that was raised was the question of how to assess a game’s health. Is it by Twitch viewership? Is it actual player counts? Is it both? Is it none? The entire case went on delineating the different ways in which data was interpreted by gamers. One user, iiWhiskey, was thoroughly engaged in the replies trying to draw the line: “Bro I made a counter point to using viewers vs an actual player count. And showing 320k players that day. If you think those numbers are low is not the topic of conversation, its viewers vs players metrics.” He is basically saying that we comparison of things which are entirely different that way, and people are getting mad about the wrong thing.
Moreover, the demographic issue was raised. User fedsmoker42069 made what may be the most profound observation of all time: “Battlefield players are older and the older players do not watch streams. They play.” And yes! It does sound reasonable when you think it over. The Battlefield series has been around since 2002 – that is over 20 years! Gamers who were there at the beginning of these games must be around their 30s or even 40s now, with a job, and a family, and not enough time for gaming. They are not the ones who would be watching streams all day and when they finally have time for gaming, they just play.
At the same time, other users were very quick to remind that this is just … normal? Like, user kudohori sarcastically replied to someone: “You mean a game did not keep all the users it had at launch? Wow, that is so weird, it only happens sometimes.” And he is right – A game will always lose some players after launch. The question is whether the falloff of BF6 is more than usual and whether the difference really drives people away in the long run.
Comparisons with the Arc Raiders were raised a lot, as some commenters pointed out that even if Arc Raiders has better Twitch numbers, this does not mean that it is getting more players. User iChill_Z put it very simply: “Because people are playing it and not watching it. People are watching arc and not playing it to be honest.” It is indeed a fact that some games are simply more enjoyable to watch than others, despite how fun they might be to play.
The BF6 complaints were the next topic, which was, of course, very eagerly anticipated. User MartiMooz has it that “The maps are boring AF. Need to bring back classics like metro, locker, and etc.” whereas korupt907 noted “The red sec audio is so bad that this is my reason for not playing it.” To put it all together, there are some problems with the game that are contributing to whatever drop-off is or might be happening.
User MusaRizk was even more extreme with “They scammed us. Took our 70 bucks and implemented Fortnite levels of bad bloom,” which, ouch! That is a serious allegation, but it deserves mentioning that the issue of bloom (the random bullet spread thing) has been a very hotly debated one in the shooting game community for years now.
The gaming discussion that this whole situation reflects is, perhaps, the most fascinating thing about it all. There are people who argue about the metrics, some complain about the game mechanics, and others justifying the game’s existence, and it looks like everybody has a strong opinion based on… well, sometimes it is hard to figure out what it is based on. User HoosierLight put forth the question “Who the hell thinks that streaming numbers mean anything when it comes to a player base?” which is a quite justified question considering the current situation where it seems that everyone is treating Twitch charts as the ultimate indicator of a game’s success.
On the other hand, user t0tallystable suggested what could be considered the most pessimistic opinion: “It was the ‘shit kid scored’ case. Nobody played it because it was good, people played it because they were curious it was not shit.” This is kind of funny but also kind of tragic if it turns out to be the case, especially for PlayStation and Xbox players.
