Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in a recent interview that the core reason why modern new multiplayer games frequently fail is not just gameplay or quality issues, but that players have already established stable social relationship networks in existing large-scale games.
He pointed out that long-running popular multiplayer games such as “Fortnite”, “Call of Duty”, “Counter-Strike” and “Apex Legends” have formed a structure similar to a “social ecosystem” in which players’ friendships, team habits and even daily entertainment are firmly bound. In this case, even if a new game is launched, it will be difficult for players to jump on their own, because no one wants to leave their existing friend group and start over.
Migrating an entire group of friends is almost impossible!
Sweeney further explained that the real difficulty in new multiplayer games is not to attract individual players, but to get the entire circle of friends to migrate together. He believes that the core motivation for most players to enter online games is to interact with a fixed group of friends, so if friends still stay in the old game, the appeal of the new game will be significantly reduced. He also emphasized that only a very small number of super hit games have the ability to break this structure and allow the player base to migrate as a whole, and this situation is very rare in the entire game market. In other words, what new multiplayer games face is not competition, but “social territory that is already occupied.”
The problem isn’t just social networks
However, this statement has also triggered discussions among some players and the industry. Some people believe that although social binding does exist, the reasons for the failure of new games include serious homogenization of content, excessive operating pressure, and the lack of long-term retention mechanisms for a large number of works. Especially in the live broadcast service game market in recent years, many works have declined rapidly after short-term popularity, which also makes the argument that players are unwilling to migrate more complicated, and it is not just a problem of social networks. At the same time, some players ironically pointed out that if the new game is good enough, friends will naturally be attracted to it. The problem may not be just that people don’t want to leave, but that the game is not enough to make people want to leave.
Epic continues to promote cross-game social ideas
It is worth noting that Epic has been promoting the concept of cross-game social and ecological integration in recent years, including hoping to allow players to maintain social connections across games through the Unreal Engine ecosystem and related services. Sweeney’s speech this time has also been interpreted by the outside world as a foreshadowing of the future vision of cross-game social networks, which is an attempt to reduce the cost of players migrating between different games. However, at present, this idea is still a long way from truly changing the existing market structure.