One thing I've realized recently, AAA games are a medium like blockbuster movies. They aren't enjoyed in a vacuum, there's a social participatory element to them. People want to be part of an active fanbase and/or talk about it with their peers.
Playing an unpopular indie game (or even a game that's >8 years old) is kinda lonely. Yeah its fun but who am I going to talk to it about? Playing Fortnite or Overwatch or even a new AAA single-player game feels like being in the cultural zeitgeist.
It took me a while to realize the same thing. I used to play video games a lot but stopped abruptly and a lot of this had to do with the missing social context (went from a "gamer" group of friends to a more diverse friend group).
This is actually super annoying to me, I love single player games, story driven fps or rpg or whatever, but everyone just keeps on churning out multiplayer or (even worse) co-op games. I don't have any gamer friends and I don't wanna play co-op with some random person but I do wanna have fun and experience some cool content.
Offhand - Spiderman, Red Dead Redemption, Detroit, titanfall 2,Sekiro, monster Hunter world (kind of - the multiplayer I'd pretty much optional) are all AAA games released in 2018/2019.
There's also a glut of indie games like Into the Breach,Celeste, Dead Cells - if that's more you're thing!
There are oodles of great single player games being released still, and the enteryainemtn value of them is massive - games like Red Dead Redemption have o er 40 hours of content just in the main storyline alone!
I think that the strategy of focusing on multiplayer is failing. There are multiple recent examples of AAA games that created backlash, eg. Anthem, Destiny, Fallout 76.
Yes. Second Life has that problem. Second Life has about 30,000 to 50,000 concurrent users at any one time, which is about equal to GTA V Online and would put it in 10th or 11th place on Steam if it were on there. But it's 16 years old and a "dead game".
Funny because lately I've seen way more people posting Second Life stuff than say Spider-Man or GTAV, but then again most of my online socializing is with furries.
Playing an unpopular indie game (or even a game that's >8 years old) is kinda lonely. Yeah its fun but who am I going to talk to it about? Playing Fortnite or Overwatch or even a new AAA single-player game feels like being in the cultural zeitgeist.