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Video game funeral

Dead Game

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About

Dead Game, often intentionally misspelled as Daed Gaem, is a catchphrase used by video game communities to describe various games which are considered to be either dead, i.e. had their official servers shut down and lost their dedicated community, or dying, i.e. losing player base or being neglected by the developers. Due to the phrase being associated with scaremongering, it has often been used mockingly to highlight that the game of discussion is not, in fact, dying.

Origin

The origin of the phrase is unknown. One of the earliest documented uses of the phrase online is an October 10th, 2010, thread by Hexus[1] forums user Steve in which they named "dead" video game series in which they would like to see new installations (screenshot shown below).


| 10-10-2010, 05:56 PM #1 Steve o Dead game series you'd like to see again... HEXUS webmaster Sometimes great games never get funding for new releases and so the series disappears into nothing more than fond memories. Steve RAID Monkey So, what dead game series would you like to see make a comeback? Join Date: Nov 2003 Here are mine: Location: Bristol Posts: 14,269 Ecco the Dolphin Thanks: 286 Thanked: 829 times in 469 I'd like to see a sequel to the Tides of Time. There was always an intent to do this, as completing the second game on hard gave you a special code that would influence the storyline of the third posts Steve's system instalment. That said, I never had the patience to play the game on the console - although I have completed it with save-states on an emulator. Freespace Freespace is to space combat games what Half-Life is to the FPS genre. THQ/Volition need to pry the license of the cold dead hands of Interplay and get on it. Half-Life It'd be great to see Episode 3. What, you mean they're working on that? Could've fooled me O Reply With Quote

Prior to January 1st, 2015, the phrase saw widespread circulation in competitive gaming communities online such as subreddits dedicated to eSports-oriented games. For example, prior to 2015, the catchphrase was used in over 1,000 posts and comments in /r/starcraft, [2] in over 650 posts and comments in /r/dota2 [3] and in over 230 comments in /r/leagueoflegends .[4]

In these communities, the phrase has been used to highlight that these respective games are being neglected by the developers, have balance issues and/or seeing a decrease in the amount of active players, whether real or speculated (comment examples shown below).


Random BadFurDay 18 points · 5 years ago · edited 5 years ago The dead game commentary is not about relative size compared to LoL, it's more about the shrinking of sc2 over time due to Blizzard : • Failing the WCS system (which finally looks good now, too little too late) Not pandering at all to casual players in any form (not showing mmr or subleagues so forever bronze players feel no progress, no intention of ever making multiplayer f2p, not adding any side content to the game that would incite players to ladder more) • Not pandering enough to hardcore players either (not showing mmr or subleagues so players trying to get into gm feel no progress, the swarm host, turtle mech, cheap solutions like the oracle or the widow mine to fill missing unit roles, but once again this is something that seems to be good in lotv, too little too late) • Neglecting anything that's not 1v1 (failed arcade, stagnant map pool for team games) • Being really really slow with the content patches (both fixing bugs that have been here forever and balance changes, the ptr is barely even being used when they should be trying s--- in there all the time) Really obviously making us wait for Hots then LotV for radical changes, thus making many people bored of the game Barely doing jack s--- about hackers or really cancerous level of badmouthing and general s--- attitude on the ladder (this is a real turn off, especially with the ignore list being limited in size) • Not giving us any social tools at all on Bnet, it used to be so hard for a long time to just create a god damned custom game with friends in early WoL, they added chat channels so late into the game and they suck so hard that there's no incentive to use them at all. If people make friends online in your game, they'll have reasons to keep playing it, really. SC2 is not a dead game, but it shows signs of a potentially dying scene, which is something we should be concerned about. And yes, this is partly a side effect of LoL's success, which is hogging some of the sponsors. No, I don't resent LoL for it, and we shouldn't resent them. This is purely Blizzard's fault. Phlash_ 11 points · 7 years ago I was a part of the SC2 community for about 2 years, started playing dota back in august. It's not a dead game, but blizzard is too retarded to run their own game and games like Dota 2 and LoL are seeing so much growth SC2 looks pretty pathetic in comparison. It's not that it's dead it's that it's not growing and probably won't because at it's core SC2 isn't a very fun game beyond it's competitive aspect. [deleted] 3 points · 5 years ago MMO are dead game League of legends is popular because as student i can go to play 1/2h after school with friends and also it does not require me to play it every day like MMO On MMO you know you will be less good if you stop playing 1 week, meanwhile on League of legends you can not play for 1 month but you only need some time to get back to your level

Spread

In addition to being used in its straightforward sense, the catchphrase has often been used mockingly to ridicule those who claim that a certain game is "dying." When used mockingly, the catchphrase has often been intentionally miscapitalized and misspelled as "daed game," "dead gaem" and "daed gaem" (comment examples shown below). The phrase saw extensive use on streaming platforms such as Twitch and Mixer.


Mike Rufail @hastro Dead game 7:05 PM · Jul 27, 2018 · Twitter for iPhone B/R Gaming O @BRGaming fOrtNitE iS a dEAd GAME FORTNITE HITS 8.3M CONCURRENT PLAYERS WORLDWIDE E FORTNITE'S PLAYER BASE HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED SINCE FEBRUARY WHEN THE GAME BROKE 3.4M CONCURRENT PLAYERS B-R VIA VG247 3:01 PM · Nov 8, 2018 · TweetDeck Ninjas in Pyjamas : @NiPGaming Dead Game TEO TEO PC GAMES IMPACT INDEX Q1 2019 THE ESPORTS OBSERVER 1 24 CSAGO 69.98 2 1V DEAGUE EGENDS 66.97 3 1A NDOTA 2 54.77 4 2 FORTNITE 51.70 5 3A OVERWATCH 29.86 6 5A RAINEDWS SIEGE 26.36 7 2v HARISTON 23.55 8 2v 20.23 9 4A S r 10.27 10 1V CALL-DUTY 10.18 11 1V WARERAFT 9.49 12 3A FIFA19 7.01 13 77 CINEERHA 6.95 ROCKET LEAGUE 14 27 6.95 Oand thert 15 1A 3.00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 9:49 AM - May 28, 2019 · Twitter for Android GAMES

Starting on December 14th, 2016, YouTuber[5][6] N.S. launched a series of video "Death of a Game" in which he analyzes how various games lost their player base and had their official serves shut down due to various reasons.



On September 15th, 2019, YouTube[7] channel theScore esports uploaded a video which analyzed the "Dead Game" meme and the impact it can have on the perception of the game among the players (shown below). The video received over 355,000 views in five months.



Various Examples


Vani |日本語勉強中 @GrandAcademia This is the holy trinity of video game revivals, RT to get your dead game revived and all your dreams will also come true CRASH ANDICOON NiSANESARECOCY 11 MAN 3:27 PM · Dec 4, 2017 · Twitter Web Client Tryndamere O @MarcMerrill Not bad for a dead game! ;) THO The Esports Observer @esportsobserved · Jul 7, 2019 The Top Twitch Content of H1 2019: @LeagueOfLegends @FortniteGame Just Chatting esportsobserver.com/top10-twitch-c. 237.1M Dota 2 S OBSERVER 181.5M APER Apex Legends 178.OM Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 127.3M Overwatch 120.8M Hearthstone 118.5M World of Warcraft TEO 4:37 PM · Jul 8, 2019 · Twitter for iPhone TDM_Heyzeus @TDM_Jesus HEY ZEUS RIP Saturday's record - CSGO just set another all time highest player numbers - over 900,000!! Dead game indeed! Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Store | Hub 356,299 playing 9 min ago 901,305 24-hour peak 901,305 OPERATION all-time peak SHATTERED WEB Zoom 48h 7d 1m 3m 6m 1y All From Feb 3, 2020 To Feb 10, 2020 OM 4. Feb 5. Feb 6. Feb 7. Feb 8 Feb 9. Feb 10. Feb 2014 2016 2018 2020 Compare with others... Month Avg. Players Gain % Gain Peak Players Last 30 Days 508,771.6 +7,575.6 +1.51% 901,305 January 2020 501,196.0 +44,494.4 +9.74% 817,229 December 2019 456,701.6 +30,620.8 +7.19% 767,060 November 2019 426,080.8 +17,085.5 +4.18% 758,412 7:11 PM · Feb 9, 2020 · Twitter Web App
CLG Marksman @Marksman All the people goin around saying "Fortnite's a dead game" are looking at today's update with planes, creative mode, winter wonderland and thinking.. "man I wish I played Fortnite..." 3:51 PM · Dec 6, 2018 · Twitter for Android Rod Breslau @Slasher there was over 2 million concurrent esports viewers across Twitch and YouTube for Fnatic vs SKT on the first day of Worlds League of Legends dead game btw 7:19 PM · Oct 12, 2019 from Manhattan, NY · Twitter for Android

Search Interest

External References

[1] Hexus – Dead game series you'd like to see again…

[2] Reddit Search – Search Results

[3] Reddit Search – Search Results

[4] Reddit Search – Search Results

[5] YouTube – Death of a Game: Star Wars Galaxies

[6] YouTube – Death of a Game: Star Wars – The Old Republic

[7] YouTube – What is a Dead Game? The Cheapshot Meme That Can Hold a Painful Truth

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Foo_dog
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Foo_dog

Retail WoW really has been falling off, according to google trend stuff. Notably, however, is that games can only die when developers abandon them (not to mention its community wouldn't bother trying to keep it alive). TF2 might be suffering from a horrible fate right now though (maybe the creators.tf thing will take off).

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