Riot doesn’t really talk about player numbers on TFT, for better or worse. On the one hand, I always wish we would because I’ve wanted the team to have that external validation that we’re crushing it and our numbers are insane. On the other hand, seeing the way the gaming community has been using player numbers lately, I’m glad we don’t.

It’s wild to me (yes I’m old) how people now obsess over the steam charts of games they barely played, or never will play, as some weird validation of their own taste. And it’s a shame too, because there are so MANY games and choices to play. A lot of the early design lessons I got as a kid were from playing games that weren’t necessarily great, or didn’t have amazing sales.

Swords & Serpents on NES always jumps out in my memory as this random game that wasn’t a hit, but somehow my family ended up owning. I remember playing it and trying to learn their systems for enemy generation, stat allocation, and more. Such an interesting game with great lessons to learn from. I have no idea how many copies it sold.

On the dev side, one of the game I’m the most proud of because of the quality of level design, as well as how quickly a tiny team pumped out the game, was Aura-Aura Climber. It only sold like 75,000 copies and I’m sure even at it’s peak probably (using steam terms) would have only had like 1,000 concurrent players on release. Does this mean I should be less proud of it? Of course not. There are lots of factors into game sales, and game design wasn’t one of them here.

If you really TRULY love games, stop obsessing over player numbers. Play the games that interest you, and take lessons and experiences from them. Form great memories from the games you love, or sometimes the ones you don’t (looking at you Bible Adventures on NES). And if you aren’t interested in a game…don’t play it. It’s really that simple. Spend your time experiencing things both good and bad that drive your passion, and I promise you’ll end up in a much better place with games.

Ok time to go to work. Another extremely busy week in future land, as well as 14.18 prep with all the big swings coming up. Also my kids start their new school on Wednesday, and we’re nervously trying to make sure my son has the support he needs. Also excited to see people try (and miserably fail) at Chaos Mode in Tocker’s Trials. So yeah, have a great week all, and take it easy 🙂

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