How does The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt manage to stay popular over the years? (Topic)

There are no new updates for the game, the last patch was 15 months ago, and its modding community is sluggish and rarely gives birth to new interesting things. However, The Witcher 3 is still a bestseller. Gamepressure is thinking about the popularity of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

You have probably used services for comparing prices on the Internet more than once? You should have. It's too convenient not to use them. So, lists that show the popularity ratings of games work in a similar way. And do you know which game has almost always been on the line of popularity over the past 5 years? Yes, exactly SHE.

The news itself is not very exciting, but the fact that almost 5 years after its release, The Witcher 3 still does not leave the lists of the best, raises the question: how does she do it?

The fact that Wild Hunt along with GTA 5 on PC was at its peak in 2015 is quite obvious. Also, the dominance in 2016 was not unexpected either: with the Blood and Wine expansion and the release of GOTY, this game still couldn't be forgotten. But the following years are already a mystery. Of course, when CD Projekt RED started making other games, Geralt had to step aside and make way for new titles like Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017 and obviously RDR 2 in 2018. However, this does not change the fact that hits come and go, times change and the Witcher is always on horseback [sorry for the pun].

And what's more fun, when it seemed that the game had finally outlived its usefulness, and The Witcher 3 should make way for Cyberpunk 2077 - Netflix released eight episodes of Andrzej Sapkowski's own adaptation, reviving interest in the game. The international hype surrounding the television series has grown to such an extent that it also has an impact on the game.

Since July, when Netflix began advertising the series, the game's sales on Steam have started to grow. 2 million copies purchased in six months is roughly a quarter of the game's lifetime sales. The influx of new players was accompanied by the return of veterans, and as a result, The Witcher 3 reached a new record for the number of players online at the same time - five years after release.

Of course, The Wild Hunt isn't the only game that ages like good wine. GTA V, Skyrim and Euro Truck Simulator 2 are still popular today. The fact is that each of the listed titles constantly reminds players of their existence, while the Witcher simply exists and waits for them to start playing.

Shake the old days!

GTA 5 came out almost seven years ago, but it is still alive and well thanks to GTA Online. The game is constantly updated, the servers are occupied by millions of players, which are joined by new ones. And money goes to Rockstar relentlessly. ETS 2 keeps players interested by actively updating the game based on community feedback, the game world is constantly expanding with more and more exotic locations. In this way, SCS Software can retain attention.

And Skyrim. Aside from all sorts of ports for various platforms, Bethesda's nine-year-old [think!] RPG is mostly supported by an incredibly thriving community of modders.

What about The Witcher 3? New content? The last DLC came out almost three years ago, and that was pretty much when support for the game ended. Updates? Well, I was lying at the beginning, patch 1.32 was released just a couple of weeks ago, but it introduced support for Simplified Chinese as the official language - but this was the first patch in the last year and a half, and then it did not change the game in its essence. Multiplayer? Not. Modifications? Nexus Mods offers quite a few mods, but the worthwhile ones can be counted on one hand.

Okay, let's narrow it down. Maybe the game has dropped in price and people are taking it as an alternative to more expensive projects? But this is also not entirely true. It keeps the price and does not drop below a certain threshold, unlike most AAA games. The base price of the game has reached $ 40 and it will probably take another two years before we see a significant drop in the price.

Could it be the reprints? One way to maintain interest in Euro Truck Sim 2 is to regularly add physical editions with add-ons to the retailer. The GOTY edition of the game is available in at least two versions with different content ... What about the Witcher?

So, the GOTY version was released in August 2016 and included the main game and two expansions; a year ago CD Projekt also released a limited edition trilogy of artbooks ... that's all. I think even Sapkowski's books lead a brighter life than The Wild Hunt as they at least change covers from time to time [video games don't]. Game collectors have nothing to collect with Geralt. Well, maybe figurines.

As for collecting. I started to wonder, maybe people are just buying The Witcher for all platforms? I have tested this with colleagues. Taking about twenty people, whom I managed to catch and interview, the following happened: in our editorial office, a person owns one of three versions of Wild Hunt. At least people here weren't very interested in buying a game for all their platforms.

Eureka!

So what is the reason for the popularity of The Witcher 3? I have found that the answer is extremely simple. This is the best RPG of the past decade. That's all.

It seemed that everyone who wanted to play The Witcher was playing it. How could it be otherwise when, on Metacritic, Wild Hunt is the highest rated video game by gamers, and PC Gamer is promoting its paid subscription featuring Geralt in the bathroom.

It seems that there is no live gamer who has not played The Witcher 3. This is clearly not true. There are many reasons that may have prevented thousands of people from playing the game. Maybe they were too young, maybe they didn't update their PCs or consoles. Maybe they were just putting it off. There may be people who just watch the show and read the books and then learn about the game.

In short, The Witcher 3 is constantly being discovered by someone. How long will this last? Probably still quite a long time. The Wild Hunt is aging pretty well, and neither the graphics nor the gameplay are noticeably outdated. The game is indeed still a benchmark in many ways, and it could remain a bestseller even after Cyberpunk 2077 and next generation consoles. Nothing ends, something always begins.

The Topic of Article: How does The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt manage to stay popular over the years?.
Author: Jake Pinkman