Honey, I shrunk/blew up my fan-base!

This thread was created to ask 1 simple question: do you think the fan-base of Killer Instinct is currently in a state of growing or shrinking?

Naturally, I like to think positively and believe that it’s growing, but I often recognize numerous people on the leaderboards, online, and in this forum - with seemingly fewer and fewer posts on the latter each and every day. This leads me to believe that the (online) community may actually be shrinking (or at the very least, not getting any bigger) and that only the most dedicated of the fan-base still remain, especially since there’s currently nothing to look forward to until much later.

What do you guys think? Do you think Killer Instinct’s fan base is shrinking or blowing up? Why?

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The lack of activity is most certainly attributed to the lul between now and when S3/PC version comes out.

Once S3 hits there’ll be a ton more interest. Once KI is on PC, the community will explode.

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Good question. I think it’s tough to judge an overall fanbase in terms of a trending direction numbers-wise at any given time because I think that there are mitigating factors.

For KI, the last new character came out a while back and we’re several months away from new content. The last full character released was months ago. EVO has come and gone. There’s currently a news lull. Football just started up again. School’s started up again. Tons of great new games coming soon or have arrived recently.

I know the football one might seem stupid, but all of the things are factors that might allow someone’s attention to drift away from KI.

The question is whether that means a few, some or many of them are wandering off for good. I tend to think KI will be okay. I think that the game’s reputation has grown by leaps and bounds and that when season 3 really starts to gear up again, we’ll see more news, have more dev interaction, and you’ll see more fans talking KI than what you’d normally see during a more down period, especially with the PC release still on the horizon.

So yeah, I’d say that KI is trending up, even if the number of fans around here might be dwindling a bit at the moment for any of the reasons I mentioned avove and perhaps others I might not have thought of.

Until I see any real reason to think otherwise, I’d say KI’s in a good place and primed to get even better.

Dude, school just started, a couple great games and expansions are out, we’re post EVO15 and the game is stabilized without anything too glaringly obvious (or hasn’t been said).

The Friday Giveaway tends to have a few thousand participants (last I read).

The community only shrinks when someone doesn’t comeback, not when they’re prioritizing or just plain experiencing their life.
Take the roller coaster for what it is… WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

:slight_smile:

Growing at a diminishing rate…?

I doubt about it. If KI is going to be released like that, I might agree with the fact of a great income of PC players in the first week for sure. But, considered the previous experiences and how a similar game has been created from a well known company finished off, I’m expecting a bunch of threads from their part regarding most of all 2 topics and that would be 1) Isn’t KI a F2P? WTF R U SRS DUD? and 2) Mah game doesn’t start. F U SHORTSOFT. Not counting 1 - 2 stars reviews. PC gamers can be 8astards most of the time when they want.

It doesn’t help even the fact of the exclusivity on windows 10 when there are still tons of people using 7 and 8. So, in my opinion, unless of a mind change by PC players hence a new attitude, I think that the PC community will drastically diminish so much in around 2 weeks - 1 month that you won’t notice a difference form the actual state.

Also the release of SFV in the same period and with the great numbers he has registered so far just in Steam preorders and beta participations isn’t helping for sure.

However, I’m sure that Season 3 will increase the number of Xbox One players just because the game has landed pretty well on the console.

I think compared to the las few years, the fanbase is growing. Lack of activity can be attributed to the fact that school as started and season3 is currently on the rise.

Overall, the game is going to grow. Why? Because there’s a new game for people to hear about/see in the marketplace that’s becoming available on more platforms. Even if the game’s popularity waxes and wanes within the months, the fact that it’s available on something besides a 20 year old Nintendo console means that it’s going to grow.

Think about it; I had no idea Killer Instinct existed until the Xbone version was released. It was technically available before, but since it wasn’t on a platform I could use, even if I had heard of it I’d hold zero interest in it. Now that there’s a new entry in the series that’s going to be available on multiple modern platforms, more people are going to see it and be able to obtain it.

@DarthNos I feel like in the long term, especially since it’s so many months down the line, the fact that it’s on Windows 10 won’t be as much of an issue. This sort of thing always happens when a new operating system launches, but it kinda resolves itself out of necessity most of the time. I mean, chances are that unless you’re in a small town library, you’re probably now using Windows XP anymore. And you have to actually download emulators for 95 and DOS related programs.
As more people get ahold of Windows 10 over the course of the rest of this year and the first quarter of the next, and MS works out issues to improve the system, the install base will grow to a sizable amount.
Even if the game isn’t super popular upon it’s initial release, as long as the port is functional enough that performance issues can be blamed on the user’s computer rather than the game (example: Even at 240x200 resolution with all settings at zero, I can’t run Bioshock:Infinite because my PC doesn’t have the power, even though it’s well optimized for PC) then the fan base has opportunity to grow. Why? Because people can get ahold of it. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost all hype for a game because it’s announced as a PlayStation exclusive. No matter how good The Last of Us, God of War, Resistance 3, or Uncharted are; I cannot play them, because they’re on a system I don’t have, therefore I do not give a sh*t. The same thing happened when KI was announced as an Xbox exclusive, but now that it’s getting some sort of PC release, it at least has a chance to get its feet in the water.

TL;DR- The game has been awakened after 20 years of dormancy in a form that’s very high quality with a lot of tournament play, AND is becoming available on more platforms. It’s going to get popular.

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Your statement regarding popularity might be true only in mid - long terms of time, by constant activity from the devs. But you have to consider that at the beginning, with this system, we have to face the negative criticism from a quite good part of PC gamers. It’s unavoidable and expected, so better being informed.

If the Xbox community is remaining stable and more efforts with overtures from the devs would be done, in this case I agree with an increment of popularity of KI. Even for PC.

But the numbers might not be explosive, that’s what I mean. Of course, if SFV reveals to be a fiasco, in this case KI would get a very high number of demanding PC gamers incoming. Otherwise, it’s up to the efforts of everyone, developers, players and newcomers.

Regarding Windows 10, instead, I admit it would be a limit, but not so much, considering you can get it for free until the end of this year. I’m worried about the fact of not testing the game properly before the PC release, that’s what I wonder.

Personally, I’d rather think of really long term success rather than the short term. Thinking in the short term led to Medal of Honor:Warfighter (aka modern warfare games are popular, people will love this!). Long term thinking led to Fallout.
But that’s just me :stuck_out_tongue:

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Not only you, my friend. Also I agree plenty. Long terms success is building a game.

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Personally I now believe that the overall KI community will grow/expand EVEN MORE later on especially with the simultaneous releases of BOTH Killer Instinct Season 3 and the PC port (version) of Killer Instinct next year in March 2016 :wink:

just think the KI community is just not active because of the lack of news. Even the forum posts are slowing down. Their should at the very least be a KI community monthly post rounding up what has been happening in the world of KI. Just like Halo has these Halo community posts.

They could update the news and talk about online tournaments, the new tshirt, highlight a member of the KI community and share his twitter., Have a pro fighter share some tips, and do a super special monthly giveaway as well as highlighting the top ranked players. Come on man, I made all of this up from the top of my mind. Where is the KI community general manager. Why isn’t he doing his job and keeping the train a-moving.

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once they show a trailer for S3 – hopefully with new features, and new chars in action, activity will rise again.

I hope we get a trailer at least. October-November would be ideal i think but most likely Dec-Jan.

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As others have said, since we haven’t had new trailers or even Text Streams for new information, the community likely doesn’t have a whole lot to talk about right now. I don’t think there was a huge amount of daily discussion other than “will we get Season 3” on the S2 forums before they were taken down, so I don’t think this is actually anything new.

The announcement of S3 and Rash’s availability generated a large amount of conversation, and the next trailer or bunch of information (character reveals or silhouettes, I hope!) that MSIG release to us will do the same.

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I agree about the lack of activity at the moment as we haven’t as a community had much news to go on. What I will say as well is that on a subjective level, having no sight, Silhouettes aren’t massively useful.

I think it’d be interesting to do what NetherRealm Studios did, releasing audio teasers as well as images. That way, more people can be involved.

But that’s a different topic alltogether.

I think the fanbase is in a good place really considering the lack of news and I expect it to grow with the PC release and S3.

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I know the silhouette topic is pretty dividing in our community, and obviously in your case specifically it’s a problem, but what I like about the silhouettes is the fact that we get a general shape which allows for a lot of community speculation and discussion, at least at the very start of (or before) the Season. I enjoyed all the talk about “Broccoli man” that resulted from Aganos’ silhouette, and we wouldn’t have had that with a full image reveal.

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The only real difference between Halo and this community other than the slowing posts due to lack of news: The Halo Community is the worst community I’ve been a part of.

I’m sure posts will go back up as soon as we get more tasty KI news to eat! omnomnom.

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