So about the size of the Splatoon community

[Picle]

So according to Nintendo, they've sold around 11 million copies of Splatoon 3. Idk what happened, but it feels like the community is WAAYY smaller than that. I'm aware of the fact that not everyone's gonna get on the game at the same time, but this kind of dip in popularity is so steep to the point where I can occasionally see my friends on the enemy team whenever I do stuff like anarchy series. I've also noticed for the competitive scene how often I'll see people I know personally either in tournaments or in free agent servers. All in all, I've noticed the Splatoon community is MUCH smaller compared to 2022, but what do you guys think?

 

[Suchi]

1) Japan's playerbase is huge. Very very very huge. A lot of those 11 million copies were bought by JP people.
2) Western comp has always been small. It's a fraction of a fraction.

It's a pretty niche community at the end of the day, but tbh I think there's some merit in that. It makes it easier for your voice to be heard and it also allows the potential to get more people into the the scene.

 

[MandatoryCatalyst]

1) Japan's playerbase is huge. Very very very huge. A lot of those 11 million copies were bought by JP people.
2) Western comp has always been small. It's a fraction of a fraction.

It's a pretty niche community at the end of the day, but tbh I think there's some merit in that. It makes it easier for your voice to be heard and it also allows the potential to get more people into the the scene.

Honestly this is why I love the Splatoon community. It's big enough by just the fact it's a Nintendo game that there's plenty of fanart and content about it being made, while it's still small enough that someone like myself, who's deeply socially anxious and has trouble actually being in communities on a deeper level than "likes posts" can still exist. Squidboards specifically averaging about 11-12 members online at any given time I'm also online is ideal for me, there's enough people I don't feel like I'm intruding on a preexisting friend group, but it's small enough that I don't feel overwhelmed

In terms of the actual game and how many people are online, I don't think there's a significant drop in the playerbase being honest. While online multiplayer games are inherently going to decay over time, given that Splatoon is both a big series, as well as updates and content still being added means that I don't think the decay is really going to be too noticeable right now, it might just be coincidence you run into people you recognize (I've certainly run into the same people over large spans of time, three times now I've gotten put in matches with a friend of mine without even knowing they were online, the earliest being only a few months after release, and the most recent being only last month)

 

[vitellary]

also worth noting:

• a significant portion of those 11mil sold are players that don't even have NSO and got it just for the single player campaign(s), it's obviously not the main draw of the game but it's definitely a noteworthy group of the game's audience. this also includes people like speedrunners who probably do not play the online modes often either, even if they're actively playing the game
  • of the players that play online, a significant portion of them might play only salmon run, and never touch pvp. this is probably an even bigger proportion than those that don't play online
    • of the players that play pvp, a significant portion only play turf war, and have never touched ranked battles. turf war is the main draw of the game after all, and for some people that's all they need to enjoy the game
      • of the players that play ranked, a small portion of them are likely to be in the same rank as you. i'm not certain what the scaling is for whether eg. C rank has more players than S rank, but i would guess that the lower ranks generally have more players, and you end up with smaller and smaller crowds as you go up the skill ladder
        • and as you mentioned, of the players in your specific rank, timezones end up affecting who ends up playing around the same hours as you

so, all that considered, i think it's easy to justify that both "there are a huge amount of people that bought this game and still play it to this day" and "i keep seeing the same people in anarchy open isn't that weird?". there's a huge amount of different filters in place that cause players to end up segregated into finer and finer groups, so it's no surprise that you'll see the same people in the same very small group as you pretty often

 

[missingno]

11 million copies sold does not mean 11 million people continuing to grind the game almost two years later.

Honestly kinda funny to me to call this game niche, because everything else I play is several orders of magnitude smaller. I'm used to games where everyone knows everyone by name.

 

[DzNutsKong]

I play Smash and Pokemon and the community for this game is definitely smaller than those two in the west, like come on of course it is, but it's not even really worth thinking about for me. How many other people enjoy the games I play will not effect me one way or another unless there were literally zero people playing a multiplayer game I like. There's plenty of people to talk to even here, let alone in the broader Splatoon community that I've not yet gotten to know very well or even met to begin with. That's more than enough for me to be happy.

 

[ThestralZ]

I'd take a friendly and small community over a huge and more distant or toxic community any day. I am a random person on the internet, but because of this place and Discord servers, I get to meet cool people and share my opinions which has really boosted my confidence irl

 

[Picle]

also worth noting:

• a significant portion of those 11mil sold are players that don't even have NSO and got it just for the single player campaign(s), it's obviously not the main draw of the game but it's definitely a noteworthy group of the game's audience. this also includes people like speedrunners who probably do not play the online modes often either, even if they're actively playing the game
  • of the players that play online, a significant portion of them might play only salmon run, and never touch pvp. this is probably an even bigger proportion than those that don't play online
    • of the players that play pvp, a significant portion only play turf war, and have never touched ranked battles. turf war is the main draw of the game after all, and for some people that's all they need to enjoy the game
      • of the players that play ranked, a smallportion of them are likely to be in the same rank as you. i'm not certain what the scaling is for whether eg. C rank has more players than S rank, but i would guess that the lower ranks generally have more players, and you end up with smaller and smaller crowds as you go up the skill ladder
        • and as you mentioned, of the players in your specific rank, timezones end up affecting who ends up playing around the same hours as you

so, all that considered, i think it's easy to justify that both "there are a huge amount of people that bought this game and still play it to this day" and "i keep seeing the same people in anarchy open isn't that weird?". there's a huge amount of different filters in place that cause players to end up segregated into finer and finer groups, so it's no surprise that you'll see the same people in the same very small group as you pretty often

I always knew as you climb up the competitive ladder, you'll end up seeing more and more of the same people, didn't think it would happen as soon as ~2000 X power or at div 10, but yeah, you make a good point

 

[Picle]

I'd take a friendly and small community over a huge and more distant or toxic community any day. I am a random person on the internet, but because of this place and Discord servers, I get to meet cool people and share my opinions which has really boosted my confidence irl

As small as this community can feel sometimes, I agree with you tbh. A lot of the toxic communities are because they got popular

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

Tbh I'd only start worrying if major tournaments like LUTI and Low Ink start to not fire for lack of players, since thats going to be the red flag that the diehard dedicated players start leaving(which usually reverabreates through the rest of a community, you see it a lot in tcg communities, once a game starts to die the top players move on and the rest shortly follow)

 

[neonscreenlight]

i mean the community is a lot smaller compared to most other nintendo franchises but i think i prefer smaller communities. it's nice to go into a discord server or whatever and instantly be able to pick out a few familiar faces