We don’t like to throw around clichés like ever-evolving and infinite, but if there’s one thing that deserves that level of praise it’s the world of gaming communities. In 2022 alone, over 10,000 new games were released. That’s a lot to keep up with! We're about to explore what gamers loved the most (and the hardest) by breaking down some standout achievements and statistics of the gaming community in 2023. Let's dive into the numbers and trends that have shaped the gaming landscape over the past year.
Largest Discord Community
As all dedicated gamers know, Discord is a social hub for all things online gaming. This app is used as a meeting place and public forum where folks who share a passion for gameplay can meet up in the digital world. Keeping track of the largest Discord servers can give us a solid idea of what games and communities are growing the fastest each year.
Followed closely by fighter mainstays Valorant and Genshin Impact, the leading Discord gaming server right now is Blox Fruits, a Roblox game themed after the classic anime One Piece.
With over a million active users on its server, Blox Fruits is dominating the game. The basic principle is simple; players adventure across the open sea collecting fruits that give them various in-game abilities. This Roblox offshoot has been described as "one of the most content-packed games on Roblox", has around 75,000 active players daily, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
Most Hours Played
We had to break this category down a bit to make sure we covered all our bases; there’s a big difference between hours played in an online game versus hours logged on a PC or console. Here’s what we found.
Most Online Hours Played: Fortnite
Since its release in June 2017, Fortnite has been a titan of online gaming, and it’s still very much holding the throne. Despite having a fairly straightforward battle-royale concept, Fortnite has been able to reimagine and reinvent itself dozens of times and keep players absolutely hooked. It’s latest update, Season 4: Last Resort, includes three new locations and tons of brand new weapons and gear. If you haven’t dropped in over the last few months, consider checking it out!
Most Steam Hours: Your Chronicle
With over 230 minutes of average weekly play time, Your Chronicle is primarily a mobile game but is currently topping the Steam charts. Surprisingly, this game is a text-based RPG with humble graphics and interface. This is an ‘idle’ RPG, which means it progresses with no interaction from the player. In this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style journey, players battle golems, careen through dungeons and level up to become powerful warriors. With 299k active players as of September 2023, this is one to watch.
Most Hours Logged All Time: Minecraft
What more could we say about Minecraft? This classic is so loved that, since its release in 2011, fans have collectively spent a staggering 68 million years playing it. If many hours were played by a single person, they’d have to start shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct. That’s a lot of RAM.
Most Watched On Twitch 2023
With nearly 150,000 average viewers and 669 average channels streaming it at any given time, GTA 5 is dominating Twitch right now in both the most watched and most streamed categories. Despite being released almost 10 years ago, GTA is still full of surprises and makes for pretty great streaming content.
Most Console Downloads
Diablo IV released just a few months ago in June 2023, and is still topping the PS5 download charts. With online and solo gameplay capability and some pretty great demon-killing action, it’s easy to see why people love this iteration of a gaming classic. With over 24 million active players daily, you won’t have any trouble hopping online and getting in on some group devil domination. If you’re already a Diablo fan, Prime Gaming is offering players some free skins for the next few days— grab some while you can!
Proudest Community
This category goes to the community most likely to buy and wear game merch loud and proud. With over $11.6 billion in merchandise sales in 2022 alone, the Pokemon universe is the undisputed champion. With such an amazing array of products, from tees to plushies, this one is a total no-brainer. No office setup is complete without a starter pokemon figure on your desk to remind you where you came from (team turtwig forever, by the way.).
Best Non-Gamer Game Community
This is a tough one to call, because everyone has their own definition of gaming. But the best non-gamer game community has to be Stardew Valley. This comes out of the pure will and collaboration it took to get Stardew off the ground: when creator Eric Barone couldn’t get Stardew on Steam due to their no-solo-developer policy, fans of the then-conceptual game worked together to provide feedback, help, and essentially create a quasi-development team to get the game on its feet. Seven years later, this gorgeous farming simulator is one of the most beautiful, peaceful, and interesting games on the market.
As Ferris Bueller once said, life moves pretty fast. In 2023, gaming communities across the globe grew at lightning speed, with thousands of new titles, servers and ever-evolving trends. From massive Discord communities to enduring classics, gamers let us know what they liked, what they didn’t, and everything in between. We’ll be keeping our eye out for the next best thing!
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1327143/discord-top-gaming-servers-worldwide-by-number-of-members/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267072/steam-top-titles-median-playtime/#:~:text=Most%20popular%20titles%20on%20Steam%202023%2C%20by%20monthly%20user%20engagement&text=In%20February%202023%2C%20Your%20Chronicle,minutes%20during%20the%20measured%20period.
