By Todd Russell
Top games for playtime in 2024, what are your guesses? Indiana Jones? Starfield? Rocket League?
Nope.
It’s sobering to think of the many, many games out there (With 270,000+ games, Gamers are hopelessly outnumbered + National Card Playing Day) that one quarter of all the gaming time was spent playing a mere 6 games in 2024: Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, EA Sports FC 25 and Helldivers 2.
This author doesn’t play any of these games at the present time and three of them, never have played (EA Sports FC 25, Helldivers 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6). I have barely checked out the other three, but our grandchildren regularly play all three. The source article referenced below mentions that as the primary audience.
“All six titles have strong online multiplayer or co-op elements. Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite are especially popular among younger players and are available across multiple platforms, including mobile, PC and consoles.” – Visualizing the Most Popular Games of 2024
This definitely provides a clue to game developers on what features they should add to increase replayability: co-op! Personally, I’ve looked for co-op on Steam.
And whatever your think of Epic Games as a games store, they’ve certainly had their struggles, Epic has one gaming ace up their sleeve — that juggernaut known as Fortnite — that has managed to capture nearly a stunning 10% of all gaming time. We wondered last year if Fortnite could be turned into a shopping mall more popular than Epic Games in this article: Could Fortnite Shopping Mall and Arcade with Disney IP be Under Construction? Disney Pays $1.5 Billion For Equity Stake in Epic Games. Hey now, don’t laugh.
The bigger question about why more new games, I guess EA’s FC is 2025, so that’s a new game in the list, but the AAA games are being overhyped. It seems like every new game, including DOOM (DOOM: The Dark Ages is out … for $69.99 on Steam) are showing up with 10/10 and 5/5 reviews at launch. Active PGM member Khazu has logged a bunch of DOOM: Dark Ages gaming time and here’s his take:
As mentioned in the PGM article, just play it on Game Pass.
Friendly readers, how many of these top 6 2024 games did you play in 2024? Are you still playing any of them? Do they make up 25% of your gaming time?