The Arena shooter genre only works when there are enough players to ensure that new players are not automatically thrown to the wolves; unfortunately, Diabotical’s tiny community is almost entirely comprised of Arena FPS veterans and newcomers to the genre will find themselves unable to land more than the occasional blow before they are hammered into oblivion.
To make matters worse, unstable matchmaking and a dwindling community make it increasingly difficult for new players to get enough game time to improve, resulting in increasingly worse matchmaking times and abyssal new player retention.
Image credit Diabotical - Published and developed by The GD Studio.
Despite over 250k people signing up to play Diabotical during beta, the vast majority of these players would not return for its full launch, and even fewer would stay around for more than a few rounds, resulting in an astonishing 99.6% of the player base quitting shortly after launch, most of which never to return.
The Arena First Person Shooter genre was only ever really popular before a better alternative arrived on the market, and as such, the core demographic is 40 to 50 years old adults, many of whom have either left gaming behind entirely or have little time to play due to busy schedules.
In addition, titles that are made to appeal to “1990s gamers” often struggle to attract younger players, especially when they are, for the most part, not welcomed by the core demographic who “do not want kids in their game.”
To risk sounding cliche, children are our future and making a title that rarely appeals to anyone below 35 isn’t a good way to ensure its long-term sustainability.
Image credit Diabotical - Published and developed by The GD Studio.
Eggbots are very easy to customize, and with over 200 stickers to choose from, its easy to make a unique and instantly recognizable Eggbot, something which is perfect for a title like Diabotical with its small but dedicated community resulting in players often playing with/against the same people day after day.
Diabotical launched with over 15 modes and a map editor, which is fantastic, however with less than 15 players online globally right now, an abundance of modes does little but remind me of what “could have been” if only the developers had risked angering its core demographic by making a title with wider market appeal.
Image credit Diabotical - Published and developed by The GD Studio.
Diabotical is a shooter video game developed and published by The GD Studio, it was released on 3 September 2020 and it is Free-2-Play.
Diabotical is available exclusively on PC.
The GD Studio keep the servers and fixes the occasional bug; however, there has been very little in the way of actual development in well over a year, a sorry state of affairs which seems to please the majority of the remaining community, who appear to eschew innovation and want to play the same type of game they have been playing since 1999.
This was made evident by the community’s poor reaction to the developers’ attempt to introduce new weapons and powerups shortly after launching in September 2020, something which seems to have had its intended effect on the developers, who have, for the most part, avoided introducing anything new or interesting ever since.
Image credit Diabotical - Published and developed by The GD Studio.
While we do not know how many people play Diabotical in total, around 480 people have left a rating since the epic rating system went live in Q2 2022, which would place the total active userbase at around 1000 members in total, which is on par with daily peaks of around 50-80 players worldwide.
Diabotical is almost entirely dead; however, there is usually at least one full at all times if you are willing to play outside of your region.
Diabotical supports:
The Diabotical in-game store sells:
Diabotical is squeaky clean; however, this does not account for user-submitted text messages, which can sometimes contain harsh profanity or sexual content.
The Arena FPS (Arena First Person Shooter) genre is dying, and without much-needed innovation to a twenty-year-old genre that was only popular until “better” options came along, that won’t change anytime soon.
While there will always be a following for such games, a general dislike of modern monetization models and a lack of free time epidemic among its core demographics (40-50-year-olds) ensures that even the best attempts at reviving the genre will struggle to grow a suitable community that can not only support matchmaking but ensure future development.
Diabotical is a decent arena shooter, but the entire Arena FPS genre is stuck in a death spiral that will take a lot of effort to escape, and while Diabotical is a nice attempt at reversing that trend, a bigger budget, more polished product, and vastly larger marketing campaign will be needed to attract fresh blood to a stagnant genre.
