Red Thread Games’ recently released game Dustborn, has not even hit over 100 concurrent players on its release day.
A screenshot from Dustborn (2024), Red Thread Games
Back in July following the release of the game’s trailer, a representative for the game conducted an interview with PSU and confirmed the entire game spawned out of protest against Donald Trump being elected President of the United States in 2016.
The representative was asked “what were some of the inspirations during the early days of making the game?”
He responded, “For us, it always begins with the characters and the world, followed by the narrative. We generally have an idea of genre, setting, mood and tone, who the protagonists are — and then we build the game around that. Art direction, game mechanics, engine, specific features…all of that follows the world, the story, and (most importantly) the characters.”
“That’s very different to how some studios operate, but Red Thread is first and foremost a storytelling studio. We tell stories using game mechanics and interactivity, and we try to do something fresh and different with every game we develop,” he continued.
A screenshot from Dustborn (2024), Red Thread Games
From there, he said, “Still, we wanted Dustborn to be an evolution of the work we did with Dreamfall Chapters: a third-person adventure with a strong cast of diverse characters, in a vibrant, deep and original world, with some adventure-game mechanics and lots of branching dialogues and stories.
“But this time we also wanted to include combat-action, with a narrative twist that stays true to our storytelling heritage,” he added. “And there’s also a bunch of features connected to the idea of weaponised words, and how words have the power to change the world.”
A screenshot from Dustborn (2024), Red Thread Games
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Next, the representative revealed the game was inspired by the election of Donald Trump, “The idea behind Dustborn’s setting and characters was also influenced by a series of political events that deeply affected us all, beginning in the summer of 2016, and continuing until…well, today.”
“As game developers, we wanted to tell a story that felt relevant and thematically timely, with a cast of characters that could more accurately represent our player base and the setting, and to hopefully have some positive impact on the world…in addition to being an entertaining game,” he shared.
A screenshot from Dustborn (2024), Red Thread Games
As for what the game is about, the representative said, “It’s about a lot of things. But it’s mostly about keeping hope alive in the face of adversity, maintaining friendships in spite of conflicts, and about the awesome and terrifying power of words. It’s also a story about being different, being an outsider, and being on the run from people who hate what you are.
“And robots. Let’s not forget the robots. It’s also about robots,” he added.
A screenshot from Dustborn (2024), Red Thread Games
YouTuber Smash JT reacted to the game’s trailer and the interview stating, “That’s what this game basis its premise upon. Words are used as weapons and have the power to change minds and this is used politically to push the agenda within the game.”
He also detailed, “It kind off feels like the developers of the game are sending some sort of subliminal message to the gamers like, ‘Hey, learn how to use words to fight against people and get your ideologies pushed across to them, which is exactly what gamers have been rejecting since gaming became a thing ever.”
Later in his video, he questioned, “How many people are going to out of their way to pay to play this” and “Honestly, looking at it for what it is and knowing what I know about it and based off of what’s transpired by the other games before it, I don’t see this game getting anywhere close to even 500 players. And that in itself is going to be such an epic fail that the studio is not only going to be reeling from it, but potentially closing down because of it.”
That prediction about the amount of people playing the game is likely to come true. Three hours after the game became available to purchase on Steam it has not yet had over 100 concurrent players.
As of writing the game’s current peak is 72 players.
SteamDB concurrent player data for Dustborn
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For comparison, Dreamfall Chapters had an all-time peak of 1,711 concurrent players back in June 2016, two years after the game released on Steam. When it released in October 2014, it had a peak concurrent of 1,329 players according to SteamDB.
Dreamfall Chapters (2014), Red Thread Games
What do you make of this game’s lack of players?
