Multiplayer during the World Cup
How did the FIFA World Cup Final and third place games affect UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer? We took at a look at our concurrent user data for those days and have posted them after the jump.
By arne | Twitter @arnemeyer | Monday July 19 2010

Last week, Google posted the effects of the World Cup on search engine queries to Google.com by country. They showed how much of an impact certain games, and the tournament overall, had on search activity – basically showing that, in general, significant amounts of people were focused solely on the World Cup during the fixture. Not surprising considering that soccer (or football) is considered the world’s most popular sport.
We figured we would take a look and see if we saw something similar with UNCHARTED 2 multiplayer. Before even looking, we expected to see the number of concurrent online players to drop during World Cup fixtures. We weren’t disappointed.
The graph below shows the typical curve of our concurrent online player population on an average day.
As you can see, we typically get our peak player population around the middle of the day, U.S. Pacific time.
Now let’s see what happened during the World Cup Third Place fixture, which was played on Saturday, July 10, 2010.
It’s pretty clear that a portion of our player population that is typically online was watching the World Cup fixture. It’s interesting to note that people started coming online before the game was over, much less decided, as the game-winning goal didn’t come until about four minutes before regulation time expired.
Now, we would expect to see a much more severe dip during the World Cup Final, and that’s precisely what we saw, as shown in the map below.
It’s not surprising that just about everybody watched the entire game before hopping back to playing UNCHARTED 2. Even after the game, not everybody came back – no doubt either celebrating Spain’s first World Cup or lamenting the loss suffered by the Netherlands.






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Posted by: hjidontknow on 07-19-2010
Well, I liked the skins
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: hjidontknow on 07-19-2010
And The games were great
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: Meyhem on 07-19-2010
i didn’t like the skins in the slightest....can we get the same thing during the football (american of course) and baseball playoffs....it’s only fair.
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: DeadnBuried on 07-20-2010
How is that “fair”? You realise they did this skin thing because it’s the WORLD cup, right? It involves the whole damn planet, THAT is why they decided to support it with themed skins. They’re not gunna do the same for a solely american sport because the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit.
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: ant11223 on 07-21-2010
I give a shit asshole their doinig this because its the world cup its just to celebrate milions cares about that shit your takinig so calm down thats your opinion not a fact.
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: WaR_REAPER10 on 07-22-2010
No it’s not. Soccer is much more global than American Football or Baseball. Also, New York Yankees Baseball Drake? That would look so stupid.
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: kromius99 on 07-20-2010
the skins where cool. Im just waiting on info about new dlc, or updates. Maybe uncharted 3, although i bet we wont get ANY info for atleast 2 more years when e3 2012 comes, maybe even 2013 e3.
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: mophead9615 on 07-21-2010
Thanks ND the skins were awesome and thanks for the interesting data. I would be cool to know which skins were worn the most at certain periods of time.thanks
Log in to reply to this commentPosted by: spidey000 on 08-01-2010
How do we get the skins?
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