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How Does The World Cup Affect Online Multiplayer? Let Uncharted 2 Show You

by Phil Kollar on Jul 19, 2010 at 04:35 PM

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Apparently the World Cup exists for more than just weeks of non-stop complaining on Twitter from people who don't care about soccer? Apparently some people actually watch it and don't play online multiplayer games while doing so. Naughty Dog decided to dig into the data and see how much the average night of Uncharted 2 multiplayer was affected by World Cup fever.

In a post on the Naughty Dog blog, the developer created some easy-to-understand charts to help show the dip in players during the hours that the World Cup was happening. First off, here's an average day of Uncharted 2 multiplayer:

Makes sense, right? There are less players early in the morning and late in the evening; you'll find the most in the middle of the day, as people arrive home from work or other activities and turn on their PS3s. Now here's how it looked on July 10, the date of the World Cup "Third Place fixture" (whatever the hell that is):

And here are the results from the date of the actual World Cup final, July 11:

I'm not surprised, but it's pretty impressive to see the passion people have for soccer laid out like that. I'd expect similar results for any popular online games...unless Uncharted 2 just has a disproportionate number of soccer fans for some reason?