Where have all the Yahoo games players gone?

The place to play online games in the early years of the 21st century was undoubtedly Yahoo Games. The most popular games of pool and chess boasted 40,000+ players at any given time, and favorite classics such as Hearts and Spades drew crowds you couldn’t shake a stick at. Now those numbers have drastically dwindled to a mere fraction of what they used to be (eg. I counted only 4,615 total pool players this past Wednesday noon EST… I sure miss the “players online” tally they removed a couple of years ago!). Is this proof that Yahoo players are abandoning ship? And if so why? I have a couple of theories…

Loss of Simplicity

The Yahoo game site has transitioned from simple to… not so simple. They’ve transformed from a user-friendly, easily navigated game site to one filled with a plethora of advertisements in every nook and cranny (even in the game applets themselves!), tons of downloadable games, and many questionable games that seem to appear out of the woodwork weekly. My mind goes on sensory overload every time I have to visit the game site home page… thank God for bookmarks and backlinks!

Spam Block

The once easy-to-access game rooms now greet users with an often difficult-to-distinguish confirmation code request. The confirmation code is meant to keep out spammers but I’ve yet to enter a game room that did not have a spammer in it. This issue has been around since the dawning of Yahoo games and has become such a norm that it seems to be accepted (and ignored) by players. Ironically it seems that this code is more efficient at deterring players from entering the game, especially when 3 or 4 attempts at the blurry confirmation code can drive any sane person to insanity (I’m speaking from personal experience here!).

So, where are the Yahoo players going?

It used to be that Yahoo games was the “king of the hill” in the online game site world but the past couple of years have suggested that Pogo games has taken claim of this title; in fact, today Pogo is not only advertised on the Yahoo games site, but has its own link which connects users to Pogo games within the Yahoo browser! Pogo shows an impressive 200,000+ players online at any given time (add another 100,000+ during badge Wednesdays!). MSN Zone and King range from 100,000-200,000. And even IWON might be comparable to Yahoo with around 50,000 players.

Ah well, I guess I have to accept that things are always changing. My nostalgia won’t bring back the glory days of Yahoo and who’s to say a new up and coming game site won’t blow Pogo out of the water in a couple of years? Ya just never know!

Questions for readers: What are your thoughts on the apparent decline of Yahoo games?Did you used to play on Yahoo but have switched to another gamesite? Why? Feel free to leave a comment!