10-Year-Old Game Player Count Surges 1000% Purely Due To Memes

There are many, many reasons why someone might choose to try out a particular video game. Generally, because something looks fun, you’d think. But maybe you might be tempted to pick something up if it’s getting a lot of good reviews, or to play something new with a friend. 

According to some fresh new data from Twitter account @PlayTrackerNet though, there’s yet another, clearly more influential reason out there that might tempt you to play something - memes. As reported by IGN, Konami's hack 'n' slasher Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has seen a massive surge in players, and it’s all thanks to the power of silly viral internet jokes.

While you're here, be sure to take a look at this incredible fan-made remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, below.

The PlatinumGames-developed Metal Gear Solid spinoff first released back in 2013 on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, and although it was received positively at the time, after all these years, it’s understandable that player numbers would have dwindled - as they had done, until very recently. Now, concurrent player figures have gone up 1,000% (IGN write that they went from an average of 300 to 800 players last year to an average of 2,000 players this January), and there’s been a peak in achievement activity on every platform. 

The meme that’s thrown the game into the spotlight is Jetstream Sam, with people captioning the GIF (or screenshot) of Sam thoughtfully stroking his chin with all sorts of ridiculous things for him to contemplate. Metal Gear Rising is a pretty great one for memes in general - one of the villains has a whole dramatic speech about memes being “the DNA of the soul”. Unfortunately, that does have a slightly more scientific explanation to it than the definition that us internet dwellers are used to, but it’s still amazing out of context.

Meme power aside, maybe more people are playing this game thanks to the fact that it’s still impossible to buy certain Metal Gear Solid titles thanks to some issues with “historical archive footage”. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 were both removed from digital storefronts last November, and there’s still no word on their return - fingers crossed they’ll be available again soon.