Software comes and goes, particularly if it is not well maintained. Some software choices are better than others, in certain contexts, of course. Chatting programs are not as popular as they used to be, but in some instances, they stand out above the rest.
If you take a look at the gaming world, you will see that Discord is among the top-used programs for chatting and joining communities. Why is Discord so popular with gamers and what makes it a top choice? Let us break it down.
Aggressive Branding
Discord has branded itself as the go-to software that is used for gaming and for gamers. When you brand yourself as such, you will no doubt attract gamers and a similar audience. When the popular gamers jump on a piece of software, the rest are going to follow suit, mostly because they follow by example.
Discord is shiny and has a skin which gamers appreciate, and more than anything else, you have emotes, all the popular ones that you can find on other platforms, like Twitch, for example. Being branded as it is, is one of the reasons why Discord is a gamer’s top choice.
Community Use
Even if singular gamers don’t use Discord, entire communities do. If a favorite streamer or Patreon user or YouTuber has a Discord server, then you will be more likely to join it. Even if you don’t care about the application, the server is the only way to consistently interact with your favorite creator. Discord, once gaining popularity, continued to be the top choice for anything gaming and even tech related, to be fair.
Most tech youtubers have a Discord server. When a community is gathering on a server, who are you to be left out?
Overlays for Days
Discord offers seamless overlays with almost any game on the market. You can use the overlay to your advantage for communicating, boosting volume, muting or deafening yourself. The overlay sits in the top left corner by default, unobtrusive in almost every video game, even more so if you drop the opacity.
An overlay is a useful feature, particularly when it doesn’t cover half the screen unintentionally (khm, Steam). Gamers tend to be lazy, so they use the simplest thing. Everyone is using Discord, so why should they use something else? The answer, they don’t.
Updates and Care for the Community
Discord is one of the applications whose developers actually care for the community. They are great and they invest a lot of effort into making sure that their product works across multiple platforms (and it does) and that it works flawlessly. Frequent updates make Discord a top choice for anyone who wants bleeding edge technology. Or rather, someone who wants an application that will work and not crash in any circumstance.
It’s Relatively Fast and Has Decent Voice Chat
For a web application, basically, Discord is pretty fast and responsive. It is also a decent application for voice chat, even though it sometimes pushes the gain too far on the microphones, leading to them picking up anything from breathing from another person in the room, to every single keystroke, which is particularly loud when using clicky switches on a mechanical keyboard.
These are a couple of reasons as to why Discord is the top choice for gamers worldwide.