If we're to compare how Dogs performed with their rewards to that of Hamster Kombat I think I do agree with your thoughts that the number of participants in an airdrop project also influences the value of the rewards to be given. Dogs had a few participants and not less than about two months or so, they airdropped their rewards to the small community and it was large. But HK the level of hype got a lot of involved which probably wasn't what the developers envisioned. In some cases, it leads to postponements and extension of snapshots and listing date just to accommodate the larger community.
I do remember those old years on which you could be able to earn or eligible for airdrop on just simply signing up on a google form on which unlike now on which you would really be doing up some hard tasks.
There are even some that do require some transaction counts on which this really spend up some gas fees on which this is really that something that being needing some expense
on which it is really that already that a part of risks on which you do need to deal on with.
Those old good days are long gone, forthwith you will have to go through some daily stressful tasks, play games and also with an expected number of referrals to be gotten before you could starting seeing yourself to be eligible for the airdrop reward.
It's as though the widespread acknowledgement of cryptocurrency led to a curse on airdrop hunting opening a gateway for scam projects to infiltrate the space. Perhaps, this mainly the logic to why old airdrop hunting feel less interested in partaking in airdrop projects of this time looking at the dust rewards that comes with many of them.