User count of the forum

[ProbablyIdiot]

Just saw a repky on the forum's 20th aniversiary post saying user count used to be higher back in the day. Anyone remeber how much bigger? (Also, from my experience,OpenTTD still has a large/expanding player base, so what happened?)

[kamnet]

If you're referring to the user count on the forums, when I came on as a mod back several years ago and started poking around in the user registrations, over half of them at that point were spam accounts that had mostly registered and then failed to actually post anything. Some of them mostly created accounts in order to post links in the signatures or bios and increase their rankings on search engines. I spent nearly a year weeding them out and we put in new anti-spam measures.

In the last year we have had 130 new (non-spam) accounts registered, and 950 active accounts who have logged in within the last year. Why the drop here? IMO, mainly because we're a web-based forum and not a mobile app, where most of the world has moved on to. We're effectively running on quarter century-old technology that was developed in 2000, and largely inspired by software and concepts for communications that were developed 10-15 years before that. Other communities like Reddit, Steam and Discord have been developed since then and have official mobile apps integrated into their platforms.

We're not the hip kids anymore. And, to that end, almost none of us here are kids. We either grew out of the game or just got older, developed jobs and created families that take more of our time.

As for the game itself, OpenTTD devs just implemented some new software that provides them with real stats and info about what players are actually doing with the game. There are over 75,000 active players globally. THAT is impressive IMO. If all of our players exclusively used Steam, we'd be ranked #7 Top Game by players, right behind GTA V, which might just make us one of the most popular free and open source multiplayer games in the world, possibly also right behind Minecraft as one of the oldest games still being developed, updated and expanded.

[doktorhonig]

I check in every couple of years, but I mostly read. Please don't take it offline!

[Pilot]

I check in every couple of years, but I mostly read. Please don't take it offline!

Just looking at that 7 year gap between your last two posts. Nice to see you again!

[doktorhonig]

I have to admit, I resisted social networks for a long time because decentralized forums are superior. I did get a reddit account at some point, but things are also going downwards there.
Maybe I will become more active here again. It's been one of the friendliest communities I have ever been part of.

[kamnet]

I check in every couple of years, but I mostly read. Please don't take it offline!

Speaking of which, I just saw the other day that OpenTTD Polska is shutting down their forum and moving the community entirely to Discord. The Discord channel is a lot more active.

There is an OpenTTD channel on Discord, as a branch of the Reddit group. It's my alternate home, but I do prefer forums so much more. But Discord is where the sheer number of people are at ready to engage in discussion and collaboration.

[Chrill]

There is an OpenTTD channel on Discord, as a branch of the Reddit group. It's my alternate home, but I do prefer forums so much more. But Discord is where the sheer number of people are at ready to engage in discussion and collaboration.

I genuinely didn't know this existed, but I have now joined it!

[orudge]

I have never used Discord and know nothing about it, but is the OpenTTD Discord not just the #openttd IRC channel that has existed for 19 years? Or is this somehow separate to the one that is linked to IRC?

[Pilot]

I have never used Discord and know nothing about it, but is the OpenTTD Discord not just the #openttd IRC channel that has existed for 19 years? Or is this somehow separate to the one that is linked to IRC?

The #openttd IRC channel merely feeds into one channel within the Discord server (named #openttd-development). Away from this, there are multiple other channels, whether it be for Screenshots, generic OpenTTD stuff, help, or even an off topic section.

[Chrill]

I have never used Discord and know nothing about it, but is the OpenTTD Discord not just the #openttd IRC channel that has existed for 19 years? Or is this somehow separate to the one that is linked to IRC?

It's essentially a mix of forum and live chat. There are multiple chat rooms, but you can also do separate chat rooms that work sort of like forum threads.

I struggle with Discord as an evolution of forums, because discussions are always relentlessly ongoing in one channel. On TT-Forums, I can return later and keep up to date because everything is neatly divided and discussions are separate. On Discord, if I'm away for an hour the chat has moved on. It's overwhelming really.

As a live chat, or even voice chat, Discord excels. And Discord is, or at least originally was, most famous for live chat when playing games. Massive World of Warcraft raids, or just Counterstrike with your buddies, you'd have Discord in the background. Currently, I play Raft with my little brother and we use Discord to communicate.

[Redirect Left]

or just Counterstrike with your buddies

This is what i use it for mostly, voice chatting with friends as we do our best to come up with a fiveman for a full 5 v 5 competitive match.
Unfortunately forums in general are getting less usage, in part due to Discord, but of course there's no way of stopping that. Pretty much every forum I use has suffered huge activity losses, mostly from what I can tell to Discord groups, usually unofficial ones other users set up, which is a bit of a slap in the face to the forum admin/owners.

Discord i tend to chat in for about 30-45 minutes, then alt tab out of for the rest of the day, its way too easy to spend all your time on there, much like I used to do with IRC back in the day. Some days i only open Discord if someone has tagged me with an @ so i know I'm needed.

Personally I hope forums across the net slowly recover in activity, I do miss the old days of highly active forums for sure. Discord has its highs, but it definitely isn't as good for long threads, they've tried to add it to the platform, which is a middle finger to forums again, but i find it a very lacking feature.

[Pyoro]

Eh, same as always. Discord is just modern IRC; people thought that'd kill forums too. Then for a while it kinda does, then it doesn't again.
I think it's mostly just fracturing the community for an old community like this; people talk OTTD on Steam, on Reddit, on here, on Discord; indubitably also in other places. So it's not so much less interest in OTTD as interest elsewhere. Which is fine, but with smaller communities you really notice how activity goes down.

That being said; just do remember: if you are not the costumer, you are the product. Don't use Discord if you care about your privacy/data

[Born Acorn]

We're effectively running on quarter century-old technology that was developed in 2000, and largely inspired by software and concepts for communications that were developed 10-15 years before that.

It does sadden me a little that so much internet culture has been lost with forum and site failures over time. The Wayback Machine does have a lot of it but that's pretty much unsearchable so not the best for finding something specific.

Will there be a future where things like TTDPatch simply aren't remembered at all?

We either grew out of the game or just got older, developed jobs and created families that take more of our time.

This was me. My most "communicative" year was probably 2006, but in 2007 I got my first job and my involvement online basically fell away over the following years. I rarely even play OpenTTD any more, but I still play it on occasion. When I was in school and college and my income was pocket money I'd basically have nothing to do but play the games I had to death.

[WWTBAM]

As kamnet said,the main reason the total number of accounts has dropped is spam clean-up over the years.

The two main reason I see for declining activity here is as other have said, new online apps and platforms. The other being us older (in forum years) growing up and getting jobs. I personally moved out of home and got a job that completely distracted myself from these forums. I also took a massive interest in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to the point of building a clone of the software used on it.

[doktorhonig]

The internet has gotten a whole lot of new users in the last 20 years, but the amount of people who are able and willing to host things themselves has not increased that much. You have some, of course, but most people just don't bother, leave for social networks, and then act surprised, when they change things to make more money. See the reddit protests.

[Born Acorn]

The internet has gotten a whole lot of new users in the last 20 years, but the amount of people who are able and willing to host things themselves has not increased that much. You have some, of course, but most people just don't bother, leave for social networks, and then act surprised, when they change things to make more money. See the reddit protests.

I've seen something similar in my work training young people to do the job we did. It seems everyone coming into adolescence after ~2008 can use the internet but they might never have used a mouse and keyboard to do so. It's all apps and social media. Centralised experiences get the users, not decentralised forums.

[doktorhonig]

Yes, and there's something you could call a "generational horseshoe theory". Boomers and Zoomers have a lot in common and often exhibit similar behaviors like taking a photo of a screen instead of an actual screenshot. Or the inability to properly organize files in a directory tree.
There are always a couple of nerds who have no problem with doing those things, but instead of having more computer-savvy people we just have dumbed down computers and people who have no clue what's going on when they use them.

[eis_os]

Before my account get deleted after 9 years of silence, yes I still know this forum. Even the login details in my browser are functional

You get older, time flies much faster, so you think you had a a private message here a year ago, well it was 2021

Anyway, yes forums are less used then in the past.
However the newer technology are likely to be shutdown or going nuts and aren't search friendly either. So I still think the "old" internet is useful today...

And I yes, I still use debuggers & assemblers to change games

[Chrill]

Before my account get deleted after 9 years of silence, yes I still know this forum. Even the login details in my browser are functional

You get older, time flies much faster, so you think you had a a private message here a year ago, well it was 2021

Anyway, yes forums are less used then in the past.
However the newer technology are likely to be shutdown or going nuts and aren't search friendly either. So I still think the "old" internet is useful today...

And I yes, I still use debuggers & assemblers to change games

Now THIS is a name I haven't seen posting in a while. 2014 was not yesterday.

[orudge]

Good to see you again, Oskar, hope you're doing well.