GameKnot: GameKnot related, Is GameKnot still growing?

GameKnot related: Is GameKnot still growing?

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kingdawar
31-Jan-09, 09:58

Is GameKnot still growing?

It appears to me that GameKnot's total amount of active players is not growing - give or take, it is more or less 25,000 players, and has been so for several years.

Is this observation correct?

markb56
31-Jan-09, 12:29

The question that really matters is whether the number of *paying* customers is growing. With the downturn in the economy, I wonder how this might affect GK's paying customer base? Who knows, it might actually help GK because all the laid-off people might have vast amounts of time on their hands and what better way to spend ones time than playing chess, or riding your bike, or working in the yard? That's the life I wish I had!

markb56
04-Feb-09, 12:44

Using one of the Internet wayback machines, here are GK's numbers taken from February of each year starting from 2009 going back to 2002:

Years: 2009 ... 2002
Registered Players (1000s): 842 722 589 411 252 120 62 22
Completed Games (millions): 14.9 12.8 10.5 7.2 4.2 2.1 0.8 0.2
Games in Progress (1000s): 133 120 116 95 71 54 30 10

Since "Registered Players" and "Completed Games" are cumulative, the growth of these numbers appears linear for the last three years. However, since the "Games in Progress" is unique for each year, this row of numbers suggests that GK is growing (unless the "Games in Progress" totals include those games that go on for year after year!?).

Back in the 1960s I remember when McDonalds used to post on their marquee the number of burgers served. First it was 100 million, then 200 million. Then in the 1970s it was boosted to 1 billion soon to be followed by 2, 3, 4, etc. Nowadays the marquee blandly says: Billions and Billions served.

kingdawar
06-Feb-09, 05:07

Nice research

I didn't seem to see any growth in active players, but the "games in progress" appears to indicate that the total activity is increasing.

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