And now we are less than 2,000 active members

Hi everybody.

SailorDan said:

Because of the silent caveat 'All other things being equal'. Which, of course, they aren't. The number and variety of ways of socialising over the internet has grown massively over the years, and for many people forums are considered old fashioned. YouTube, in particular. is attracting a lot of Trainz enthusiasts, but facebook pages have also grown, as well as private blogs for smaller groups.

If you judge by one social media format you are going to be misled. You have to consider all the forms that are available to people.

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sailordan, in regards to your above comments, I appreciate that the development of social media has provided many various ways for persons to communicate via the Internet. However, I do not believe that video sites such as YouTube provide a platform for discussion in any way comparable to a forum and are not in any way used in that manner.

In regards to social media sites such as Facebook then I have little experience with that media, but on the two occasions I have ventured into that " cauldron" to comment on the an industrial safety matter, I immediately had 61 people wishing to become my friend. Had I accepted any of those "friendships", doubtless I would have received numerous people posting on my page in regard to what they had consumed for breakfast each morning or others informing me of all the sordid details in regard to their husbands/wives/partners torrid affair with the checkout assistant at the local supermarket. However, in the foregoing when I did visit Facebook (which was sometime ago) despite searching I found very little on that social media site of any consequence or discussion in regard to N3V ​or Trainz.

I believe it has to be remembered that Trainz and rail simulation is a niche market within the much wider IT gaming market. As with all who have interests in the products of a niche market, they tend to congregate in forums or media sites which identify strongly with their niche interest. By example, those of us who work or have interest in industrial safety congregate on the IOSH website and forum. The foregoing I believe is very much the situation with this forum, for those who have an interest in the Trainz rail simulator undoubtedly congregate in the main to post and discuss that interest here. Therefore, I believe that the numbers visiting this forum would very much represent the level of interest in the Trainz simulator and those numbers must be looked at in terms of a world wide user base.

Bill (who is lurking while he is working).

Think you will find it always goes quieter at this time of the year.

Quite a few post on Non English Trainz sites such as Trainzup > 653 active members

Steam Trainz discussion seems to be active.

From Facebook Trainz Page.

14,345

Total Page Likes

14,025

Total Page Follows

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If 14,025 people are following the Trainz Facebook page that indicates quite a lot of interest to me.

Railworks has 210,805.

Harold

clam1952 said:

Think you will find it always goes quieter at this time of the year.

Quite a few post on Non English Trainz sites such as Trainzup > 653 active members

Steam Trainz discussion seems to be active.

From Facebook Trainz Page.



[/I]
If 14,025 people are following the Trainz Facebook page that indicates quite a lot of interest to me.

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Malc, Facebook has 1.86 billion regular users per month. Therefore the fourteen thousand following the Trainz Facebook page is miniscule in terms of Facebook's overall userbase. The number of followers a page has does not necessarily indicate the ongoing interest in the page subject as someone can indicate a following and that remains on the page statistics even though that person may have ceased that following long ago.

Anyway not getting any work done in the office, so better try to get on.
Bill

clam1952 said:

Steam Trainz discussion seems to be active.

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http://steamcharts.com/app/315660

http://steamcharts.com/app/24670

Harold

And now we are at Active Members 2,012, onwards and upwards..... :hehe:

By the way Bill, takes some doing and Googling but you can block all the annoying friend requests and other junk from Facebook which I detest and just post, never follow anything, just bookmark the page. I just use it for the Ffestiniog Railway stuff as the old forums have virtually died and it's all now on Facebook worse luck.

@ Harold I actually compared those with Railworks and TSW a few days ago, other than they peaked at the same time I'm not saying a word!

One has to wonder about the future of train games since the latest and the GREATEST train-sim "Train Sim World" only sold 20,000 copies.

http://steamspy.com/app/530070

The playability limits it greatly and is in a death spiral:

http://steamcharts.com/app/530070

That is why I bought an offline version of TANE.

Harold

It has always been a niche hobby, but I have to concur the number of active forum members is not necessarily indicative of those using the product. Look at any forum about any topic and you will generally see the same 20 - 30 names dominating most topics. Also need to bear in mind TANE is not a particularly young product anymore, it has stabilised somewhat from the early days which means both whinging and help topics are diminished. SP2 may see a spike in numbers, of course.

Then some of us follow more than one train sim product. I'm currently working on (and not far off releasing) a Trainz route so naturally tend to gravitate here. However the next project could be in MSTS or TS occupying two or three months in which case posting here might go on the back burner until another Trainz project comes along.

What does people posting on this or any other forum have anything to do being active? An active poster perhaps but an active user of the sim? Only N3V watching the daily logins would know what those actual numbers are and they are not talking. Plus all older stand-alone versions that are still being used but don't phone home would also need to be counted if you wanted a real number.

A bunch of us have passed away. :'(

Hi everybody.
In regard to whether the number of "active members" on this forum in any way represent the total number of active users of the Trainz simulator I believe is core to this thread. Any true numerical statistic will always be representative of a percentage of a total that the statistic was first taken from. In the case of the approximately 2000 active members of this forum that number would be a percentage of the total Trainz user base.

As Martinvk states in his above posting no one on this forum with the exception of the N3V management would have any knowledge of the total active user base numbers. However, the 2000 active forum members would still be representative of the total user base numbers whether that figure be one active forum member per 100 active persons in the user base (in the foregoing, active forum posters would represent 1% of the total user base). I use the foregoing figures only as an example as the true figure could be one active forum poster to 250, 400 or even 40 of the active users, as in the second of the two foregoing figures we simply do not know.

However, in the above it can be positively stated that the near 2000 active forum members (those that post or login to this forum on a regular basis) are representative by percentage of the total number of people who use the Trainz simulator. Therefore, when the number of persons active on the forum shows a decline it is most likely to be indicative of an overall decline in the active user base.

In the above I seem to recall that the active forum members number reached a peak of around 4000 in 2014 just prior to and just after the release of T:ane. However, I believe that the active forum members figure of around two thousand has been fairly constant for approximately the last twelve months. That stated, those figures are only my own recollections and very much could be wrong, in which case somebody will without doubt inform me and the rest of the forum should my memory be incorrect, which is not unknown.

Bill

wholbr said:

.... Therefore, when the number of persons active on the forum shows a decline it is most likely to be indicative of an overall decline in the active user base.
...
Bill

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As long as the assumption that the two are in lock-step, it would be true to assume a decline. But without independent corroboration, i would wait before taking that step. I can think of several reasons why forum activity might decline that have no correlation to overall use.

Whatever the case, speculation is never out of season.

There are other pointers, such as payware sites shutting, Trainz based web sites shutting and pure indifference on the forums.

There is another group to consider, those who post on the forum, but don't really use Trainz anymore. Guilty I'm afraid. I'm hoping SP2 will change that with improved performance and the FBX content method.

wholbr said:

However, in the above it can be positively stated that the near 2000 active forum members (those that post or login to this forum on a regular basis) are representative by percentage of the total number of people who use the Trainz simulator. Therefore, when the number of persons active on the forum shows a decline it is most likely to be indicative of an overall decline in the active user base.

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That doesn't follow. It could just as likely be a decline in the percentage of users who choose to be active in the forums. I could hypothesise that as Trainz becomes more popular it attracts a different type of user who doesn't bother with forums. For instance, as Trainz moves to a younger market it finds a user base that prefers other forms of social interaction, so forum participation becomes a smaller percentage of the total user base. It's all just guesswork.

I have been extraordinarily busy.

And yet, from time to time, I change logins and relax with the game, TANE.

I just don't have time for the forums, at times. Yet, I can relax with the game.

I am sure there are others in that place, too.

I should probably clarify me, the headline of my opening post is a finding of fact (at that time), and not a speculation that someone here hinted.

whitepass said:

Yes but I do not know the time.

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Thanks for the "half" answer, it's good enough for me.
As I said in the OP, I was just curious.

AJ_Fox said:

Hallo ekankal

Not sure what you are talking about. Do you mean the number of members currently logged in or is there another statistic?

Cheers

AJ

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// Erik from Sweden

Just to note, today the figure is 2124.

Perhaps it may depend on whether much is going on (like the impending release of SP2).

ekankal said:

...

// Erik from Sweden

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So there are ~2000 active. BUT if we look at the title of the stats, it is called Trainz Discussion Forums Statistics. So out of the 802,394 members, only 2005 have been active in the forums in the recent past. If this was a forum sim, that might be a worrisome stat but I figure most of the rest are too busy with Trainz to bother hanging out here. As for the 701 currently active users online, 102 were members and 599 were guests.

So while some spend time in the forums, I would venture a guess and say that most are busy actually using Trainz. And since many can be off-line while using Trainz, it would be hard to really pin down the actual number of users.

As a side note, looking at the download stats from the DLS, some have way over 1,000,000 downloads. Even if some of those are duplicate downloads which CM should prevent, there are a lot of people downloading stuff and that is just from the DLS.

Hi Everybody.
Well, perhaps I have a rather dubious nature, but I find it a little suspect (to say the least) that within days of the opening post in this thread being made on April 8th the active member count suddenly begins to climb. :hehe:

The foregoing comes about following a prolonged period of the count slowly falling from above four thousand and the turnaround taking place while nothing new has as yet been released.

From general observation it would seem to me that the forum has been somewhat quiet of late. Part of that may be because it has lost the general postings on real world rail events and news that always seemed so interesting to so many forum members. Those postings always created interest bringing forward many comments and debates and in that adding interest to the Trainz world.

Perhaps, with SP2 in the pipeline and a new Trainz Android version being released (hopefully) we will see a “genuine” substantial rise in the number of active members and sales. Undoubtedly that situation will bring a great rise in profitability for N3V to the long term benefit of all who enjoy this hobby.

Bill

Hi Everybody.
Well, perhaps I have a rather dubious nature, but I find it a little suspect (to say the least) that within days of the opening post in this thread being made on April 8th the active member count suddenly begins to climb. :hehe:

The foregoing comes about following a prolonged period of the count slowly falling from above four thousand and the turnaround taking place while nothing new has as yet been released.

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TANE SP2 New Beta just released will wake a few up who only post on here when testing.