Would you be more likely to play?

[Karl]

If you saw those numbers on the front page of AltitudeGame.com would you be more or less likely to have tried the game?

[gemigemi]

More likely, definitely. Especially the "today" part is very impressive for an indie game as indie games tend to be short life span stuff that people lose interest in shortly.

[Nikon]

I don't understand the question but I said yes.

[tgleaf]

More likely.

[York]

Hm. This actually isn't as obvious to me. I started playing Altitude because DODD showed me it. I didn't care how many people played. But, one of the big reasons I love altitude is because of the tight community. Of course, there are loads of people I haven't met but for the people that play at the same times as me, I feel like you really get to remember familiar names. So I am all about a small community but for the average gamer, they like BIG multiplayer action.

[Harmonica]

At a former job at a dot-com, we did a small study on our homepage, to determine whether or not showing the number of customers would affect new trial signups. We had about 50,000 paying customers at the time (2nd largest in our industry).

The study found that including the customer count on the front page would slightly decrease new trial signups: even with those high numbers, visitors who weren't familiar with the company and industry thought 50,000 customers was rather small, and they weren't interested in what they perceived to be a small enterprise.

Including the numbers didn't have a large effect, it wasn't a very large or formal study, and our product was nothing at all like a video game -- the customers were mostly small business owners, not gamers; and customers never interacted with other customers -- so the results are suspect at best, but that's the data we had. =)

[Triped]

The only correct answer is A/B testing.

[mled]

YES KARL u should put that on the website and maybe u no push up the today players? lol jk that would be cheap but put that on man nice stats

[Flyngbanana]

I've often stayed clear of smaller games who often have a very small playerbase playing 'at the moment' or other relatively low stats.

[Ajuk999]

Well it is easy for people to do whatever the majority is doing. Take for example Evony.com, they are always boasting about their average millions of people playing their game.

So yes I would be more likely to check out Altitude if I saw those big numbers on the Homepage.

[DiogenesDog]

Originally Posted by Triped

The only correct answer is A/B testing.

This.

(Altho my gut reaction is that I'd be more likely.)

[Tosconi]

I think it's also good to write - number of new members every day, I mean something showing the community's growing. This is a clear indicator showing stable development, which might work right on the possible new comers.

[innerlyte]

Eh, I wouldn't include them. The total players number isn't bad, but assuming the active players is spread over a 24-hour period, that's less than 100 players an hour on average. Weren't these numbers up on the old website? I honestly don't feel like having them there made any significant positive impact.

[Boko]

Just curious, how many of those 89.425 players have bought a key?

[Ajuk999]

Karl, that is a lot of players in a one day, Good Job Guys!