Where is everyone?

I was expecting to see thousands of people here. At least hundreds. Where is everyone? There is only, what, 3, 4 people here? I am confused.

I'm here

Competition.

I get the impression that most members from xprize days post elsewhere and only check here sporadically.

I think this forum still has quite a wide viewership though. Everyone will probably flood back when SS2 (or whatever it's called) gets near to launch, or if spacex manages to launch something that doesn't blow up.

Rocketplane XP should generate some buzz when it enters test flights and revenue flights. I'll try to get people buzzing before then.

Most people prefer to read it seems... spacefellowship.com has many more unique visitors each day, than it has registered users..

What the h-ll is going on? Do we sit back and wait for someone who's gonna post some news?

These unique visitors, who are they? Engineers, Hobbyspace guys, investors or people accidentally came by? How can we make sure they 'stick' around and post something worth replying?


The space race has begun!! Hello mac Fly's?! Somebody there?

Balloon guy checking in.

JP

The presence of some of the real people of the industry (in my case JP) is what keeps some of us coming back.

But you have to expect to have a lot more traffic than posters. There are huge amounts of quality content (especially in the technology thread) so you would expect most visitors to just come here for what they need, and not make any comments.

Okay, nice to see some people here. How well are you guys doing with the weather predictions? I must admit, when I found out this was the online game they were talking about, I was kind of disappointed. I was expecting something like you would see for xbox or playstation. At least a game where 2 or more people sit down and play head to head until there is a winner, like chess or something.
Are any of you an actual weather person who does this for a living? Because you'd have an unfair advantage over me, the average joe. You'd have access to all those billion dollar super computers.
Does anyone know if there will be a place on the space-shot website to track all the winners and losers? I would really like to see that, along with info like what level they started at, who they beat at each level and how long it took to win.
Also, I'd like to hear your opinions of the whole space-shot online game!

Thanks in advance to all your replies!

Interesting and slightly random facts: there are 19334 posts in these forums, of which 5009, or 25.908%, are in the Technology forums. There are 1540 separate threads, of which 323 or 20.974% are in the Technology forums.

I don't think all people over here have actually played yet on space-shot.com.. but I guess most will take their chance, to see if they can win a ticket to space.
Since I know most of them a little.. I'm not aware of any weather predictors , but I guess JP and others may have some experiance with it, for their flights to the edge of space.

So was I, but it does accomplish the goal of giving everyone an equal chance. If it was like Doom or Chess, then only expert Doom or Chess players would play, which is too small a group of people. While weather forecasting may be a science, the accuracy of the predictions is not good to 1 degree of temperature or 1/100 inch of rain or 1% humidity. At that level of accuracy it is essentially random chance. But to be a legal game it has to be skill based. So this game gives everyone an equal chance without technically being a game of chance.

That reminds me of a joke.
Person says to gambler, "So you play poker. Is that a game of chance?"
Gambler answers, "Not the way I play it."

I actually quite like the type of game, although some variety in subject might be nice. Any other type of game would be more biased towards those with high dexterity or reliable internet connections...this way you need nothing but some capacity for thought.

I am an archaeologist by profession, so I have no real advantage, but have managed about a 75% success rate for my (eventually matched) predictions! I'm not saying I know anything about the weather, but I am saying that you all stand good chances if a know-nothing person like me can manage 75%...

Put up the money and let's go!

A great game like FreeSpace cost many millions of dollars to make and might or might not be a hit. It would be cost prohibitive to pick an existing hit or a likely hit game.

Furthermore, that sort of game would be subject to declining interest due to short attention spans. We settled on a new timeless game that satisfies legality and was economical to produce. We think people will find it to be more fun than many other games requiring less and more skill. There is anticipation. There is research.

We also did not want a game that would take a long time to play at low levels. Chess, Reversi and Galactic Quest take a long time to play. We want our players to be able to play quickly. Games that require two players to be online interacting in real time cost more to implement and are subject to waiting times for the game to start. We have waiting times, but players can submit their play and go do something else.

If weather prediction is predominantly chance, why do we pay weather forecasters so much and the national weather service so much? Weather prediction is a skill. It is a hard skill. There is room for our predictors to improve on the feeds that we provide our players. We provide a Custom Weather feed and an AccuWeather feed to players right on the play page. This allows players to do research. Without doing research, players cannot expect to do very well even if they are excellent meteorologists. Having done research, we tried to design the game so that players of average skill would be competitive. If our tournaments were like tennis tournaments or golf tournaments where the top ten players win over and over again, we would not be accomplishing the business need. Awarding two trips to space to the same person would send us back to the drawing board.

It is in your interest if you want to see wide adoption to help train people that a game that is predominantly chance like a lottery is illegal for all entities except the state to run in almost all states. A non-gambling game of skill on the other hand is almost universally acceptable. Doom tournaments and Virgin's million dollar Galactic Quest tournaments are attracting many players. Your comments will help shape perceptions for the future.