Lapsing premium doesn’t help. As you say, games are less fun without it and it does help support the site. And...while I concur with lack of admin growth, the site does offer quite a bit as is.

Is there a best way for us to measure active members.

Thingol wrote:

Is there a best way for us to measure active members.

Go to Rankings and click on "Last Played" to sort by that. I am not sure that is 100% accurate but it tells me about 350 people have "played" in the last 6 months.

Yeah, I've done that, but I think that is really last played (and won) an open game.  Doesn't have much info in regards to players who are still playing private games or just tourney games (and possibly for those just playing team games).

Thingol wrote: and it does help support the site. 

True, but the only things that needs support at this point are server and basic customer service/maintenance needs, like identifying and tossing cheaters, etc. There's little to any active growth going on in any area of site management. Tom has been reaping the benefits of what he has built ..and good for him, he's moved on to better and more important things I'm sure. But it's become a static system now.  The things that need improving, like stats, ranking system, etc.. will never change. I doubt there's much promotion going on outside the site.  On the designer side of things, the tools we've asked for to take things to the next level will never come. Gone are the heady days when, as a community we thought of, debated, and then asked for features (like factories). Tom would then consider and develop them.

To be fair, I bet the premium memberships barely cover server costs.   Paying a senior developer, including something for benefits, you'd probably need at least $100/hr.  How much extra money a year is Tom making on this site?  I'd bet it's not enough to cover more than a few hours of his time.  I don't think he's getting rich from wargear.

Sounds about right. With no revenue from ads, it's a tough row to hoe, but he seems to be doing it.  I'm guessing somewhere around 10K a year might be in the ball park for expenses?  That would take 300+ premium memberships at $30 a pop to break even.  You gotta figure he's doing better than break even for his time.

Thingol wrote:

Yeah, I've done that, but I think that is really last played (and won) an open game.  Doesn't have much info in regards to players who are still playing private games or just tourney games (and possibly for those just playing team games).

It appears to be won or lost any open non-team game. Mine is listed at June 28th where I lost an open game. I've won and lost team games and tournament games since then.

Edit: The date listed is when the game ended. So it is possible to have an artificially high date if you were booted from a game prior to it ending. And you can have an artificially low date from playing tournament, private, or team games. I would guess probably just over 400 active players.

Based on that and the percentage of those 400 which are premium, I would guess that Tom is below break-even. And Ozy, based on my experiences, I would say $120K/year for a senior programmer when adding in benefits is about typical.