Deluxe Ski Jump Forum

Hi all!

I was subscriber to DSJ3 couple years back and now I bought DSJ4. There are, however, no players online? Yesterday evening and now as well, I appear to be the only one there - and I remember in DSJ3 there were constant games?

Do I do something wrong here?

Thanks in advance!

Best!

It says on the page that "There are online games running non-stop" - where are they?

It's summer and no season. This is main reason of empty server

Areen wrote:I think this game is slowly dying because of lacks of updates ;)

Let me remind you that 14 updates have been made available since the initial release. It's not the lack of updates, it's the lack of players! I always thought the game is heavily underpromoted, but DSJ has been around for more than 13 years. It's evident that it has already attracted majority of potentially interested players during all those years and there's simply no-one else to address. Summer has always been weak in terms of Online tournaments attendance, but it's true that this summer season is extremely low on players, servers are empty most of the time despite the lowest subscription price ever. Is it possible that DSJ is losing its fan base?

Let's take a look at the numbers: 651 players at least once entered a World Cup competition during this winter season whereas only 110 players entered a Summer Grand Prix one. The winters stay strong - the number of participants per tournament has constantly floated around 100 or more this season, that's as good as any other previous season. So it may be simpler after all: DSJ is enjoyed most at winter. Nice weather doesn't support the gaming - people prefer to spend their time out, go on vacation etc. and it's perfectly normal. Crysis 3 servers, for instance, are half-empty too these days. Let's conclude that DSJ is (and has always been) a seasonal game.

The popularity of the game is tightly coupled with the popularity of ski jumping. During the summers it has always been quiet, but it seems that the interest towards ski jumping is decreasing generally as well.

Google trends can give you some insight:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q= ... ing&cmpt=q

To enjoy playing this game online you need to:
1) like ski jumping
2) own a windows computer with reasonable internet
3) either enjoy using lots of time to improve/maintain your skills OR not care about losing
4) be competitivly oriented OR have friends playing the game too
5) be prepared to pay for online time
6) have a lot of free time to actually play online

(1) is limitied by nationality, time of year, possibly gender or age group, etc. In Finland, the popularity of ski jumping is decreasing because, lately, international success of Finnish jumpers has been minimal, AND ski jumping is getting less TV time and overall media attention.

(2) would seem to be rather likely but people are starting to use computers differently. Desktops are getting uncommon and non-Windows systems are gaining popularity.

(3): to become good at this game is a serious investment of time, and all the other players just keep getting better. Sometimes this game almost feels like work . Also, the fact that this is a game purely about skill might be foreign to players who are used to the now popular "casual waste of time" kind of gaming with easy gameplay, pretty graphics and social integration. (4) to (6) should be pretty self-explanatory.

So, this basically limits the potential player group to male Polish teenagers .
Jokes aside, there really aren't too many online players, even in the winter season:
after, say, a month of playing, you rarely see a player you haven't met before.

It seems like the most active players are skilled jumpers who take their DSJ "career" moderately to very seriously.
Which is why you mostly see them at the tournaments. Actually, there are so many tournaments now (3 weekly, 2 monthly + some occasional) that playing online besides those tournaments can feel a little excessive.
In fact, the winter season in particular can be quite exhausting and many players (myself included) are taking a little "vacation" from DSJ during the summer .