How large and active is the IF community?

[StJohnLimbo]

For some additional numbers, see the thread “IF User Base” from 2013: IF User Base

Another estimate:

@In 2010

Gargoyle’s last release had over 12,000 downloads - double counting some folks, to be sure, but also omitting anyone who installed the Debian packages. In the last 45 days, with a single announcement on raif [Usenet group rec.arts.int-fiction] […], the new release has been downloaded 1800 times.

These are not huge numbers on the scale of global populations, or indeed more than a footnote on Activision’s balance sheet, but they also represent only a fraction of the overall market in IF interpreters: the players passionate enough to download a dedicated interpreter and willing to use Gargoyle for this purpose. I doubt this amounts to more than 25% market share, all told, which gives us around 50,000 interested players.