System popularity (in plays) over the last 16 years

Some interesting data from IFDB: The rate at which games are being played by development system.

Note that there is some distortion due to the fact that the date that a play is registered does not necessarily correlate with the date on which it was played in real life. People who have recently created accounts sometimes rate (or mark as played) games that they played long before.

Interestingly, the number of plays of Twine games came pretty close to exceeding that of all major parser systems put together in 2024.

Also, in 2025 Dialog was the third most popular type of parser (or at least parser-capable) game played.

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This is by the play online button, correct?

-Wade

No, it’s by a combination of ratings and “I’ve played it” data.

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You know, I’m surprised about 2020 having Twine so low, considering that was the year Tavern Crawler got joint top place…