You can see on State of the Dapps that Splinterlands has a lot of users. Peakd and Hive.blog each have almost as many as Steemit.

Hive has to be a better experience than Steem for it to succeed. The higher token price will help, but we are starting from scratch with marketing and don't even have a company behind it, even though Steemit did bugger all. I think the growth could come from more underground marketing. We need some people with a decent following elsewhere to give it a try and bring some fans over. Musicians and other entertainers who can not get out to perform right now may be interested if we can get their attention.