[iDC] RE: An Inconvenient Youth and Second Life

Thu Mar 1 10:45:34 EST 2007

Michel:

The most reliable source for figures about online worlds is Bruce
Woodcock's MMOGchart.com, a paradise of market data and charts that
covers nearly every commercial MMO ever released. Unfortunately Bruce
doesn't break things down by corporate nationality, but I did some
follow-up research through Wikipedia et al, and it turns out you're
right to be skeptical: The U.S. may dominate this market's supply
side, but the dominance isn't even close to 100%.

Here's the breakdown:

There are 39 titles listed on MMOGchart.com, not counting sequels. Of
those, 24 were developed by U.S. companies. That's just a little more
than 60%. If you leave out U.S. games with non-U.S. publishers
(France's Vivendi and Ubisoft, for instance, market several U.S.-made
MMOs, as does Korea's NCSoft), the number of titles goes down to 17,
or less than 45%.

These numbers tell us nothing about market share, of course, but from
that perspective the picture doesn't look much different. If you look
at the market-share chart for subscription-based MMOs
(http://www.mmogchart.com/chart7.html), you see World of Warcraft (a
Franco-U.S. production) with a crushing 52.9%. But even with WoW
pulling that much weight, U.S.-made games get only 61.3% of the
market. Games developed in Korea, the U.K., Japan, Iceland, and France
get 34.3% (with the remaining 3.3% swept into an unalyzable "All
others" category).

And keep in mind that this is only subscription-based games. There is
a hugely popular class of Asian MMOs that get their revenues from item
sales and so forth, and Bruce lists them separately, since it's hard
to compare 'active subscribers' to the 'average concurrent users'
figure typically used to measure these games. But back-of-the-envelope
calculations suggest that adding these games in to the mix would
create a picture in which U.S. MMOs' market share is considerably less
than 50%.

Finally, I'll point out that Bruce, for whatever reason, doesn't even
mention several very popular online game worlds aimed at children or
teens, such as Neopets, Club Penguin, and Habbo Hotel. These three
come off the top of my head, and their creators are, respectively,
British, Canadian, and Finnish.

Julian

On 3/1/07, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would be curious to any pointers confirming that the U.S. is responsible for
> almost 100% of computer games and online worlds ...
>
> Recently, someone mentioned something like 'most Africans are now connected
> with mobile phones'. I checked, it is only 10%.
>
> Michel Bauwens
>
>
> On 2/28/07, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's exact my point when I refered to my short experience in SL. I
> > think the US (where almost 100 procent of computer games and online
> > worlds are created) has a problem with the reproduction of the nuclear
> > family and the wishing of a kind of Barbie/Ken archetype where the
> > same house, the same furniture and the same tables and chairs are
> > copied or cloned.
> > In SL you can find hundreds of reproductions of Le Corbusier or of
> > Frank Lloyd Right, it's as the Sims (the popular computer game who is
> > the most clear "parent" of Second Life, has discovered architecture
> > and city planning.
> > When you have characters who fly what's the point making stairs or
> > walls? Or to design roads or motorways?
> > For me SL is a kind of perverse reproduction of life but without
> > death, sweat, smells or poverty.
> > In Everquest, the online game I usually played for several years, I
> > was playing a female avatar and  another player, a man playing another
> > female avatar, asked me to marry "him".
> > The marriage thing was a cool thing in EQ, where the weddings in the
> > game were attended by guests from the whole virtual world. I have
> > attended marriages between vampyres and elfs, centaurs and frogs.
> > We asked the "game masters" to come and marry us, it was Sony's
> > employees who acted as priests or civil servants and who performed the
> > ceremonies.
> > We got a letter, very polite, but they refused us the right to be
> > married, "two women avatars can't be married. It could upset a lot of
> > other players who could experience that as offensive".
> > We, Charles, my friend, and me, could not believe what we read. We
> > played as wizards and shamans, we fought demons and zombies, we lived
> > in a fantasy world where magic and phantasy played an enormous roll.
> > Did they mean that two female avatars were "not natural", but all the
> > other stuff was it???
> > We argued with them for months and we dropped the idea, but it
> > strenghtened my these about online worlds as very conservative and
> > oldfashioned.
> > Ana
> >
> > ps. the description of the marriage it's a bit of my research about
> > Gender in the Online Games, I am writing a book which it's going to be
> > released in this Spring, sadly, only in Swedish and Spanish for the
> > moment.
> >
> > On 2/27/07, Brooke Knight <brooke_knight at emerson.edu> wrote:
> > > Hi all:
> > >
> > > I'm an inveterate lurker on the list, but I have to pick up on Steven's
> > > comment a few days ago about how he gave a lecture about SL, both in the
> > > "real" world and the "virtual" world of Second Life.  We here at Emerson
> > > College are currently engaged in the same thing -- as it is opening up
> as an
> > > educational space.  We have students cranking away at building what are
> > > essentially avatars of our buildings.  In fact, we have an event
> tomorrow,
> > > where both Trebor and Ulises will be speaking at Emerson and on Second
> Life,
> > > on the Emerson College Island, Emerson Island (145, 109, 23).  Come by
> at 7
> > > eastern and see if it works.
> > >
> > > In this case, it will be inside the Bordy Theater on the island.  In the
> > > "real" world (I've never been comfortable with the distinction), the
> Bordy
> > > Theater is inside of a building alongside other buildings of the same
> height
> > > and size.  On Emerson Island, It stands out as one of the only objects
> > > there.
> > >
> > > So, I ask -- why is it that there seems to be a need to reproduce items
> that
> > > already exist? Is a replica of a real-world place the best way to convey
> a
> > > message, even if it doesn't work in SL?  How is that message different
> in
> > > SL?
> > >
> > > I'm just worried that we continue to experience the tyranny of the
> metaphor,
> > > as we have so many times in digital media.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Brooke
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Brooke A. Knight
> > >
> > > Assistant Professor of New Media
> > >
> > > Department of Visual and Media Arts
> > >
> > > Emerson College
> > >
> > > 617-824-8760
> > >
> > > brooke_knight at emerson.edu
> > >
> > > www.brookeknight.com
> > >
> > >
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