I recently read, on a mailing list populated by astonishingly clever people, an assertion that will no doubt strike a lot of you as astonishingly misinformed: "Almost 100 percent" of online worlds, the writer claimed, are created in the United States. To which, you might think, a hearty "Not!" would have been sufficient reply, but being the inveterate statistics geek I am, I felt compelled to offer a more numerically precise rejoinder, and after an hour or two of data sifting I had my answer:
It's more like 61.5 percent, actually. At most.
Like all the best statistics, of course, this is a highly debatable number, contingent on data that are themselves a morass of contingencies. But in this case I've drawn my figures from the most reliable source we have (alas): Bruce Sterling Woodcock's in-depth but incomplete MMOGCHART.COM, an informal industry survey whose roster of commercial MMO titles, though last updated in mid 2006, is about as comprehensive as it gets. And though Sir Bruce doesn't break the list down by nation of origin, a little follow-up research on Wikipedia et al. was enough to do the job: Of the 39 titles on the list (not counting sequels), 24 -- or 61.538% -- were developed by U.S. companies.
There are other ways to slice it of course. 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 red-white-and-blue titles goes down to 17, or less than 45%.
And none of these numbers tell us anything about the relative market presence of U.S.-made games. If you look at the market-share chart for subscription-based MMOs, 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 remember 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 Sir 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%.
Keep in mind, too, that Sir 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.
But finally, lest all you non-quants out there think I've gone irrevocably over to the dark side, let me add that I'm aware there are other ways of thinking about American dominance of the MMO space. Made by Americans or not, it might be argued, the vast majority of online games are modeled on games of American origin, shot through with U.S.-inflected cultural types and tropes.
To which I can only say: Whatever. Even ignoring the heavily Asian mythoi of a lot of the new Korean and Chinese games, and even granting that the "mainstream" of MMO history may be dominated by American games like Ultima Online and EverQuest, that history passes inevitably through the primeval choke points of MUD1 and Dungeons and Dragons, the one a British product to the bone, the other created by American wargamers obsessed with the works of the most vigorous literary avatar of Englishness since Kipling -- J.R.R. Tolkien.
But I digress, and sometimes it really is better to let the numbers speak for themselves.
One word - RuneQuest. And it's British.
Posted by: Rich Bryant | Mar 23, 2007 at 21:58
The much more comprehensive list at MMORPG is still far from complete for Asian games:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/0
and, if you can read Korean, their list is at:
http://gametrics.com/
and they have a top 50 list (I think).
Posted by: Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis | Mar 23, 2007 at 22:55
Rich Bryant's "one word" is perhaps supposed to be Runescape. RuneQuest, the 1970s tabletop RPG, was designed entirely by Americans, though it is currently published by a British company.
Another pertinent point is the income derived from the respective markets. Korea's MMOG revenue is about triple the US market's, according to Electronic Times Internet (via the PLayNoEvil blog).
Posted by: Allen Varney | Mar 24, 2007 at 00:11
That'll teach me not to post before sleep ;) Thanks Allen.
Posted by: Rich Bryant | Mar 24, 2007 at 06:49
My completely off the cuff guesstimate is that the US accounts for <10% of online world development.
Posted by: Raph | Mar 24, 2007 at 12:53
well, it seems that at least the USA's games are enjoyable yet ....
Posted by: Amarilla | Mar 24, 2007 at 16:44
Julian>it might be argued, the vast majority of online games are modeled on games of American origin, shot through with U.S.-inflected cultural types and tropes.
I see a number of other points in America's favour that also push in this direction:
1) America is a large market, so if developers are hoping to pick up players outside their region at all they'll aim to be attractive to an American audience. This ensures that American cultural tropes are often inserted.
2) Raising finance in the USA is much easier than elsewhere. American financiers look on investment in game development as what it is - a gamble - and if they lose then they just take the hit. Elsewhere (particularly in the UK), it's only possible to obtain investment capital if you can prove, beyond any doubt, that you don't need it. Furthermore, development is less expensive in the USA than elsewhere because of the weak and puny dollar. This means that more virtual worlds are developed in the USA as a result.
3) Many Americans speak a form of English. Because English is the second language for much of the world, if people can't find a virtual world in their own language then they'll try one in English instead. Virtual worlds developed in English-speaking countries have an advantage over those developed elsewhere.
4) America has a body expertise in virtual world development now, and an actual centre of excellence - Austin is the virtual world equivalent of Hollywood.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Mar 25, 2007 at 05:30
> Many Americans speak a form of English
Ouch, not on a Sunday morning, Richard. Coffee -> monitor again. I'll fetch a cloth.
Posted by: Rich Bryant | Mar 25, 2007 at 07:34
If you're talking about where most virtual worlds are (as opposed to where most virtual world users are) you'll not be able to get a meaningful answer without delving into text MUDs. There are well over 1000 text virtual worlds operating currently, nearly exclusively in the US, Canada, and Europe with a few Aussie/New Zealanders and the odd South American thrown into the mix. I'm really not sure how the geographic mix breaks down but it certainly seems to be very heavy on the US side of things.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Mar 25, 2007 at 15:23