217 million people playing games world-wide... or are there?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 11th 2007 at 2:13PM
comScore, a company earning its way in the world by compiling and analysing consumer data, tells us that there are currently 217 million people in the world playing games online. (Of course, this number only sounds impressive until you realize that there are over 6 billion people living in the world today.) But the numbers themselves seem to leave a lot to be desired -- over at PlayNoEvil they have a detailed analysis of the other things this data seems to have overlooked:- All of the companies comScore seems to be tracking are US-based. What about the large online gaming market in Asia?
- Smaller game sites aren't considered. (Smaller than Yahoo, MSN, WildTangent, etc.)
- Client-based games like World of Warcraft are excluded.
- People playing in internet cafes (common in Asia) aren't counted.
[via The Forge]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sylythn Jul 11th 2007 2:27PM
I'd like to see numbers that aren't inflated by the casual flash-based games. Including those stats always skews the gender, age, and total players data.
jron Jul 11th 2007 2:27PM
so basically this is complete bull.
Thijz Jul 11th 2007 3:18PM
Everyone plays some shitty flash game every once in a while, this doesn't say anything...
Baluki Jul 11th 2007 3:23PM
Well, if they're not counting all those things mentioned, then their data is basically worthless.
ben1778 Jul 12th 2007 10:13AM
I have worked in the healthcare/science research field for years now and that was a poorly designed study. Right off the bat from reading their exclusion list and the claim made at the end I could tell it was a weak link at best.
It would have been a much better design if they had attempted to measure only the people playing in the US and also excluded mmorpgs. In the meantime they can begin to mine data about mmorpg player population and then in a 2nd study combine that with the non-mmorpg data and lo and behold, they've got 2 solid reports instead of 1 big crappy, unreliable report with enough jumps in logic to make it to the 10th board on Frogger.