[Air-l] qual and quant

[Ren Reynolds]

I just thought I would throw some stats into the thread. As while
MMORPGs, MUDs, MOOs, _whatever_ are 'popular', the numbers of users do
not rank very highly against other popular pastimes. 

Usage numbers for western MMOs are (very) roughly as follows: 
EverQuest 500,000
Star Wars Galaxies 300,000+
Ultima Online 300,000
Final Fantasy 300,000
Dark Age of Camelot 250,000

The demographics for these games are fairly well distributed form
mid-teens to, well, all ages. So it is not surprising that comparatively
few collage age students have not used an MMO. Though it should be noted
of course that the number of hours that people tend to spend in this
worlds is fairly high, there are some reports at the moment about there
being a correlation between the drop in hours males (18-34) spend
watching TV and the increase in Virtual World hours, but I'm not sure
the numbers stack up. 

In the East, especially Korea, things are different. There a game such
as Linage has 3.5 million subscribers. I don't have the exact stats but
the Asian virtual worlds that are said to have over 100,000 members are:

  
Final Fantasy XI 
Lineage II 
MU Online 
Ragnarok Online 
Lineage 
Kingdom of the Winds

Ren
www.renreynolds.com
terranova.blogs.com



-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-admin at aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin at aoir.org] On Behalf Of
Barry Wellman
Sent: 24 January 2004 17:20
To: aoir list; communication and information technology section asa
Subject: [Air-l] qual and quant

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I've been meditating on the buzz on the AoIR list about 2 weeks ago that
very few people use MUDs, chat rooms etc. (This from the Cdn Ipsos-Reid
survey, but we all assumed that US was similar.) Most list members who
commented reported that their undergrads had never really heard of such
stuff. In fact, many of their students didn't even think they were on
the
Internet. They were "just IM'ing," etc.

This low immersion in virtual community culture is not a new phenomenon,
because our National Geographic 2000 survey data (collected in 1998)
showed the same thing. So, I suspect have (and will) other studies.

I think the reason that immersive virtual communities have been so
prominent in the media and in analysts' eyes is that they are so
imageable
and so amenable to study by qualitative means. I am thinking here of
really fine stuff such as Nancy Baym's soap opera study and Lori
Kendall's
Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub. OTOH, quant. survey stuff is better at
placing prevalence in perspective, even though it is much harder to tell
a
good story about it.

I am not taking sides on qual-quant debate (which, being bi-, I find
tiresome), but on the different outcomes in public and scholarly
discourse
of the different forms of research. Obviously, we need both.

 Barry

PS: At the risk of going even further out on a limb, I think that's what
happened re Howard Dean in Iowa. The 20-something Meetup/Moveon campaign
was so bloody imageable, from the NY Times Sunday mag. to Wired.
Meanwhile, Kerry just kept organizing in traditional ways, but nobody
wrote stories about that. (Of course, Dean was ahead in the polls till
the
last week, but why spoil a good story?)
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
	     To network is to live; to live is to network
 _____________________________________________________________________


_______________________________________________
Air-l mailing list
Air-l at aoir.org
http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l