International intrest in EU

[Oranje]

Hello everybody,

I've done a little bit of analysis on the basis of the information on visits to my site, income and population figures from the world factbook (CIA).
For what it's worth, I've made a modifier to reflect differences in average income and population numbers between countries, before comparing the number of visitors from each country. A major drawback is ofcourse that the income distribution is important too, but I didn't include this.
If I make sort of an index, where the intrest in Sweden for the game is set at 100%,
I get the following line-up:

1. Sweden 100,0
2. Netherlands 53,0
3. Norway 43,1
4. Denmark 43,0
5. New Zealand 29,6
6. Finland 23,4
7. Luxemburg 22,5
8. Belgium 20,0
9. Australia 13,5
10. Canada 11,4
11. Austria 9,3
12. Switzerland 8,3
13. USA 6,5
14. Spain 4,4
15. Germany 4,3
16. United Kingdom 3,8
17. Poland 3,8
18. France 3,4

Numbers for other countries are (statistically) insignificant (only figure I deliberately left out is the weird number of visits to the site from Estonia (incomprehensive).
Now, ofcourse this is not a good indication of how big a market there is for the game in any country. Numbers might be distorted, as the french also have websites and a forum in their own language, but I still think it has some value.
The Benelux and Scandinavian intrest seems solid, although the Dutch figure has probably been influenced somewhat by the fact that my site is on a Dutch server.
The German release has obviously been a disappointment, although they do seem to catch up a little.
Numbers for all countries are influenced by language issues, marketing issues etc., but especially the UK and the US seem to be lagging somewhat, with the release in these countries coming up shortly.
I'll try to do the analysis again in a week or so.

btw The total number of visitors to my site is getting close to 5000.

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greetings, Oranje
Link to my EU fanpage, includes a FAQ section

Common sense is the set of prejudices acquired at age eighteen.
Albert Einstein

 

[Syt]

I agree that the interest for EU is disappointing in Germany. However, I must say that if Hartmann hadn't posted about this game on the forum of Home at the Underdogs I would certainly have missed it. Why? Because there was hardly any (if any) coverage in game magazines. The largest German gaming magazine wrote not a single line about the game, much less tested it. Add in that I found the game between reference and education software (only after asking for the game) might add to this.

This is very unfortunate, as I think the game has a much larger potential in Germany.

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Attrition is not a strategy. Attrition is the apparent lack of strategy. (Sun Tzu)

[This message has been edited by Sytass (edited 12-02-2001).]

 

[Chema_Cagi]

I agree with Sytass but relating to the knowledge of this game in Spain. Apart from some fans of the boardgame, there has been almost no mention (or none at all) in the spanish major magazines.
And I think that EU has a big potential as commercial success in almost any european country.

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JM Cagigal
Virrey de Nueva España

 

[Rio]

Oranje,

A surprising little bit of statistical modeling from you my friend! Great idea!

As someone beaten about the head for years in this area in both Academia and the 'professional' world, I want to make a few constructive comments about your constructive activity:

First and most importantly, this is a constructive thing to try, as well as an interesting sidelight.

Second, there are a couple of minor caveats you should add to your comments about your continued findings:
A)You are correct that income levels should be an adjusting variable, and may be important. A suggestion to model this simply is to create two or three tiers, where a multiplyer (perhaps avg difference in per capita GDP as a ratio amongst the groups) is attached to those not in the top tier.
B)Perhaps more important than 'A', because of the way your site records visitation, the frequency of visitors may be related to the interest level of those familiar with your site and the number of times they return rather than a 'non-stochastic' (fancy word for 'statistically-random') reflection of interest or product knowledge from various geographic locations. This means that Estonia may, for example, have ONE particularly rabid fan of the game who visits your site three times daily. I for one visit at least every third or fourth day. Until we can eliminate 'return' visits, we lose a lot of the product-knowledge analytical value of the site's statistical recording.
C)Another modifyer should probably geographic locations where the game has either yet to be released, or released for under say, 6 months. This may effect the german variable, and certainly will effect those locations where release has yet to allow for word of mouth and shelf influences on product knowledge.
D)Finally, there should probably be a LARGE modifier for English-language knowledge in various countries. In this regard, places where the language is not especially valued (France comes to mind for example), or taught (the farther east you go, the greater this variable) will not only have little interest in your site, they wont even know about it because they won't be able to understand a word on this forum!

All in all, I am ont suggesting we ignore your stats by any means, and I would gladly help in any modeling. I AM suggesting though we take a healthy dose of care though before drawing too many conclusions.

Thanks for the interesting topic fo us 'eggheads'! ~~Scott

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Rio ~/|~

 

[Savant]

Nice work Oranje! This is bread and butter stuff for me in my work. BTW, Rio is a pretty sharp guy - kind of company I like to hang about with. What is your training in stats Rio? I have a Ph.D. and use stats a whole lot in my research. Can't make a convincing case without it.

Now, as to your data I think that the product has not been marketed well outside of Sweden. There are a host of factors of course, including that it was released first in Sweden. Yet, I don't see full page glossies for EU here in the US. If I'm mistaken, someone disabuse me. But Strategy First is kind of suspect on my list. When I start posting it as 'Strategy Last' you know I am fully ticked.

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~ Salve ~

 

[Oranje]

Hello Rio,

Yes, I know there are a lot more factors that should be taken into account.
I'm by no means advocating that my method of presentation is adequate.
Something else that bothers me a little is that around 25% of all visitors originate from either a .net or .org account (6%) or from a fixed IP number that has no reference to nationality (20%).
I've assumed that the use of these is evenly spread among nationalities.
If e.g. the large majority of these would be us based, then I'd get a very different picture. I just don't know. If you do, please fill me in.

As to the other aspects mentioned, I agree that it would be real nice to know how many 'regulars' vs 'newcomers' there are.
I know that you can recognize these if you do a little programming, but I'm afraid that's way too difficult for me.

Anyway, I'm real glad to get this many visitors, and I expect to see some (upward)change in the visits from the UK and US, as the marketing effort progresses, and we get nearer to the release date.

Also the mention of the very high number of hits for the main EU site from Paradox some time ago, is encouraging for the market prospects of the game.


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greetings, Oranje
Link to my EU fanpage, includes a FAQ section

Common sense is the set of prejudices acquired at age eighteen.
Albert Einstein

 

[Paradox Interactive]

Oranje,

You can always find out where the machine is located from the ip or the domain address. I'll mail you some interesting links I've been using at work...


Patric

 

[unmerged(860)]

If you do a tracert on an induvidual ip #, you should get the guys ISP as like the last few hops.

like Aol or whatever, hmm.. as multi-national isp might be a problem? *shrug*

but if you then do a whois on the isp, youd get their registered adress. which would give you the country of origin.

Just of your numbers, I wasn't too surprised that Finland was half of Norway, thats actually pretty good I think. Considering the high anti-swedish mentality

Or Sweden, Swedish and Tre Kronor all have extremely negative connotations over here. Even though I can speak Swedish I do avoid speaking it as much as possible. And I hated it beyond every other class in school, just like everyone else in school did.

You'll probably see that number jump up once the english release becomes available in Finnish stores (btw, I havent found the swedish version in stores either, but then again I live in a small town.)

 

[Hartmann]

Another caveat: The CIA factbook is most probably not correct. It often seems to draw from dubious sources. I remember in the Eighties it portrayed the German Democratic Republic as being ahead of the Bundesrepublik, obviously taking recourse to the 'official' statistics of the GDR etc.

Hartmann

 

[unmerged(926)]

Just wondering what was weird about the Estonian figures?

 

[Oranje]

Originally posted by PK:
Just wondering what was weird about the Estonian figures?

Well, about 90 visitors from a 1.5 million country with about 1/4 of the income per head of Sweden seems odd.
Can't do statistics with that.
Actually I left out one more, even more problematic. 3 visitors from the Keeling Islands with 900 inhabitants

greetings, Oranje