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General discussion (archive)How does GOG manage to be so multinational?(74 posts)(74 posts)
(74 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 06, 2011
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ceemdee: Well, apparently it's not diverse enough for cogadh.
In one thousand years time people will forget that all roads lead to Rome, instead they will say, "All Tubes lead to GOG."

On the back of trucks.. Lest the tubes get clogged.
Posted February 06, 2011
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Trilarion: The first four posts in this thread would actually hint that most users here did indeed learn their english before school. :)

Which means that maybe the share of anglophones is also here quite high.
The site is English only, so that might explain why you don't see people in here speaking Spanish.
Posted February 06, 2011
I think it mainly has to do with the fact that GoG is available worldwide and has fair prices for everyone

That and PC gaming is more widespread in West/East-Europe and Russia

and besides, many people want to play the classics that they havent had a chance to do before, gog offers the perfect opportunity for that :)
Posted February 06, 2011
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Trilarion: The first four posts in this thread would actually hint that most users here did indeed learn their english before school. :)

Which means that maybe the share of anglophones is also here quite high.
And you will be wrong as I learned English at age of seven...at least basics.
Posted February 07, 2011
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Damuna: Kosovo?
Hm, there is Kosovo among selectable countries? Does it count as diplomatic recognition from GOG?
Posted February 07, 2011
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Vitek: Hm, there is Kosovo among selectable countries? Does it count as diplomatic recognition from GOG?
Yeah it's there. But Tibet isn't :(
Posted February 09, 2011
I guess you can rightfully call me nerd from now on ;), but I wanted to find out more data about the claim made by the original poster, that GOG is a multinational community.

So I thought I could analyze the GOG website. Here is how I spent some of my free time in the last days:

I first downloaded a static copy of all html files on gog.com/en/forum with some restrictions (e.g. no files having string "post" in the filename) using the free software httrack resulting at average speed of 10kB/s in a download of about 3 GB and some hours waiting time. Then writing a less than 100 lines MatLab (Mathworks, Natick, MA - Oh, how I would love to work there, only my family probably wouldn't move...) function that parses all html files having "page" in the file name (this is an unique criteria for all forum threads), identifying name and country of poster according to unique html tags, adding all to a list, finding unique names, making a histogram of corresponding countries and displaying the results. MatLab makes all this extremely simple.

But enough of the self praise. Some words of caution are appropriate.

Warning: I might not have gathered a representative subset of all forum threads or my programm might have make a mistake. Also the online community might be substantially different from the general customer base of GOG, so conclusions might be wrong. And the displayed nationality might not be the real nationality, as there are examples for this.

Anyway, here are the results:

65017 html files found
19279 unique posters
from 145 unique countries
United States with 8986 posters (46.6%)
United Kingdom with 1734 posters (9.0%)
Canada with 1190 posters (6.2%)
Australia with 791 posters (4.1%)
Germany with 608 posters (3.2%)
Poland with 592 posters (3.1%)
Finland with 435 posters (2.3%)
Sweden with 392 posters (2.0%)
France with 381 posters (2.0%)
Norway with 367 posters (1.9%)
Netherlands with 285 posters (1.5%)
Italy with 268 posters (1.4%)
Czech Republic with 235 posters (1.2%)
Brazil with 233 posters (1.2%)
Denmark with 220 posters (1.1%)
Spain with 203 posters (1.1%)
Belgium with 160 posters (0.8%)
New Zealand with 153 posters (0.8%)
Hungary with 130 posters (0.7%)
Romania with 114 posters (0.6%)
Ireland with 109 posters (0.6%)
Portugal with 102 posters (0.5%)
Russian Federation with 93 posters (0.5%)
Greece with 78 posters (0.4%)
South Africa with 78 posters (0.4%)
Singapore with 76 posters (0.4%)
Austria with 68 posters (0.4%)
Slovakia with 66 posters (0.3%)
Turkey with 65 posters (0.3%)
Japan with 64 posters (0.3%)
Croatia with 63 posters (0.3%)
Israel with 62 posters (0.3%)
Switzerland with 57 posters (0.3%)
Mexico with 45 posters (0.2%)
Philippines with 45 posters (0.2%)
Slovenia with 45 posters (0.2%)
Argentina with 41 posters (0.2%)
Malaysia with 38 posters (0.2%)
India with 34 posters (0.2%)
Serbia with 30 posters (0.2%)
Estonia with 25 posters (0.1%)
Bulgaria with 24 posters (0.1%)
China, Republic of with 24 posters (0.1%)
Lithuania with 24 posters (0.1%)
Iceland with 23 posters (0.1%)
China, People's Republic of with 21 posters (0.1%)
Ukraine with 21 posters (0.1%)
Hong Kong with 16 posters (0.1%)
Korea, Republic of with 16 posters (0.1%)
Latvia with 16 posters (0.1%)
Puerto Rico with 16 posters (0.1%)
Indonesia with 15 posters (0.1%)
Chile with 14 posters (0.1%)
Thailand with 13 posters (0.1%)
United Arab Emirates with 10 posters (0.1%)
Barbados with 9 posters (0.0%)
Colombia with 9 posters (0.0%)
Costa Rica with 9 posters (0.0%)
Mauritius with 9 posters (0.0%)
Uruguay with 9 posters (0.0%)
Afghanistan with 8 posters (0.0%)
Macao with 8 posters (0.0%)
Peru with 8 posters (0.0%)
Vietnam with 8 posters (0.0%)
Faroe Islands with 7 posters (0.0%)
Bahrain with 6 posters (0.0%)
Malta with 6 posters (0.0%)
Bosnia and Herzegovina with 5 posters (0.0%)
Cyprus with 5 posters (0.0%)
Kazakhstan with 5 posters (0.0%)
Luxembourg with 5 posters (0.0%)
Netherlands Antilles with 5 posters (0.0%)
United States Virgin Islands with 5 posters (0.0%)
Bahamas with 4 posters (0.0%)
Belarus with 4 posters (0.0%)
Jordan with 4 posters (0.0%)
Pakistan with 4 posters (0.0%)
Panama with 4 posters (0.0%)
Venezuela with 4 posters (0.0%)
Western Sahara with 4 posters (0.0%)
Andorra with 3 posters (0.0%)
Anguilla with 3 posters (0.0%)
Azerbaijan with 3 posters (0.0%)
Bolivia with 3 posters (0.0%)
British Virgin Islands with 3 posters (0.0%)
Cayman Islands with 3 posters (0.0%)
Ecuador with 3 posters (0.0%)
Egypt with 3 posters (0.0%)
Guatemala with 3 posters (0.0%)
Kuwait with 3 posters (0.0%)
Liechtenstein with 3 posters (0.0%)
Macedonia with 3 posters (0.0%)
Moldova with 3 posters (0.0%)
Saudi Arabia with 3 posters (0.0%)
Albania with 2 posters (0.0%)
American Samoa with 2 posters (0.0%)
Antigua and Barbuda with 2 posters (0.0%)
Bangladesh with 2 posters (0.0%)
Bermuda with 2 posters (0.0%)
Botswana with 2 posters (0.0%)
Cambodia with 2 posters (0.0%)
Dominican Republic with 2 posters (0.0%)
Gibraltar with 2 posters (0.0%)
Guam with 2 posters (0.0%)
Iran, Islamic Republic Of with 2 posters (0.0%)
Iraq with 2 posters (0.0%)
Isle of Man with 2 posters (0.0%)
Kenya with 2 posters (0.0%)
Sri Lanka with 2 posters (0.0%)
Trinidad and Tobago with 2 posters (0.0%)
Vatican City with 2 posters (0.0%)
Zimbabwe with 2 posters (0.0%)
Algeria with 1 posters (0.0%)
Aruba with 1 posters (0.0%)
Baker Island with 1 posters (0.0%)
Belize with 1 posters (0.0%)
Brunei with 1 posters (0.0%)
Burundi with 1 posters (0.0%)
Chad with 1 posters (0.0%)
Congo, Democratic Republic of with 1 posters (0.0%)
Cote d'Ivoire with 1 posters (0.0%)
Dominica with 1 posters (0.0%)
Gabon with 1 posters (0.0%)
Georgia with 1 posters (0.0%)
Greenland with 1 posters (0.0%)
Honduras with 1 posters (0.0%)
Jamaica with 1 posters (0.0%)
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of with 1 posters (0.0%)
Lebanon with 1 posters (0.0%)
Libya with 1 posters (0.0%)
Martinique with 1 posters (0.0%)
Midway Atoll with 1 posters (0.0%)
Morocco with 1 posters (0.0%)
Mozambique with 1 posters (0.0%)
New Caledonia with 1 posters (0.0%)
Nigeria with 1 posters (0.0%)
Palestinian territories with 1 posters (0.0%)
Papua New Guinea with 1 posters (0.0%)
Qatar with 1 posters (0.0%)
Seychelles with 1 posters (0.0%)
Syria with 1 posters (0.0%)
Tunisia with 1 posters (0.0%)
Uzbekistan with 1 posters (0.0%)
Vanuatu with 1 posters (0.0%)
Wake Island with 1 posters (0.0%)

One can see that the online community consists of only 34% of non US/UK/Canada/Australia members. And among these are mostly European countries.

Whether this is regarded as unusually international or above average... depends how you want to see it - no right or wrong there.

I am also posting in rather completely germanophone forums and so, from my experience not every forum in the world consists exclusively of English speakers. So I would say: the GOG community is a partly international community with strong concentration on US/UK/Canada and minor emphasis on Europe.

And interestingly enough, in an international community such as here, it seems to be difficult to find other languages than english. What do I learn from this? Instead of learning another language (queria aprender espagnol) it's more useful to bring my english to perfection.
Posted February 09, 2011
@Trilarion that was very interesting to see some stats well done :)
Posted February 09, 2011
@ nerd trilarion
very nice done and indeed interesting. It also fits with a statement from gog that 50% of the sales are from the USA.
Post edited February 09, 2011 by DukeNukemForever
Posted February 09, 2011
Nicely done, Trilarion! and you've got a great english too, by the way! I know many german gamers from Steam, vent, warcraft III, and so on...and only one I have met so far, has had what you might call "admirable" english skills. If your prounciation is as flawless as your spelling and vocabulary, you're number one! ^^
Posted February 09, 2011
So... first four countries make for 66% of users here and all of them are english speaking. Not so multinational and multilingual after all.

Great work, Trilarion.

Apologies to 68 Austrian user for overlooking them.

And great work fellow Czechs, we are the second most numerous slavic country here, but Poland is much more populous so we won. ;-)
Posted February 09, 2011
lol . . . hope that was copy and paste data . . . =)
Posted February 09, 2011
Great info!
However IIRC accounts with country of origin like China (and some Carribean countries) were mostly used for spamming. At least I don't remember any Chinese non-spammer.
Posted February 09, 2011
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bansama: Most communities don't display where you are from. So unless you ask users, you wouldn't actually have a clue of any kind of ratio.
From my past experience with a large PS3 forum that will remain nameless (for fear that I allow even one more poor human to be victimised by the narcissistic admins) with over 2,000 active members, that was almost all English speaking. GOG.com is certainly the most multicultural gaming site I've ever come across.

I'd guess that it's down to the globally priced, hard to obtain old games. It's a pretty big draw.
Posted February 09, 2011
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Trilarion:
that's really nice work ... you should totally make a GOG map of the world with all the countries with GOG players filled in - you can color code it by percentages. :)

I agree it would be nice if we knew GOG's official numbers (at least percentages) for each country, but I applaud the work here. Although some of these may be spoof accounts ... after all DPRK (North Korea) is on here which seems implausible, perhaps not impossible, but implausible.
Post edited February 09, 2011 by crazy_dave
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General discussion (archive)How does GOG manage to be so multinational?(74 posts)(74 posts)
(74 posts)