A Geek Census?
If you have wondered why there are so many adults flocking on the street with Nintendo DS in their hands, here is your answer: Dragon Quest 9. The new sequel was released early summer in Japan and its wireless feature has changed the way people interact with games and other players.
The feature is called Surechigai Tsushin, the passer-by transmission, and enables the players to exchange characters, maps, and items within the game. The transaction is taking place all over Japan, and we know this statistically: Square Enix, the company which produced the game, released the information they have collected as Population Census. Based on this there has been over 15 million characters exchanged in Tokyo prefecture. Even in one of the least populated and aging prefecture Shimane, they found 41,000 characters exchanged in past two and a half months.
I visited the website, however, at moment I do not see too much data that seem to reveal more than the popularity of characters and killed monsters. I hope in future this could turn out to be something that would reveal something more fundamental about players’ behaviors and motivations.
