Which continent has more RP gamers?

[Bullgrit]

How would you rank the Earthly continents in order of most RP gamers to least RP gamers?

What got me thinking about this was the conversation in the thread about the 80s being a Golden Age combined with just recently looking up information on Antartica.

Normally, one would put Antartica at the bottom of any list ranking the number of people for anything, but consider this:

Antartica is home to up to 5,000 scientists mostly trapped inside all day. (Read: 5,000 nerds living in God's basement.) Compare this to Africa -- 1 billion, mostly outdoorsy, active-types with more to worry about than how to keep entertained for the next six months. Which continent is likely to have more D&D games going on at any given moment?

Bullgrit

 

[Plane Sailing]

Unless you are thinking of 'proportion of population playing RPGs' I don't think that there is any way that Antarctica is going to forfeit its bottom spot in the list!

 

[DaveyJones]

i'm gonna say Asia only b/c of the gold farming done in india and china for WoW.

 

[Mercurius]

If we're talking about tabletop RPGs, then:

1. North America
2. Europe
3. Asia
4. Australia/Oceania
5. South America
6. Africa
7. Antarctica

North America and Europe would be the clear top two (although possibly switched), and Asia almost certainly in third; Africa and Antarctica should be on the bottom of the list; the only question I would have is whether there are more players in Australia or South America.

 

[jeffh]

Portuguese is, or used to be, the first language a D&D product would be translated into... not because of Portugal, but because of Brazil, where the game apparently took off in a particularly huge way. So I would guess South America is pretty significant.

I doubt all that much tabletop play, at least proportionately, goes on on the Asian mainland, WOW notwithstanding. I know D&D isn't so big there and the only Asian country I'm aware of a significant home-grown tabletop game from is Japan. That doesn't mean others don't exist but it does suggest their impact has been limited. Also, in much of the continent the socioeconomic factors aren't much more favorable than in Africa (of course both have some significant exceptions and Asia has more).

 

[Umbran]

Unless you are thinking of 'proportion of population playing RPGs' I don't think that there is any way that Antarctica is going to forfeit its bottom spot in the list!

Oh, I'm sure there are several legions of them, frozen in the Antarctic ice since the early Miocene period.

 

[haakon1]

How would you rank the Earthly continents in order of most RP gamers to least RP gamers?

I did a poll on this here. (Yes, yes, I know, but not all polls are blatantly screwed up by hackers.) I don't remember all the answers, but I remember most were US, Canada, or Western European.

I had Antarctica as a choice, and nobody picked it -- like you, I guessed there would be some gamers down there.

In general, I've noticed lots of posts from Australia/New Zealand, and from Brazil and Singapore.

I suspect other LATAM countries have gamers, but Brazil seems to be the leader.

Besides Singapore, most of Asia seems to be a dead zone (0 responses in my poll, and I don't remember posters with other Asian countries as their Location). I also tried to search for Chinese versions of D&D (my wife is Singaporean and speaks Chinese), but we couldn't find any. The Rouse answered my question about that (he's a good guy) and I THINK he said there isn't one yet, but there might be in future . . .

So far as I can tell, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe also seem devoid of gamers. I would expect gamers exist in Israel, South Africa, and some of the computer science-focused CEE countries -- like the Baltics and Romania -- but I can't recall ever seeing someone mention being in those countries or having it in their Location.

 

[Echohawk]

So far as I can tell, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe also seem devoid of gamers. I would expect gamers exist in Israel, South Africa, and some of the computer science-focused CEE countries -- like the Baltics and Romania -- but I can't recall ever seeing someone mention being in those countries or having it in their Location.

I can assure you that Africa is not devoid of gamers!

 

[haakon1]

I can assure you that Africa is not devoid of gamers!

Sorry, I didn't notice you before!

Do you know gamers in countries outside South Africa? Namibia and Botswana wouldn't surprise me (given proximity to South Africa), but the rest, I dunno.

BTW, somebody prove me wrong about not seeing gamers here from Israel and Eastern Europe. There's just GOTTA be some, right?

 

[Orius]

I can assure you that Africa is not devoid of gamers!

You posted before I could mention that there's at least one person here who's posted from South Africa. I would even hazard a guess that there may be enough gamers in South Africa to outnumber any researchers in Antarctica who spend their free time on RPGs. But I would imagine that there aren't many RPers from elsewhere in Africa.

BTW, somebody prove me wrong about not seeing gamers here from Israel and Eastern Europe. There's just GOTTA be some, right?

Yair has Israel listed as a location, johnsemlak posts from Russia, and I'm sure there are some people from Eastern Europe.

As for gamer density by population, I wouldn' be surprised if Asia did top the list. There's probably enough gamers in eastern Asia to top the list, though if not, I'd say the numbers for North America, Europe, and Asia are probably close.

I might be completely and utterly wrong too.