Gaming Goes International
Looking to expand, geographically or product-wise? Online gaming is a natural, and increasingly an international natural.
One game alone (World of Warcraft, from Blizzard Entertainment) has garnered “over $100 million in each of several different markets — in its first year alone.” (Source: DFC Intelligence via eMarketer.) When you see that, you know you are dealing with something that has gone beyond huge potential. It’s arrived.
That market, like most online products, is expanding in an already healthy arena — the United Kingdom, or as many Americans would mis-label it, England. (The UK encompasses several nation-states and territories.)
As an American, I have some hope of convincing the English that we speak the same language. (One does have to be careful about some differences in swear words, I admit.)
Fortunately, that language barrier is largely absent in games, where the emphasis is on action and visuals. Americans and Brits may disagree passionately about the proper temperature of beer, but they mostly agree on how hot is this or that new game.
And gaming, despite some appearances to the contrary, is no longer (if it ever was) predominately the province of male teens. Gaming today is enjoyed as often by thirtysomethings and up as it is by those under 20.
It’s also gender neutral. Or, more accurately, gender encompassing. Females comprise roughly the same percentage in gaming as they do in the population, i.e. half. Despite the heavy emphasis in many games on guns and gams (that’s a ’30s-’50s pulp-novel term for women’s legs), females are at those consoles as much as males.
There’s one other country where adventurous affiliates might travel, electronically speaking: Finland.
The Finns are at or near the top of every list of Internet and digital technology. A country of over 5 million (1.7 million male, 1.7 female between 15-64), it’s squeezed between Sweden and Russia. Despite being located between those two, Finland has a largely free-market economy. And it has a 100% literacy rate.
(Linus Torvolds, progenitor of Linux and born in Helsinki, probably can’t be credited with the enormous growth of Internet use in Finland. But he did create a Pac Man clone, so that didn’t hurt.)
Best of all for English-based sites everywhere, the Finns — like most individuals of Europe — are proficient in the native tongue of England. So they have an equal chance of understanding Americans. About equal to American gamers themselves, who sometimes find it challenging.