世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com published the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research into online gaming. At the start of October 1,079 members of their monitor panel successfully completed a private internet survey; 44.5% of the sample were male, 2.4% were in their teens, 21.0% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 23.4% in their forties, and 9.6% in their fifties.

One thing I’m not sure of for this survey is whether online games means just massive multiplayer ones or whether it covers smaller games like first-person shooters, or simple card games through Yahoo! and the like.

I never got into trading as I felt it was a waste of money and felt to me as cheating. I didn’t have too much of a problem with buying gold, but when it felt that there were more people interested in farming items for selling either in-game or outside of the game it lost much of its charm.

Q1: Have you ever played an online game? (Sample size=1,079)

Yes, within the last three months (to SQs)	21.7%
Yes, but not within the last three months (to Q2)	20.1%
No (to finish)	58.2%

Q1SQ1: About how much per month do you pay for online gaming? (Sample size=234)

	Votes	Percentage
Only play free games	179	76.5%
Up to 1,000 yen	24	10.2%
1,000 to 2,000 yen	17	7.3%
2,000 to 3,000 yen	9	3.8%
3,000 to 4,000 yen	4	1.7%
4,000 to 5,000 yen	0	0.0%
Over 5,000 yen	1	0.4%

Q1SQ2: For about how long do you play online every week? (Sample size=234)

Less than an hour	36.8%
Between one and three hours	36.8%
Between three and five hours	13.2%
Between five and ten hours	6.0%
More than ten hours	7.3%

Q2: Real Money Trade, RMT, is buying and selling game items or currency outside the game environment for real money. What do you think about this? (Sample size=451)

Agree	7.5%
Agree, depending on conditions	25.3%
Disagree	38.1%
Don’t know	29.0%

Reasons for supporting RMT included that earning money is a hook to keep one playing, it looks like a money-maker, adds something extra to the game, it’s no problem if others want to do it, and it’s one part of making friends in the game. Reasons for opposing it included bringing real money into the game causes problems, wanting the game to be clearly separated from real-world issues, makes the game more savage, makes it difficult to keep the online and offline worlds separate, and that it’s unfair that rich people will have an advantage. For those favouring RMT with conditions, the reasons given included that as long as there was age restrictions it wasn’t a problem, the trading should be carried out according to some defined contract, and if one thought of it as just buying time, then it was OK.