BuzzerBeater Forums

Piri, I'm not even going to respond to your commentary, as it's so poorly informed and almost offensively presented. Actually... not even "almost".

Japan has people on the net, money, and about 5 times the population of the biggest European BuzzerBeater nations.

One thing many Japanese don't have is freetime, working Japanese...work a lot. Long hard hours.

But we have colleges, we have housewives, we have kids that live with their parents till they pass away, we have geeks, lots and lots of geeks.

We have people that might be interested in playing this game, or atleast trying it. Thousands easily hsould be able to be drawn through the turnstiles. Maybe only hundreds will stick. Or maybe thousands who knows.

Japan's user numbers make it similar to other nations like Bahamas in BB, but in the world and economically, its more like the Canada or Australia. Its a big nation with money.

Unfortunately, (well fortunately is some regards I guess) BB is not run nor managemed professionally, it is not treated like a business...and for that reason it doesn't have as much success as it would were it treated and managed like a proper business.

Business sense would dictate a strong push in Japan to grab up supporting users, paying customers. And to establish a good user base for selling adds.

So glad Wolph brought up these points. Except, Japan's population is far, far greater than that of Canada or Australia - the possibilities that exist in this nation for this to succeed are huge. If only...

I am interested geniunely to find out what kind of adds I will see when my supporter runs out. I want to see if they got any good Japanese sponsor or anything.

I believe that they are using Adsense, which is one of the most incredibly inefficient ways for a website to make money off advertising. They need to get out there and negotiate this themselves, which is highly unlikely. There's very little activity within the game itself, I can't see there being a lot outside of it. Kinda besides the point, but it all points to an unwillingness (for whatever reasons) to expand in non-traditional BB nations.

España Active Teams: 4239
Nippon Active Teams: 34

best thing is to try & promote the game & get more users really with about 100 the game would work fine

maybe in the offseason so they all start with new teams @ the start when rookies are cheap to buy & they dont look at a horrible record have some sort of promotion in japan on all the local websites that cover bball

More numbers that you really should consider:
España population: 46,030,109
Nippon population: 127,960,000

It's the 10th biggest country in the world, and those within the 18-35 age bracket have an incredibly high disposable income, and most have more than enough time to spare for a game such as BB.
As Wolph said: Japan's a cashcow, could be huge. But currently? The community is probably at least 60% expats from English-speaking nations. There's been no effort at all to expand the game here in any way, shape or form.
Worse still, the majority of the few teams that do join up get put into a situation that almost guarantees they'll leave within their first month in BB.
Such a shame...

Japan has people on the net, money, and about 5 times the population of the biggest European BuzzerBeater nations.

Just to correct the facts a bit, it is more like 3 times. I assume Italy, Spain, and Poland are among the biggest European BB nations. Italy has a population of close to 50% of Japan. Spain and Poland are slightly smaller, but they are among the big European countries anyway. Only Russia (majority European), Germany, France and the UK are larger than Italy. I think Ukraine may be pretty close to Spain in size. Russia is anyway the only European country with a population larger than Japan.

You're kinda splitting hairs when it comes to the point at hand. Wolph's point remains valid: Japan has the population, economy, and the means to be many times vaster than the 20-30 users it currently has.

I simply corrected a fact. I was not arguing the point in any way whatsoever.

I simply corrected a fact. I was not arguing the point in any way whatsoever.

You are hardly adding anything constructive or do you want to turn this into a thread of 'whats the capital of....'

I think the point has been made - its now whether or not its valid to warrant any time & energy to re-jig the way in which promotions/demotions are shared out.

There have been a few different attempts to lure in new users in Japan (one of which was me agreeing to tank purposely - joke)...... maybe its just a market that prefers alternative ways of getting their kicks.

Correct me if I´m wrong but isn´t the Japanese market alot about Graphic Interfaces, highest technology concepts and plenty of "instant entertainment" other than long term "text adventure" feelings? Is basketball of any significance in the Japan observation of current sports? Nothing added to the discussion, pure curiousity.

You are hardly adding anything constructive or do you want to turn this into a thread of 'whats the capital of....'

Look, I simply corrected a fact and I am happy to leave it at that. I am not the one introducing capital cities to the discussion. And this will be my last post on this topic.

Obv you cant live without having said the last word...

Imo Japan could be one of the major countries in this game, especially considering the high standard of income I think there is a lot potential for selling supporter packages.

Basketball is huge in Spain and Italy, how big is it in Japan ?

Anyway I think it's more about gaming culture and trends.
It's known Spain is very much into internet gaming for several reasons, it doesn't come as a surprise it is the largest community here.

Outside of internet infrastructures or lifestyles, Europe has a developed market for management games of the BB's type lead by the famous Football Manager serie.
The USA, for exemple, has a long history of fantasy team games which were almost non-existent in Europe until recently and that style of games is much more popular than FM clones.
I'd suspect Japan is closer to the USA in term of gaming trends and is more familiar with fantasy teams and as seelenjaeger said Japan simply plays other types of games as part of its gaming culture.

There are many things to consider, the UK have a large internet gaming community but basketball is non-existent in the UK and they are small on BB despite being the birthplace of the game genre.

Poland is another singular exemple, basketball is only moderately big there (our Polish members will contest this ;p) but very much into internet, I remember a study showing that Poland had the highest number of searches by searchers in Europe ahead of the UK which came as a surprise to me. Poland has a fast growing internet market and maybe BB is a witness of that as I don't remember Poland being amongst the largest communities only a couple of years ago.
Philippines users number stands out on BB probably for the fast growing market too.

Lithuania has a small population, only a few millions, but basketball being by far the major sport, it is reflected on BB. Greece and Turkey are two other exemples showing that the popularity of basketball in a country will draw users towards BB.
Germany, on the other hand, where interest in basketball is mild has a disappointing community size.

So... many many things to consider...