From: Andrew Okun ENI NET> Date: 4 mar 2000 Subject: Re: The number of potential shogi players(Was:Re: The number of I have some observations on this discussion. I think we can take the population of "registered" or frequent chess players, multiply it by some percentage and come up with a number of shogi players we can hope to recruit from that. I don't think the same can be done for casual players for a couple of reasons. One is motivation. The registered or frequent chess player sees a continuing value in game playing in general and is willing to put some time into learning to play a game well. When presented with a new game, if they get past the ordinary reluctance and can be sold on the game, they will not be afraid of learning to play it and will try to play it well. The same cannot be said for casual chess players. Almost all of the casual chess players I have tried to turn on to shogi have balked at the learning curve; they have little enough time for games as it is, and even with the easy handicapping, they'd rather play a game they know. Think of it in terms of marginal value and pre-emption. Even if shogi is a better game, they already know a serious and intriguing board game and the value of learning a second one to the casual player is not worth the time; the ubiquity of chess -- which paves the way for shogi among serious players -- pre-empts shogi among casual players. Another is the mechanism or timing of recruiting a casual player. The serious player learns chess via books, clubs and tournaments. Even if they play with friends and family for fun, the game as they ultimately know it is learned at these organized activities. Hence serious chess players can be made into serious shogi players with clubs, tournaments and books. Casual players are made by playing with family and friends as children, reinforced by familiarity with the game from popular culture. A western child learns about chess as part of learning its own language, which -- at least in the case of English and probably many other languages -- has adopted the imagery and vocabulary of chess nearly in its entirity. By a young age, it has seen innumerable depictions of chess being played and chess players being admired on TV, in films and so on. Chess champions are international news. It has seen family members play and wanted to join in. The typical casual player is made by playing with a parent or older sibling, enjoys the game, maybe even dabbles in a club, but not for long. Then that casual player teaches his or her own children. The hundreds of millions of people who play chess from time to time are the product of decades or centuries of infiltration of the game into the culture, gently stoked by clubs, books and tournaments. I imagine that the ubiquity of shogi in Japan evolved in a similar way. That is not to say that it need take centuries for a game to become widely known and popular; Monopoly became widely played and its vocabularly made part of English in only a few years. But Monopoly was not spread by clubs, tournaments and books; it was spread by aggressive marketing by its owner. Nor will shogi have 30 million ex-Japan players anytime in our lifetimes because of tournaments, clubs and books. That will expand the audience, but very slowly, particularly without the support of popular culture. My kids are learning shogi and, if they enjoy it, they may even teach their kids, but that isn't the speed we are aiming at. Active non-Japanese shogi players may be numbered in the hundreds. To make one new player, even a casual one, takes at least a few hours for one of those players. That new player will only join the population of shoi players if there are lots of other people to play with. Here are my recommendations. 1. Do everything to put shogi into the mainstream eye. That is, when having a tournament, tell every local daily and weekly newspaper, both for their events calendars, sports reporters and photographers. Also, contact television and radio stations. Put up signs and posters advertising the venues. Ideally, have the tournaments in as public a place as possible. If it is at a hotel, ask if you can have some of the games going on in the lobbies. Ask a local shopping mall if you can have the game in their common areas. Hold the game in a public park with the maximum foot traffic. The same for club meetings, shopping malls, parks and hotel lobbies, donut shops, Starbucks. When there is a national tournament, notify the national press -- the New York Times, Reuters, AP -- not Chess Monthly. Consider a Businesswire release. 2. Make shogi easily played. List every club meeting in the local papers and make them open to all. Get as many game sites on the Internet to support shogi as possible. A few months back, when I suggested we campaign to have Yahoo! Games support shogi, I received a very tepid response along the lines that the existing sites were good and we shouldn't undermine them. They are good enough for us perhaps, but if we are trying to coin new players, we should be using the top outlets to do so. If we create 30 million casual players ex-Japan, the existing sites will not consider themselves undermined in any sense. 3. Create after-school programs for kids and clubs for college students. This is the time of life when people are most receptive to learning games they don't already know from their families. If your college doesn't have a shogi club, start one. Put up posters and announcements, bring three or four boards and some print-outs on how to play and wait. If you get to a dozen players, call the campus paper for them to come and take a picture. 4. Publishing should lead, not follow. I offered a month or two ago to do short run publishing of any shogi books people knew of. I got a few suggestions, but it never went anywhere. If somebody gives me a translated copy of any of those 50 books a year, any out of print stuff, any public domain stuff in English or any quality unpublished manuscripts, I'll print it up, legalities allowing. Here's an idea. Let's take one of the newer shogi software packages and offer both Microsoft and Apple free use to put a "starter edition" on every new computer. Anybody know any folks at those companies? Remember, evangelism is shameless. Andy Okun > -----Original Message----- > From: The Shogi Discussion List > [mailto:SHOGI-L TECHUNIX TECHNION AC IL]On Behalf Of Manabu, Terao > Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 7:02 AM > To: SHOGI-L TECHUNIX TECHNION AC IL > Subject: The number of potential shogi players(Was:Re: The number of > chess players) > > > Thanks for Dr. Danerud, Jonathan, Marc, Alexander & and anyone > that replied me directly and sorry for not responding quickly > and one by one. > > As to the number of casual chess players, > The highest number is given by Alexander - everybody know rules(In Russia) > The lowest is given by Dr. Danerud - 1% of Total World Population > Interesting estimation is given by Jonathan - 50 times as many as > registered players > > But Let me use Marc's number(Casual Player - 5% of population) > and apply it to worldwide. Now the population on this planet is > 6 billion. Then the number of casual chess player in the world is > to be 300 million. If 10% of them become shogi player, there will > be 30 million shogi player outside Japan. It sounds like just a > dream, but let me continue a bit. > > According to the latest survey conducted by "Yoka Kaihatsu Center" > (Literally, Leasure Developping Center, I'm not sure this is the > correct translation of the organization), the number of shogi > players who play at least one game a year in Japan is 10.6% of > the people aged at 15 year old or older which means 11.4 million > persons. (It's rather difficult to have the number of 'registered ' > shogi player in Japan since we don't usually use the concept of > 'registered' and 'casual'.) They have 11.9 occasions to play shogi > per year and they expense 600yen(Approx. US$6.00 or Euro6.00) for > shogi equipment and 700yen for entry fee or so per head a year on > average. The expense does not seem to contain paying for shogi > contents such as books, magazines, TV programs, computer programs > or so. More than 50 new books on shogi are published every year. > One weekly commercial paper(Shukan Shogi) and three monthly commercial > magazines(ShogiSekai, Kindai Shogi & NHK Shogi Textbook) survive. > One CS TV channel specializes in shogi & go to broadcast shogi/go > programs from morning to evening. This is the reality in Japan based > on the number of the 11.4 million persons who play at least a game > a year. > > If the consensus is made that the shogi population outside Japan > will sooner or later reach 30 million, almost all shogi contents > are motivated to be translate into Western languages such as English > since the market size outside Japan is 3 times as large as that of > Japan which translation must pay. > > As to price issue of standard shogi set raised by Dr. Danerud, I will > spread your recognition to whomever I find necessary to do so. > > Regards > Manabu Terao > > > > > Get your FREE, private e-mail account at http://mailcity.lycos.ne.jp >