The “why” behind the numbers, asked of gamers themselves.
Market share and rankings only show you the outcome. What a business decision really needs is the reason behind it: why gamers chose a brand, and where it still falls short of what they wanted.
2016
Running since
11,718
Responses, latest survey
72,062
Open-ended comments, latest survey
~99%
Valid response rate, latest survey
Who runs it
Close to gamers, every day
Gamers Census is run by JILCH Inc. Working this close to gamers every day is why candid answers come to us.
jilch.net
Operator
JILCH Inc.
Runs Gamers Census. Under the banner "Company of the FPS game lovers", we work across media, marketing and research.
Delivered together with IGN Japan, our media and sales partner
Gamers Census has asked Japanese gamers for those reasons almost every year since 2016, and the survey starting in 2026 will be its 10th edition. We go directly to core gamers and ask what devices they use, which games they love and how they rate the brands they buy.
Rarely measured
Games are now one of Japan's major cultural industries. Yet what the gamers at its center actually use, what satisfies them and what disappoints them is measured surprisingly rarely.
Missing from the room
Sales figures and global aggregates are easy to find. The candid view of Japan's core gamers seldom reaches the room where brand decisions are made, so product teams and marketers are left making big calls on a hunch.
Facts, not guesses
We believe it is worth shining a steady light on that gap: building up gamers' voices as facts rather than guesses, and turning them into common ground the whole industry can stand on.
Make the unknown known.That is why we keep doing this.
Principles
Four habits we keep coming back to
We aim to help both gamers and the companies that serve them grow, and to be fair and honest with each. Here is how we keep to that in day-to-day research.
Gamers are more than numbers.
Every response is a real gamer's experience. We care not only about the totals but about why each person answered the way they did. That is why we read every open-ended comment instead of discarding any.
The harder the finding, the more directly we say it.
A report full of flattering numbers leads to bad decisions. Metrics that fall short of expectations and areas where a competitor is ahead get the same attention as strengths. That is what makes the data usable.
Data takes time.
One year of numbers is a single point. Value appears when the same questions are asked year after year and the direction of change becomes clear. We choose a trustworthy time series over short-term buzz.
Neutrality is a practice, not a position.
Declaring that we take no sides is not enough. Fair data only comes from applying the same standards to question design, tabulation and presentation, every single survey.
Why you can rely on it
Numbers you can use with confidence
So you can use the numbers with confidence, we pay close attention to the foundations of the survey.
2016onward
A long-running survey
It began as a small survey of about two thousand people. Even as questions were added, the responses kept growing.
10,000+
Core gamers' voices
Respondents are core gamers willing to work through detailed questions only an enthusiast could answer, which reveals how brands and categories really perform and how strongly gamers feel about them.
70,000+
Every comment, too
70,000+ open-ended comments a year. Scores alone cannot tell you why a rating is what it is; gamers' own words can.
All figures are from the latest survey.
Protecting respondents
To everyone who answered
This survey cannot exist without the gamers who take it. So the first thing we decided was that no respondent should ever be disadvantaged by taking part.
Answers kept apart from contact detailsThe response data we analyze contains no names, contact details or exact addresses. The email address or social account you may give us for the prize draw is stored separately and deleted for every entrant once the prizes have shipped.
Numbers are aggregates onlyAggregates are only released for groups of at least 30 respondents (N≥30), so no individual can be inferred.
Comments in their own words, with attributesOpen-ended comments are read by subscribing companies in the original wording, alongside age group, gender and prefecture. We never attach names or contact details, and we withhold any comment containing a URL, email address or social media handle. When we quote comments in articles, we edit out proper nouns.
The details are set out in Article 10 (anonymization of survey response data) of our privacy policy (Japanese).
Sponsorship
Sponsorship, not advertising
Gamers Census is not advertising space. Sponsoring it means joining those who keep one honest yardstick alive for the industry. That is how we see it.
What sponsors get back
Keeping a neutral survey running year after year depends on companies willing to support it. In return, sponsors get the highest-resolution view of how gamers see their brand, and a place among those growing the market itself.
Results never move
That is exactly why sponsorship never changes the results. If it did, the yardstick would lose its value, and so would the support. Protecting our neutrality is the most honest thing we can do for the companies behind us.
The survey started with a narrow set of topics. It now reaches across devices, game titles, esports, streaming and gamers' everyday lives, and keeps widening.
Devices
Game titles
Esports
Streaming
Gamers' everyday lives
Our aim is to be the first place people look when they want to understand gamers in Japan: a record the whole industry can use, not one company's opinion or a one-year study.
