Basketball GM and world domination

The Internet is a wonderful thing. Basketball nerds from all over the world can enjoy Basketball GM.

But where do these basketball nerds come from? On a whim, I wondered if it was possible that there are Basketball GM users in every country in the world. Crazy right? Turns out yeah, is not fully worldwide yet. But it's pretty close!

First of all, there is no single definition of "country", so I'm using a fairly conservative list: the UN member states. That's 193 countries.

Basketball GM has been played by someone in 187 of the 193 countries in the world. That's pretty good!

The vast majority of users come from the USA. Canada, Australia, and the UK are well represented, probably due to their size and common language. The basketball-crazy Philippines lags the UK a bit in total users, but surpasses it in number of seasons simulated.

At the other end of the list, there are small numbers of users from many tiny and/or impovrished countries like Samoa, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, Vanuatu, Tonga, South Sudan, etc.

The six countries where Basketball GM has not yet been played are:

North Korea is much bigger than those other countries, but it lacks things like Internet access or even electricity for most people. Even so, given the popularity of basketball in North Korea, I have to believe that somebody has played Basketball GM. Maybe even the Supreme Leader himself! It could be that Google Analytics simply doesn't store data from North Korea, or maybe North Korea has Google completely blocked.

Besides that... these are just some tiny, tiny countries. My dream of having Basketball GM users in every country is probably far away. But 187 is not bad!

Update, 2021-02-22: Since the original blog post, there have been users from Palau and North Korea! Only 4 countries remain...

Update, 2021-06-25: Kiribati is now crossed off the list too! Only 3 countries left.

Update, 2024-05-07: Got a user from Nauru! Only 2 countries left!