Counting MMOG Subscribers

For single-player games, the most objective measure of popularity has always been sales figures. When it comes to multiplayer games, however, sales figures by themselves aren't enough: people also want to know how active the game is at the current moment, and many who purchase a game will stop playing it for one reason or another. Subscriber numbers are generally used to evaluate how many people are participating in an online world, but these numbers are not always easy to establish. We have to rely on information released by the companies running the games, and they don't all count subscribers the same way. In Korea, for example, its not unusual for people to play online games at a cafe using a time card. Do they count as subscribers? Terra Nova has posted an interesting article discussing how subscriber numbers are calculated, and how they might be inflated in some cases to make a game look more popular than it really is.
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