Second Life pwns Gordon Freeman, Warhammer Online, others
by Tateru Nino 
May 7th 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, EVE Online, MMO industry, Warhammer Online, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Wagner James Au at New World Notes is carrying some surprising data from ratings giant, Nielsen Media Research. From actual measurements of usage across over 180,000 homes in the USA, Linden Lab's Second Life (paradoxically measured under the 'PC games' category) rates the number two most played title, just behind World of Warcraft.
Forget Warhammer Online, or EVE Online, they don't even make the top ten. World of Warcraft and Second Life beat out Gordon Freeman (Half Life 2), Civilization IV and StarCraft. As for actual weekly usage, Second Life is top of the pops at an average of 760 minutes per user per week. World of Warcraft earns the top spot with 653 minutes per user per week, but has a whole lot more users.
How about Google's YouTube, the 800 pound gorilla and market leader of online video? Just 47 minutes per week (figure from C|net).
Facebook? 84 minutes per week. Myspace, just 10.5 minutes per week (figures from ITProPortal).
This data is measured from actual homes, as we mentioned. Almost 200,000 of them, so it isn't just data that's centric to the hardcore gamer. This is a random sampling of ordinary people.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
KingGrowl said on 4:14PM 5-07-2009
Number 3 blows my mind. WTF?
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snowleopard233 said on 4:16PM 5-07-2009
Yeah, something's screwy here...
Tateru Nino said on 4:17PM 5-07-2009
I haven't tried it multiplayer, to be honest, but I *did* enjoy the single-player game quite a bit. Maybe it's hot for multi-player-on-player action, and I'm missing out.
KingGrowl said on 4:21PM 5-07-2009
Oh, I'm sure it's a great game. I just cannot believe it's that far up on the list ahead of so many other game you'd think would be on there. Wow.
Animagnum said on 4:51PM 5-07-2009
It does seem odd, but there was a sale that included Dark Messiah last month on Steam. That probably doesn't explain it being #3, but it might've helped.
Animagnum said on 4:52PM 5-07-2009
And by last month I meant March.
Fizzl said on 6:44PM 5-07-2009
What... I didn't even know it had multilayer. Fun story mode though.
PeterD said on 4:19PM 5-07-2009
Yeah sorry, something just doesn't seem right with those stats. For one thing, where's Sims 2? Based on unit sales that thing should be way up there, but isn't even on the charts. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? How did that get #3? The game bombed as far as I know and hardly sold any copies. *boggle*
I've never even met someone who plays Second Life, so I find it hard to believe it's the #2 most played PC game. Something is going on here.
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KingGrowl said on 4:22PM 5-07-2009
I'm going to have to agree. It just can't be correct.
SignpostMarv Martin said on 4:23PM 5-07-2009
Are you sure you don't mean you've never met anyone who'll *admit* to using (coughnotagamecough) Second Life ? :-P
Tateru Nino said on 4:24PM 5-07-2009
Nielsen assures that this data is correct from recording actual activity data and not just surveying and writing down what people *say* they're playing. So it's surprising, yes, but we've got to take it at face value as factual for the 180,000+ homes that they sampled.
Tateru Nino said on 4:24PM 5-07-2009
Unless that many homes faked their data, which is statistically unlikely.
JP said on 4:25PM 5-07-2009
lolstatistics.
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rc5583 said on 4:27PM 5-07-2009
This is less impressive with a little reading comprehension. 3.206% of the folks who were tracked by Nielsen played Second Life. Their average minutes per week played were 760.
46.710% of the folks tracked played WoW for an average of 653 minutes.
So, what this tells us is that Second Life has a very small audience who plays over 12 hours a week.
Which is not all that exciting or newsworthy. Someone rushed to make a bigger headline here than they should have. Pwnage? No. Fanboi looking hard to find a headline for their game? Yes.
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Tateru Nino said on 4:30PM 5-07-2009
That still puts both overall user numbers and time-online well above most of the big-name games we cover here. 3.2% of homes is a LOT in MMO terms.
Tateru Nino said on 4:34PM 5-07-2009
Name me an MMOG that gets as high a percentage as SL in the sampled homes other than World of Warcraft? Oh, wait. There isn't one ;)
Jeni said on 8:40AM 5-08-2009
Concidering that SL isn't a game and that people actually LIVE their lives on that similiation of what life really is...those numbers speak volumes of what society is deteriorating into. I wouldn't be pleased seeing those numbers unless you're an advertiser.
Tateru Nino said on 12:26PM 5-08-2009
I've got no idea where you picked *that* notion up, Jeni. Seriously.
ReijMan said on 4:31PM 5-07-2009
This list is crap says nothing about the avrage American or anything at all.
Beside how easlilly you can manipulate statistics.
Wonder how these homes are picked.
Dark messiah.. don't make me laugh..
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Dale Innis said on 4:36PM 5-07-2009
Whoa, yeah, this has to be wrong: my personal intuition is MUCH more reliable than the findings of a professional rating agency! What are they thinking?? :)
Woot, SL!
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