Nielsen Correction: Last March, Second Life Played More Than WoW, But Eighth In Total Popularity

Last week, I noted a Nielsen report graph which suggested that Second Life was last March's second most popular PC game in the US. As Raph Koster and others first noticed, the graph's audience share column seemed to be missing, so I double-checked with the Nielsen analyst, who provided this full chart (available on their site here) which gives us a clearer picture of March stats. While Second Life has the highest average usage minutes, it's actually eighth in total player popularity. Nielsen ranks it second overall in March by combining those metrics together, which is much more evident in the above chart.

Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Eighth among all (non-casual)PC games, including single-player games, is astounding. I'm very surprised and rather pleased to be wrong, having discounted the stats in the previous thread.

I hope other virtual world/game developers are taking note. Want to topple WoW? Consider the power of user-created and -owned content, a currency that can be traded for real-world dough, and a robust set of community/social tools.

[Veeyawn Spoonhammer]

Is anyone else surprised that Starcraft is still in the top 10? I know it's awesome, but I wouldn't have put it in the top 10 games played today.

[cala]

Sorry but "8th in popularity (actually Share)" also is a likely incorrect analysis. It is 8th out of the Publicly-released Top 10 out of the Top 100 that were analyzed. To get the real ranking you need to buy the Nielsen report and compare the share figures from the full list. SL is clearly ranked 2nd in terms of TMP% (the sort-order for the list) but I'd predict that some of the lower-tmp% games in the remaining 90 might have a higher Share rating than 0.996.

[Hamlet Au]

Hmm, interesting point. I suppose that's possible for some casual PC games which have much smaller TMP but are very popular; then again, I see two casual games up there in the top 10. I think the more qualification is that these are top *PC* games. Nielsen tells me they're measuring web games now, I bet you those numbers are gonna be way huger.

[Ann Otoole]

So what would happen if you cut off the people under 18 from those statistics?

Yea that's right. Second Life would rocket to number one. I mean come on we are adults. Nielsen needs to deal with the bogosity of that stats and list by age group.

Is everyone that stupified by poorly designed stats engineered to drive advertising revenue? Linden Lab doesn't advertise Second Life and despite their massive advertising efforts where is IMVU?

Nobody looks at stuff with a critical eye seeking truth anymore.

So Second Life is number 8 with no advertising. What a gigantic tremendously huge statement that is. Congratulations Phillip. You are really jabbing a well deserved sword in the eye of the advertising industry.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"Second Life would rocket to number one."

No. The average age of a World of Warcraft player is 28.3 (interestingly, the average for female players is 32.5). This compares to an average age of about 26 for all virtual worlds/MMOs -- including SL. Only a quarter are under 18. If you subtract that from the WoW numbers, it still pulverizes SL in share. And for a fair comparison, you'd have to subtract the population of the Teen Grid and an unknown number of underage residents who access the main grid against the TOS.

While I advocate that MMOs study Second Life for features that could improve their virtual environments, it wouldn't hurt Second Life to learn from leading MMOs the keys of their success: shallow learning curves, comprehensive in-game tutorials tied to an engaging storyline, non-monetary rewards for individual advancement, ease of finding appropriate content of interest, and rock-solid game engines with a minimum of bugs (the current build of SL, by contrast, consistently locks up my entire system within ten minutes of launch).

Stats courtesy of the Daedalus Project (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus).

[Henri Beauchamp]

Making comparisons between a game such as Wow and a virtual world such as SL is like comparing a Porsche (or Ferrari: I'm not partial to a given brand) with a commercial vehicle that your boss provides you with for free:

- Not everyone can afford playing on paying online games sites, while everyone can register and log in SL for free. It means that, for a start, only SL users with "Payment info on file" (i.e. paying customers) should be counted.

- Also, you don't use a Porsche to transport stuff, but only to transport yourself (and possibly your girl friend) when you use the commercial vehicle to transport anything and anyone. Wow is a purely role-playing game. SL is anything you want it to be (from a role-playing platform to a meeting place for corporate users)... You just can't compare.