Second Life Still Among Nielsen's Top 10 of PC Games in US

While we often hear declarations that Second Life is dead, it's actually still among the top PC games played in the US, according to Nielsen, the venerable ratings service. Here's the latest stats, from last May:

Annoy your gamer friends by informing them that Second Life is more popular than Left 4 Dead 2.* These ratings, by the way, reflect actual gameplay data, not surveyed behavior. Nielsen electronically meters web and application activity from 180,000+ homes in the U.S. to generate these numbers. "We track the .exe files that are running on the panelist PCs and report on the data monthly," Nielsen's Brad Raczka just told me.

While Second Life is still in the Top 10, these numbers represent a drop from May 2009, when SL had a .996 share, with an average number of minutes played of 760. Now the share is down to .0814 with 611 average minutes played. It's significantly less popular than World of Warcraft, to be sure, but for SLers, there's more good news on this chart: One of the lead developers of another top title, Electronic Arts' Sims 3, was Rod Humble, who's now the CEO of Linden Lab.

Of course, there's an even bigger factor to consider with this chart:

PC games are only a very small part of the broader ecosystem of interactive entertainment. This chart doesn't track web-based games, including the huge and popular social games on Facebook, or games played on the iOS or gaming consoles. A chart that included just web games would be dwarfed by Facebook titles like Zynga's Empires & Allies.

That said, this chart does provide good insight into the smaller but highly engaged market for games which require a client that's installed on a user's PC via a download or even DVDs. Second Life will be in that category for quite some time, and could target much of the audience who now plays Sims 3, some of the audience who plays WoW and LOTRO, and even a bit of the market who play Rollercoaster Tycoon, which has a strong user-created content component. (For that matter, there's a fairly large sub-community of combat gamers in SL, which could appeal to Half Life 2/CounterStrike/Etc. fans, if SL's physics and frame rate is sufficiently improved.)

See all of Nielsen's gaming charts here. Nielsen's Raczka tells me the company will release June 2011 figures soon, so it'll be interesting to compare and contrast with this chart.

* Left 4 Dead 2 has a higher TMP than Second Life, which is, Nielsen explains, "the percent of total minutes played from the Top 100 non-casual/pre-installed PC games measured." However, SL has a larger share of the market, i.e., more people actually playing the game.

Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"Annoy your gamer friends by informing them that Second Life is more popular than Left 4 Dead 2."

Why would I want to annoy my gamer friends when the best hope for their hobby and ours is to go big, worldy and interoperable?

Second Life could be the best game "lobby" ever created if they wanted. Trying to take share from the MMOs is zero-sum; working with MMO producers to compliment and supplement game content is win-win.

SL provides a social/creative space that most games can't match; dedicated game engines deliver performance that SL never can.

Make love, not war. We could have beautiful babies.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

GASP! Secondlife is officially a GAME! oh noes!

[Deebrane String]

@ Ann: So is "first life"... according to my atomic. *chuckles*

[Mark C]

That would be great in an ideal world, Arcadia, but in the real one it runs up against certain hard business realities. Namely that game companies want to own the "lobby" too. Linden Lab, or anyone else, is about as likely to get a glimpse at Blizzard's user table as the GOP is like to get a glimpse at Obama's fundraising mailing list.

[Troy McConaghy]

If you rank those ten by Average Minutes Played per Week...

SL 611
LoTRO 540
WoW 519

[Valentina Kendal]

yeah, what Troy said - SL is number one in minutes played? And the *average* user spends 10 hours a week - more than WoW? That amazes me.

[foneco zuzu]

what amazes me is still thinking of Sl as a game, how naive!

[Psion]

I wonder how their methodology handles alternate clients. Many users prefer clients like Phoenix, and if Nielsen isn't counting those variants as Second Life, it's possible SL should be ranked even higher.

[Darkfoxx]

Reading this there's two thoughts that cross my mind.

How many of these games share their players? it would be interesting to see these numbers by unique users. SL not only could be the greatest gaming lobby ever, but in a lot of cases already is. Look at the I don't know how many game groups there already are in SL for fans of these and other games. I'm certain there are daily meetups organised in SL to go play Left 4 Dead or any of the others in this list.

Second thought... If SL is among the top ten most played games... what's all this talk about a name change and rebranding? Doesn't seem like it has to.
I hear the words "SL is dead/dying" thrown around a lot. But if I look around (granted, I dont get out much aside from the handful of places I visit) there is still quite some
activity.

I do also hear of a lot of tried-and-failed new places by residents. Maybe that's the problem; for example clubs. There are new ones opened and closed everyday. That's not because there's too small a crowd, but too many clubs, and with their cost (land and music server costs) and no real way to advertise or lack of innovative ideas to keep any visitors they attract they tend to fail pretty quickly.

That, and the idea that still exists that SL business can be profitable for everyone. But unless you have a really good idea and manage to keep it fresh and ahead of the competition, or you can pump enough RL cash into it initially to get into the land business which is not that profitable with just a single sim or two, it's really hard to make a buck.

And that is kind of what people expect when they open a new business. And when it fails, its easy to say "no-one comes because there is no-one". easier then "No-one comes because I failed"

I don't have the idea SL is doing that badly, and above's top ten says the same to me.