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Contact UsBefore I pen this article I shall don my Second Life armor. No, it’s not an add-on for my avatar but a state of mind that allows me to actually mention the virtual world in a media environment that has been rather hostile towards the outfit of late.
In March, I revisited Second Life to find out what state the virtual world’s stats were in, and found them to be rather good, despite media reports that it was yesterday’s news.
Now, Nielsen Games has released data derived from their online panel of homes that puts Second Life second only to World of Warcraft in terms of the top PC game titles for March.
In essence, the data shows that World of Warcraft dominates the list in terms of the percentage of total minutes played (46.71% vs. Second Life’s 3.206%), but Second Life players spend more time in-game. This perhaps demonstrates the “sticky” aspect of a virtual world versus a traditional MMO game. But what the data doesn’t show is the level of player engagement during their time spent in the game or virtual world.
Many in the gaming community are startled by the revelation that Second Life is still alive and kicking, some believing the figures to be from a survey or somehow skewed. However, according to Nielsen’s Brad Raczka the results are not drawn from survey data. “We electronically meter the web and application activity from 180,000+ homes in the U.S.,” he commented on Wagner James Au’s Second Life blog, New World Notes.