Looks like Nielsen Games have released some intriguing stats for April PC games. What’s interesting about this?
- Second Life is apparently the 6th most popular PC ‘game’, and is #2 overall for number of minutes played. More people partake in SL than they do Half Life 2.
- LotRO is the 3rd most popular PC game in May. Were they running a promotion? That’s pretty exceptional. People also are spending more time playing LotRO per week than WoW.
- Did any of these come out in 2009? Or even 2008? =P
- As Wagner James Au pointed out, “an online chess game is almost as popular as World of Warcraft”.
Note this tracks client installs only, not browser-based games. For those curious, some notes on where the numbers come from are here. Can’t wait to see the graph once Sims 3 is a factor.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Dark Messiah on the 3rd place makes the whole list look suspicious.
It was not a bad game, but it's not very long in single-player mode and doesn't have any notable multiplayer. I guess, you make go through it once more with a different class if you really like it, but that's it.
I just don't see how a 2006 game without significant replay value or massive multiplayer community could be in the top of current games.
I wouldn't really trust Nielsen to get great stats. They take do random interviews on 1200 gamers a week. I put more faith in xfire stats (http://www.xfire.com/cms/stats/) than Nielsen's.
Actually, that's not true Nielsen – it's a common misconception that they use interviews. Check this link:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/05/new-world-news...
“Nielsen's Brad Raczka says this data is not from consumer surveys where they estimate gameplay times, but actual play: “Just wanted to let you know that this data is from actual metered gameplay measurement… It is not survey data. We electronically meter the web and application activity from 180,000+ homes in the U.S.” In an email exchange, he adds: “Keep in mind the Nielsen Online panel is not a panel of gamers, rather a panel of U.S. homes all over from which we track web and gaming activity.”
I hear that. I didn't think that game did THAT well…especially not years later.
ahhh that might be true then..
I was going by some random fact sheet i found on their site that explained how they did it.
http://en-us.nielsen.com/etc/medialib/nielsen_d...
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic being so high makes me skeptical off the bat. I'd be curious about why it is in 3rd.