More on Second Life user numbers

One of the ongoing marvels of the MMO blogosphere is how Second Life managed to become the MMOG with the best press coverage from conventional media, while being a relative flop as a game. Clay Shirky is analyzing the latest numbers.

There is an official Linden Labs post about user statistics saying "Approximately 10% of unique users have logged in for 40 hours or more." Which is a nice way of saying "90% of unique users have played Second Life for less than 40 hours". Or as Clay says, "The plain meaning of that sentence is that fewer than 200,000 people have given Second Life even a cumulative work week of their time, over the history of the platform."

40 hours of total lifetime is nothing for a MMOG. I spent more time beta testing Vanguard than that, and that was just to get an idea of a game which I ended up deciding not to buy. The only game I remember buying and playing less than 40 hours is EVE Online, and that was only because I realized too late that other players could (and did) gank me, and "pod" me, thereby not only erasing many hours of trade profit, but also losing me a week's worth of skill gains. Even games that in hindsight I would consider terribly bad, like Anarchy Online, I played for far more than 40 hours before giving up on them.

Given the huge difference in "stickiness", counting the number of registered users isn't a good method at all. Especially games where you can register for free often have much inflated numbers there. If they were honest, Linden Labs would just list paying subscribers (about 25,000), or concurrent users (about 10,000). Those numbers tell you a lot more about the significance of Second Life, especially if you consider that half of these are apparently journalists.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:43 PM Permanent Link