Is Second Life even a game? Isn't it more of a glorified chat room for fat people and cross dressers?
 

We also could try to consider those that use free accounts.....

But anyway they aren't 8mln anyway. I could say that should be considered only:
1) active paying accounts
2) free accounts that logged at least once in the last 30 days

Another metric could be peak concurrent players (if 2L is a game) compared to other games.

Anyway i'm really sick of those false marketing propaganda and sick of seeing well known newspapers getting and reporting the news as the "next big social thing" without even taking the news with a bit of salt.

In Italy is the same.... many newspapers just take those news and write articles without ever having seen the game or tought about what Linden Labs is really saying.

Obviously many will read those articles and will try 2L, making those numbers even bigger. But what Lindel Labs don't say is.... It's that it's only a counter. They should change the statement from: "we have 8 million players" to "we had nearly 8 million players"
 

This is the trouble when companies get to pick their own metrics for user population for virtual worlds.

Nearly 8m in registered users sounds big, until you realize that accounts are free and not tied to a credit card unless you do premium. I've created 3 accounts for it myself, and I only log in occasionally.

Because there isn't a good standard measurement of online users (avg. concurrency over the course a week, perhaps?) the PR people put down what sounds impressive. Until we have a standard like the way web sites do today (unique visitors) PR will say the biggest number they have - its as simple as that.

-Del
 

The same thing happened in my local area with Facebook. The local newspapers were reporting statistics that made you believe that every 3rd or 4th person was using Facebook. I know a lot of people are using that web service but not that many. I think they were just counting the number of people visiting their home page, lol.
 

And here was me thinking that the backlash had come and the time of papers writing second life puff pieces without doing any propper research was over.

I'd guess the attraction is that they can mention and tie it to lots of things that non-gamers will know and relate to - the wimbledon, U2, that kind of thing. Then the non gamers can read about games and think they understand something about it.
 

Yeah Linden Labs really just pimps up the numbers. I thought it was dreadfully boring and never went back in after ten minutes of trying it out. - dave
 

Is Second Life even a game? Isn't it more of a glorified chat room for fat people and cross dressers?
I personally classify Second Life as a "game toy" like Sim City, where winning conditions are defined by each player. Some players might just want a glorified chat room. Some might want to recreate a specific fantasy. Some might want to own x acres of land or y amount of money.
 

ignore this game. now you just advertised it again.
 

And people wonder why I don't watch the news anymore. This laziness of reporters goes far beyond Second Life.
Remember Katrina and how they reported "stacks of bodies", or even just last week they reported dozens of beheaded bodies, which turned out to be fake when someone actually investigated.
 

Wow second life has 8 million players? I know what I'll be doing tonight....I'm gonna make a furry and hump people!


In all seriousness I am going to download second life just so I can annoy the piss out of people. It will give me something to do while grind honor in AV by "defending the cave".
 

Every time there is a story on the TV about computer games, it mentions 2nd Life. Why??
It has to be the dullest on-line game ever.