Second Life claims the most spare time

By Robert Purchese Published 8 May, 2009

And only WOW more popular across US.

Nielsen Games has said Second Life is the second-most played game across the US, and the virtual world where people spend the most time.

The research company randomly sampled 180,000 homes across the country and found that, on average, 760 minutes are spent playing Second Life each week.

World of Warcraft only claims 653 minutes a week, but accounts for a massive 47 per cent of total minutes played. Second Life, at two, only represents three per cent of that figure.

No other MMOs feature, but Second Life beats the likes of Half-Life 2, StarCraft and Civilization IV.

Massively finds that, on average, people spend 47 minutes on YouTube each week, 84 minutes on Facebook and just 10 minutes on MySpace.

Second Life is a virtual world based on our own, where players and sell property and services to each other. The in-game currency can be legitimately purchased with real money, however, which has lead to some Second Life "companies" turning over real-business-like profits and gaining real-life value.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • menage #1 3 years ago

    Vaporclaims for vaporware.

    Also, SL isn't a "game"

  • Triggerhappytel #2 3 years ago

    I thought Second Life had gone right down the toilet and lost most of its subscibers? Don't know where I read that though; I don't really follow news on MMOs or their like.

  • JohnnyWashnGo #3 3 years ago

    Should be 'Second Life claims the most waste of time'

  • GreyScale #4 3 years ago

    Second life is no more a game than Facebook is

  • Chaser #5 3 years ago

    bobbins...

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #6 3 years ago

    I thought Second Life was supposed to be hemorrhaging users?

    Graphs on Wikipedia seem to suggest so.

  • mingster #7 3 years ago

    Its kept alive by fetishists...
    Its user base is even sadder than the darkfall neckbeards.

  • MrChuckles #8 3 years ago

    So, the number of minutes spent means everyone who plays Second Life spends an average of 760 mins a week, but that only 3.2% of households play it. Whereas a WoW household spends on average 653 mins, but 46% of households have it.

    This means WoW has around 15 times the amount of spare time spent on it than Second life in total?

    Also, if you add Civ 4 & Civ 4:Beyond The Sword, they come to an average of exactly 1000 mins a week.

    Also, why the hell is Dark messiah of M&M in number 3 for households in the US?

    All these stats sound like rubbish to me.

  • kestral #9 3 years ago

    over 75 thousand concurrent users.

  • optimusprym8 #10 3 years ago

    just goes to show what happens in a country where you supress sexual thought

  • paulf #11 3 years ago

    'Also, SL isn't a "game"' +1

    also, SL isn't any good

  • kestral #12 3 years ago

    SL bashing was very popular for a while.

  • superdelphinus #13 3 years ago

    second life is being used by other sectors now though

    my firm has a presence there

  • butler` #14 3 years ago

    Also, SL isn't a "game"

    Stupid research group is stupid shocker

  • Ez3kiel. #15 3 years ago

    They've got some nerve calling Second Life a game.

  • Goodfella #16 3 years ago

    Blimey, not a single retarded reference to Home.

  • SEVQA #17 3 years ago

    I second that Second Life is not a game! and actually as a gamer myself I found it to be a sxit experience surprisingly enough! Yeah the idea of virtual worlds and all that is ok and no doubt inevitable but one thing about it that isn't are the micro transactions which are the screw, and in these difficult times the virtual elites that these shitty virtual worlds are pushing can fXck right off! The last thing we need is a reflection of our real world in monetary terms which has clearly failed! HOME can jog on and all!

    "second life is being used by other sectors now though

    my firm has a presence there"

    Yup and that's the future I see for virtual worlds over the next 10 years, owned and run by company's where the worlds look synthetic, lacking feeling and stuffed full of adverts and are as politically correct has the company's these peeps work in. Except they never expected gamers to hack into worlds and drive rally cars on the nicely kept virtual lawn! - It will happen.

    "I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you. "

    Rant done!



  • Bitkari #18 3 years ago

    I wonder how many of those Second Lifers are just dancing under money trees?

  • Roxette #19 3 years ago

    Well, I played SL for almost 4 years. SL was very popular and still it is, although many things have changed. There are now lots of rules, almost no bugs or crashes anymore. But the world grew too big, the reason why its hard to meet other people. Still it has an average of about 75 thousand players per hour. The estimation is that SL has a total of 3 million players, which is not quite bad. Better than most other games.

  • Bangaioh #20 3 years ago

    SL is bollocks, biggest waste of time ever. SL a game? They wish. Pure shite.