How big is Second Life?
It’s this big (as of November 2008):
The map comes from this site and you can download the full 13MB version to get a better understanding of the magnitude of Second Life.
We’ve featured maps of the Second Life grid before, and they’re useful to reinforce the scope of virtual worlds. Those who haven’t spent time [...]
Gender and virtual worlds: new research
Dmitri Williams from the University of Southern California has completed some research in conjunction with Mia Consalvo (Ohio University), Scott Caplan (University of Delaware) and Nick Yee (Stanford University). The title of the research is Looking for gender (LFG): Gender roles and behaviors among online gamers. The research employed a range of survey tools [...]
The Second Life economy: calm before the storm?
Linden Lab today released the Second Life economy statistics of the third quarter of 2008 and it shows some healthy growth in some areas:
hours spent by users in Second Life passed the 100 million mark
the total land mass continued to grow significantly to just under 2 billion square meters
the monetary value of user-to-user transactions in-world [...]
World of Warcraft demographics: no big surprises
Over at GamerDNA they’ve crunched some numbers on some key demographics of World of Warcraft players – the sample group are GamerDNA members combined with Armory data, so the sample is representative to say the least.
The results aren’t surprising but still interesting. The key points:
1. There remains a preference to sign up an Alliance character [...]
Australians in Second Life Update – small declines
Linden Lab have released their metrics up until September 2008, and in the Australian context there’s been a slight drop in activity – 686,872.48 hours, which is nearly eight thousand hours less than last month. Across 10-15 thousand active users, that’s not a big drop and Australia maintains the 11th spot worldwide.
Overall:
- user hours dropped [...]
Kids and virtual worlds: the ever-growing market
Virtual worlds metrics gurus, Kzero, have done some further hypothesising on the growth of the kids market for virtual worlds in the next year or two.
If the prediction of 110 million kids using virtual worlds by 2010 is close to the mark, even the most cynical corporates are going to start taking notice. Take [...]
Age demographics and virtual worlds
Metrics gurus Kzero have released a new breakdown of the age variances by type of virtual world frequented.
There’s no big surprises but the figures do further emphasise the power of the pre-teen and teen market for social virtual worlds.
Thanks to Pavig Lok for the heads-up.
