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Second Life Hits 100,000 Users

Posted by Zonk on from the that-is-a-lot-of-beat-poets dept.

Gamasutra reports that the virtual world Second Life is boasting 100,000 users. They've had a large influx of users since they opened the games for free to non-property owners. From the article: "Statistics released by the creators say that the game's inhabitants hail from 95 countries in all 7 continents (apparently including Antarctica). Users spend an average of 4 hours per day playing the game, which has no specific completable goal, but places importance on in-game item and building creation by Second Life citizens."

7 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. What Active Worlds should have been by Kaldaien · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.activeworlds.com/

  2. Re:To be honest by Firewalker_Midnights · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or they could have a life and this is used to have another one... A fake online one... Because they're greedy for life.

    --
    I Lost My Virginity While Waiting for BSD to Compile.
  3. Only four hours by generic-man · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason why players only spend 4 hours per day on Second Life? Simple -- they spend the other 20 hours discussing the hypoanthemics of paradimensional economies in the blogosphere.

    --
    For more information, click here.
  4. Ouch. by Solder+Fumes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been starting to notice that a lot of my extra time was spent in Second Life, though I have no easy way of tracking it all...I really should cut back.

    Despite the often lackluster performance, frequent crashes, copious bugs, and strange userbase: it's still THAT fun and addictive. Imagine walking along and suddenly getting an idea for something; you whisk basic objects out of nowhere and mold them to the right shape, then write some code in a language similar to Java or PHP. Voila, a spaceship. Or hummingbird. Or peanut-butter sandwich. Second Life satisfies an urge many of us have, the desire to see ideas come to life NOW.

    1. Re:Ouch. by FooAtWFU · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's an older medium for doing that. It's called a MUD. Some MUDs, especially the MOO variety, make it easy to whisk together interesting objects, often without programming, sometimes in a programming language somewhat similar to C. And while you can't "see" the results of your creation per se, that also means that you don't need spectacular artistic skills to pull it off. You also get to exercise the imagination.

      --
      The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  5. not quite accurate by presearch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Granted, Second Life is something special. (Yes, I'm one of those 4 hour people.)

    But I think the 100K number equals the total number of unique account names ever created.
    At night, there's always under 5,000 people in world. Looking right now, 16:30 EST, there's 3500.
    Many of those accounts (especially for those 4 hour users) are alt avatars, perhaps 30%.

    But I have to agree with a previous poster, bugs and all, it's a quite remarkable environment.
    Too bad you can't host your own server....

  6. Goals by metamatic · · Score: 3, Funny

    Life has no specific completable goal. Maybe you should stop playing that for so many hours a day?

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak