One BIIIiiiillion
There are now one billion registered virtual world accounts, according to KZero, with 350m of them gained in the last twelve months.
More telling is the areas in which the growth has come. Around half that billion is in kids’ worlds (ages 10-15), which now boast many worlds over 10m users, including some shockingly large figures like Stardoll at 69m, Girl Sense at 18m, GoSupermodel at 18m, Neopets at 63m, and Club Penguin at 47m.
Universe chart Q3 2010: 10 to 15 year olds | KZERO – Blog.
The 15-25 bracket has the monster Habbo of course, at 175m registered. KZero picks this segment as the one to watch in terms of innovation. Meanwhile, worlds for ages 25+ have not seen nearly the same level of growth, but still have basically doubled in total registrations since Q1 2009.
12 Responses to “One BIIIiiiillion”
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Registered users… grumble grumble… vanity metric… always up and to the right… grumble grumble
Indeed. But as a measure of market penetration, I think it is interesting and still a big milestone.
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As an Englishman what fascinates me is how many are girls’ games. Here there isn’t like the same equality of take-up and as recently as yesterday I met a young woman who was astounded that millions of people play online games.
It feels like we’re a generation behind in terms of gender representation but that we may well move from 20 years behind directly to synchronicity when our ten year olds grow up.
Free Realms is a pretty good game for older players too (I’d say it’s the UO/World of Warcraft genre “done right”) I’m not surprised its done well, but I am a little surpised that its demographic is at the lower end of the 10-15 scale.
(Free Realm’s quirks grow on you … as much violent combat as you like, but if you want a drink afterwards it’s going to be a Sasparilla, not a beer…)
So basically, paper dress up dolls,toy/ and the access to KIDS media, PCs vs TVs is a “meta” thing that needs “surprise”
imagine OUR generation today IF we had to sign up via a registration “conversion” interface/ and add a parents credit card….just to watch cartoons and kids TV from the 60s-80s….
or were forced to turn over ID just to buy a dress in toys r us for a barbie doll… instead of being able to save up pennies and just BUY it for yourself after months of being a good girl for grandma….
virtual worlds… real people one day.
“But as a measure of market penetration, I think it is interesting and still a big milestone.”
To be sure. Though to look at it from another angle, given the 5-15% retention rates, doesn’t this suggest the market has been saturated? I.E., Everyone who’s potentially interested in virtual worlds have tried them out, and only a small percent (still a large number) are staying. I believe Gaia, Penguin, and some of the other big kids’ worlds have pretty much plateaued.
no. it suggests only that those gifted with the skills or valued by the owners of the media to “keep” an audience, havent yet done so. Or the medium hasnet yet been devalued enough to appear fun, fast and easy:)
we live in a mediaverse that appears to saturate us, but never seems to be “enough”….
My gut reaction was, “Hrm, what’s the world population age distribution actually look like?”
According to infoplease, about 60/40 across the 45 age marker. I wonder how other forms of media match up with this age distribution. Especially if you could normalize for age of the medium somehow.
You’re always going to see extreme churn in the FTP space. No player investment = no community.
I’m dismayed at the ways established virtual worlds are trying to position themselves for the teen/tween market. Second Life segregated ‘adult’ content to a separate continent and is folding in the teen grid. IMVU reversed its position on mature content, hanging creators out to dry. Blue Mars is still stagnating in extended Beta, and its mature content policy looks like a probability cloud trending towards repression.
It’s all misguided, in my view, like trying to turn Las Vegas into Disneyland.
The kids playing StarDollz today are, as they become adults, going to be looking for a grown-up world where they can do grown-up things… and as much as the morality police might wish otherwise, that includes realistic violence, drug/alcohol/tobacco use, and sex (ideally, it’ll also include philosophy, fine arts, science and political activism).
I think smart money is not on worlds that attempt a ‘family-friendly’ makeover to grab a chunk of the kid market, but those that provide a transition path for players from social/kid worlds and games to graduate to a more complex, multifaceted, richer world/game when they grow up.
To the extent that entertainment is highly fungible (“I dunno, what do you feel like doing tonight?”) saturation is a less useful conceptual approach to evaluating these and similar metrics.
I feel like the Kzero analysis loses a bit credibility when they predict that Second Life will have an IPO sometime soon. Within a year or two. Is that a realistic scenario?