Numbers

 Posted by (Visited 10807 times)  Game talk, Music, Reading, Watching  Tagged with: , , , ,
Jun 262008
 
  • Number of users in Habbo Hotel worldwide: 20,000,000
  • “Hottest” book in the US last year according to Time Magazine: 1,500,000+. (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
  • Best-selling graphic novel in the US last year: 80,000. (Naruto)
  • Digital sales of a hit song: 2,100,000 (Leona Lewis, “Bleeding Love”)
  • Average downloads of a downloadable Rock Band track: 100,000
  • Viewers of the #1 show on US TV (including DVR): 28,800,000 (American Idol)
  • Viewers of the #150 show on US TV: 2,400,000 (Gossip Girl)
  • Users of World of Warcraft in North America: 2,500,000
  • Monthly uniques for Gaia Online: 2,000,000+
  • Total number of movie tickets sold in the US in one year: 1,400,000,000
  • Estimated tickets sold to the new Indiana Jones movie in five weeks: 42,290,849 (using 2007 average US ticket price and grosses to date).

Just some figures that caught my eye while browsing a few different publications…

Is Call of Duty 4 an MMO?

 Posted by (Visited 6843 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
May 152008
 

Rob Fahey has an editorial up on Eurogamer called “Genetically Modified Gaming” which makes the case that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is lifting the key elements of an MMO, and is in fact the most important MMO release of the year.

This definitely echoes things I have said in the past about the ways in which online gaming is taking over single-player gaming. After all, the CoD series has always been about strong single-player narrative despite its multiplayer component. With the latest installment, there’s lots of MMOish things like persistent character advancement snuck in there.

On the other hand, I think it is worth asking if this is really what we want:

Player retention and the science of addiction is being expanded upon in innovative, groundbreaking ways

Put that baldly, it’s rather disturbing. I don’t want my games to be about the science of addiction! There are a lot of other qualities brought to the table by virtual worlds, and to my mind, it’s these other qualities that are better.