nielsen posts

So you are sitting in front of your PC or Mac (or Linux if you float that way) and you are connected to the internet. What do you do with your online time? According to a new study by Nielsen, you spend 10.2 percent of your internet time playing games. That's actually an increase from a similar study Nielsen did last year as games now overtake email as the second most popular thing to do online.

However the number one activity online is "social networks" which accounts for a whopping 22.7 percent of people's time using the internet. Of course, there are a lot of games that use social networking sites like Facebook which means you can actually combine the two activities for games like Farmville. What will people think of next.

A couple of weeks ago the PC Gaming Alliance gave their report on the state of PC gaming. Today the Nielsen company (best known for their TV ratings) also issued a report on how many people play video and PC games. On the PC side, the report states that a whopping 46.2 percent of PC gamers are female aged 25 and over. Males 25 years and over only account for just over 30 percent of PC gamers.

Of course, the vast majority of games that both males and females play on the PC, according to the new survey, are pre-installed with Microsoff Windows. Games like Solitare, Freecell and Mindsweeper have by far more unique players than even World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2.

2009 is now firmly underway but some companies are still looking back to the past 12 months. One of those companies is Nielsen who is best known for their TV ratings system. Today the company announced their 2008 top 10 lists covering entertainment and ads in a variety of catagories. One of them was for the top 10 PC games that were most played in the US (the ratings were actually for activity for January-October 2008).

It's not a shock to learn that Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft was the number one PC game that was most played according to Nielsen. The study claims that the game is played an average of 671 minutes a week, or just over 11 hours, per gamer. Nielsen also claims that every minute about .723 percent of all PC gamers are playing World of Warcraft, a massive number that blows away every other game on the top 10 list. A number of older games are on the list including the PC version of Halo and web browser based MMO RuneScape:

1. World of Warcraft
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
3. Halo: Combat Evolved
4. The Sims
5. The Sims 2
6. RuneScape
7. Diablo II
8. Team Fortress 2
9. Counter-Strike
10. Counter-Strike: Source

When you read how some gamers react to the thought of in-game ads in places like messages boards and news comments, you would think that there was a universal loathing of the concept. Now one of the biggest in-game ad companies, IGA Worldwide, claims that a whopping 82 percent of consumers "react positively" to seeing ads in games.

The study, which was done in partnership with the ratings company Nielsen, also claims that 61 percent of people actually react better to products advertised inside games after seeing them in game titles. Of course this study, which polled 1,300 consumers, was handled by a ratings company on behalf of an in-game ads organization so both have a vested interest in promoting any kind of in-game ads. In other words, take these "results" with a grain of salt.