online-gaming 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.

Even though there's still a sizable single player offline market for PC games, online gaming continues to gain popularity, at least according to a new study published today by the NPD Group. Their study indicates that the number of hours people spent playing games online have increased by 10 percent compared to 2009.

In addition 20 percent of all games purchased by online gamers were via digital download compared to 19 percent in 2009 and 18 percent in 2008. The PC is still the leading platform for online gaming with 85 percent of people surveyed saying they use their PC for online gaming. This compares to the Xbox 360 console where just 48 percent of gamers use it for online gaming.

While there has been a huge jump in the number of online games played on various enabled game consoles, the PC still holds a huge majority chunk of gamers who play online. This is according to the results of a new survey of over 20,000 gamers by the NPD Group.

The survey, conducted last January, does say that PC gaming has shown a slight decline compared to the NPD Group's previous study (Shacknews reports that the percentage went down from 90 percent to 87 percent) but it still overwhelms those gamers who play online with consoles. That percentage went up from 19 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2009 Younger gamers (ages 13-17) who played online went up from 17 percent to 22 percent while gamers in the 18-34 and 35-54 age bracket decreased their online gaming slightly.

In a word: yes. In a few more words: yes, and the future is already here. In a lot of words:

When people ask "Is (product/service/phenomenon) the future?" they usually mean to imply that there is a boundary to be crossed, past which things will no longer be the same as they once were. A classic example: Is VHS the future? Yes, it certainly turned out to be, because for those of you who may be too young to remember, VHS and Betamax were in a video cassette format war, and VHS came out on top, much in the same way that Blu-ray has ousted HD DVD as the new hi-def disc of choice.

However, in the context of online gaming, there is no either/or choice to make. Rather, what we're seeing is a simple add-on to the games that already exist. So instead, what's being asked here is probably "Will every future game be played online?" And the answer to that is ... maybe. Read on to find out why.

The typical stereotype of an online PC gamer is someone who doesn't take care of himself physically as he or she spends hours at a time in front of a monitor. A new study of Everquest 2 players, however, puts this idea to bed but brings forth another more troubling issue for such gamers.

The study brought in 7,000 players of Everquest 2 (promising them a unique in-game item if they participated) and according to a story at Newscientist.com they asked the players questions about their physical and mental health while also checking out their online playing statistics. The survey's results state that gamers have a average body mass index lower than the national average and the average gamer does engage in exercise. However the survey also revealed that gamers tend to have "more cases of depression and substance abuse than their compatriots".

It's always been something of a mystery to figure out how much money is made through revenues of online gaming. Today the NPD Group gave us at least a ballpark figure for that amount with a new report that claims $1 billion in revenue was recorded for online gaming between March 2007 and March 2008. The figure not only includes revenue from PC massively multiplayer game subscriptions but also revenue from console games and from casual game downloads.

The study also listed the top five MMO games in terms of their online subscription revenues and its not a surprise to see Blizzard's World of Warcraft on top. The free web based MMO Runescape was second followed by Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online, Square Enix's Final Fantays XI and NCsoft's City of Heroes. The study also had the top five gaming web sites in terms of paid subscribers and as one might expect casual game sites dominated this segment. Electronic Arts' casual games site Pogo.com was first, followed by Realarcade.com, Bigfishgames.com, Gametap.com and Disney.com.

It's currently unknown if the survey also tracked services like Valve's Steam game downloads. The full report is, of course, available for purchase at NPD's web site.