20 Hours a Week

Heard an mp3 of Bill Gurley’s speech at Web 2.0 Conference. He talked about the usual stuff (Sims, Second Life, etc), but he dropped this incredible statistic: In the past game companies expected a video game to provide 30 hours of total gameplay for the typical consumer, and they designed accordingly. Nowadays, for massively multiplayer games, the typical gameplay per player averages 20 hours per week.

BTW, after getting my plone site off the ground, I’m going to delve into SecondLife (see their newsletter here). Free 7 day trial, and $10 a month. Note: I do not have 20 hours a week to devote to gameplay!