[...] community guru).  Raph also wrote notes on a couple of the other presentations at Metaverse U:Dmitri Williams’ ResearchTony Parisi (creator of VRML)Virtual Environments and the Future of WorkNext up was the Game [...]

@Profofy: Thanks for the link. But if you actually divide the total hours by the number of avatars, you get a larger number for older people just because they have much less avatars. Question here is, are the avatars here rollup up to customer level as is the case on the entry page or not.

I.e. do the youngsters just alt more and hence make it look like they play less.

In any case we look at 67 hours a month average for the >45 group if the avatar thing is controlled for. That’s 2 hours a day. The 25-35 year olds clock in at 1.6 hours a day. And the 18-24 year olds at 1.1.

But that doesn’t really explain anything. What if the 18-24 group spend some extra hours in WoW or other games in addition to this, while the elders just live in second life? Or older people are less likely to switch to new content or split their time? This really isn’t controlled data of total time spent online.

I’d actually like some clean analysis before conclusions are drawn.

On the VOIP thing – my experience is that voice comms only tend to get used within guilds or other organised groups (e.g. regular PvP teams). People rarely invite strangers to use their TS/Ventrilo servers. So people using voice comms have a small but stable group of in-game contacts already. And given how much easier it is to coordinate over voice than by typing, they prefer a guild team to a pick up group and so don’t make many new contacts outside the guild.

Possibly the most fun I have had with my time in WoW was a few summers back, up until 3am or later some nights doing Alterac Valley on another guild’s Ventrilo. They had a channel for the AV people to come into, played European techno music, and after a few folks got the idea of the basic strategies, there were 3 or 4 of us taking turns leading the pick-up members. I have never used voice in games before or since (stopped do to changes to the battleground).

However, I’ll agree I don’t like dungeon pick-up groups. Its more a competence issue than a social one, for me. Blizzard gives little/no feedback in your performance. Most damage classes were in no way prepared for the transition to heroics where they were expected to suddenly chain CC targets without fail, no heads up or preparation given. That’ll start me on a whole tangent about the overabundant gimmicky use of CC, so I’ll stop, now :9.

[...] kick things off, Raph Koster posted some interesting highlights from a presentation by Dmitri Williams: * People who use voice-over-IP [...]

http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

Look to your right and get the Google docs.

I’ve often heard the Lindens say that older people had the longest hours, but this month, it seems ages 25-35 have most people and most hours.

It’s also interesting that, speaking from my own experience, when a game provides built in voice comms players often ignore the feature. I’ve played LotRO since launch, and in all that time I’ve been in two pick up groups that used the game’s voice comms. I’ve also been a member of three different guilds, each of which ran its own TS or Ventrilo server instead of using the game’s own system.

Eolirin, yes, the claims re not generalizable to all worlds. That said, Cory Ondrejka commented to me that the age finding was consistent with SL’s graph as well.

Call me jaded but I’ve become suspect of anything SOE presents as statistical fact; SWG subscriptions are increasing! Was it not statistics that proved how creating the “new game enhancements” for Star Wars Galaxies was going to create a subscription base on par with World of Warcraft?

I’ve met quite a few gamers over the last 8 years, many of whom “rollplay”, and not a single one appeared to have disabiilties. Then again, it’s not like I was spending the evening with all the gals at a local convention to get an accurate account of this nor had I come home to Kitty in a boiling pot of water.

Then as we get older the nightclubs have less appeal and we have more disposable income to have a decent PC, a broadband connection and a game console or two.

So yeah, when you’re hanging out at home you’ve gotta do *something* right?