217 million people worldwide play online games, according to new figures released by comScore.
The study took into account all sites that provide online or downloadable games but excluded gambling sites. The 217million users account for 28 percent of all people online.
Yahoo! Games led the pack, attracting 53 million unique visitors. The fastest-growing Top 10 gaming property was the WildTangent Network.
The report appears to count visits to the actual gaming sites as opposed to actual user numbers. Under this methodology, online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft attract a smaller share of the market as many users would not regularly visit a central page (such as with Yahoo Games) but play directly via a desktop client. Notably though, traffic to secondlife.com is surprisingly close to the visitor numbers for worldofwarcraft.com. 
Full TechCrunch Second Life coverage here.
Duncan : is a country wise detail available ?? …… I meant is there any statistics that tells country wise user count for online games ??? …… and which all are the games sites accessed most frequent in each country ?? .. ( if u have it pleaseinclude China and Inida also
)
K.Kaviraj
only geographical region at this stage, if you follow the comScore link they’ve got the regions, not surprisingly the Asia-Pacific region has the most users, but there’s not a lot in it (hence not included in the post).
I heard in china people play games to earn . Playing access games can effect your memort power and eyes . Govt. has applied some laws over this .
On my opinion these nubers are only expressive for gaming websites, not for online gaming with a stand alone client.
And Second life will drop down shortly. There is a hype and newspaper coverage here in germany, as never before for a game. But I have some doubt that this will last very long. After all, my “first life” is more interesting
S.Hubwagen
I agree on the impressive part, and the success of services such as Yahoo Games is often overlooked.
Actually, how they make money from the online game?
Game addiction is as bad as any other addiction.
No mention of Newgrounds?
Most of the gaming sites simply make their money from advertising and annoying pop-ups. The only site I’ve found that bucks this trend is http://www.freevideogamesonline.org . All of their games are full screen flash with no ads.
They only show an ad when you first visit one of their games, but not to regular users.
Nice model.
The title of the article could have more accurately been written as “Online Casual Games” as that’s what all of these sites offer.
EA Games was targeted in the list largely for Pogo.com and not their other PC client games as Pogo does drive A LOT of web traffic and used to be considered one of the stickiest sites on the web (before social networks).
Sites like WorldWinner.com (SkillJam.com), King.com, and GameAccount.com could also easily be added to this list as they offer many of the same casual games but allow players to play for money.
@ #6 PohEe - The revenues are driven largely from 1) advertising, 2) % of premium/deluxe download sales, 3) subscription fees (Pogo.com is big here) and 4) pay-to-play fees (WorldWinner/King/GameAccount)
I think that you have to count a lot of web based games, which are not in your list. Usually these are web games in HTML and a lot of people play them at work. - like Hattrick (football manager), Red Dragon (fantasy game) and more… These games attract thousands of players.
I personally believe that soon people will play those games on mobile phones too.
We have our own mobile multiplayer game project launched in beta a week ago - Cotopia
i am one of them
lol
Wow. I wonder what the number goes up to when you add games that don’t require you to hit an HTML page first… like MMORGs.
Are fantasy sports considered gambling sites? Cause that could be big too.
Yahoo Games - is Yahoo’s new bread a butter … that and their mail are the only reason they are still in the game.
Does Pogo.com count towards EA’s subscription score?
… and this list doesn’t even include gaming such as MMORPGs and Halflife (Online) play.
wildtangent games have some ads while the game loads and some ads on their website, but they go away if you pay for the game.
the kind of people like me don’t take a notice of ads or something like that we just can’t wait till the game starts. :))
They play games while our world goes to the elite and politicians/NGOs pass laws/treaties we are against.
the best gaming site http://www.30mg.com 1500 games
Wow thats a huge number, Internet Marketer will be drooling for that audience
Vijay
Some people have been earning a lot through SecondLife actually. Those who are living vicariously through their SecondLife personalities, at least.
Our approach at AlterVille, at least in startup phase, is to focus on a specific segment of the media universe: Alternative Newspapers. The readers of alts are high spending, tech savvy, and hungry for new entertainment on their shiny devices.
We deliver it to them on the web, via iPhone, cellphone, and email/instant messaging. And with Alternate Reality Gaming as our area of expertise we work to engage users in a complex interaction, not just throw puzzles at them. Perplex City did this very well, we hope to follow in their footsteps.
These numbers assume nobody plays more than one game site. For that matter, anybody who uses 2 computers to play the same game may count twice as well.
Gee, LULU…thanks for that unbiased review. LOL…
The problem with most gaming sites is the same as the problem with most humor sites. They draw significant traffic, but they don’t convert well…no matter the ad model. And most webmasters just get desperate…first, they throw up Adsense, then noisy, flashing, intrusive CPM ads…and finally, many of them go for forced spyware installs (which pay pretty well…if you don’t have to worry about living with your conscience afterward).
It takes no brains to put together a game site, a humor site or a video blog. That doesn’t mean they all suck. It just means all you have to know how to do is to copy and paste embedding code. The real question is: what value have you added? In most cases, the answer is “none”.
To make ANY model work, you need a Unique Selling Proposition…just like any other product. Most sites lack them. Not only should the web site creator know what that USP is…so should most of the visitors rather quickly when they arrive. Can you spot it on most game sites? What about humor sites? Ummm, probably not…since they are all about the same. There are tons of video blogs out there, too. Very easy to create. But…why should they exist?
Can you spot the USP on a site like http://withabrain.com …? (and yes, it’s one of mine)
Online games are the only games to play. The game never stops!
I don’t know about the numbers - I like to play online and sometimes I spend more time searching the site for games than I do playing - so it can be a bit squered……..
Wow that is a huge market!
I am glad I added 500 new online games to http://www.classicvideogames.com I will be adding a store full of vintage games and consoles later this week
People really do need to find lives
Oh well, I admit, I’m up there in that statistic too.
-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com
I WANNA PLAY ONLINE GAMES!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
yep I’m one of them spent more time playing than studying;-(
The numbers are huge and growing 4 times faster than the internet which isn’t exactly hanging about.
I’ve just come across a company than is soon to launch a new skill games network, and unbelievably, us the players can earn money while we play thats cool;-)
Its free to join whiile in the prelaunch and yep I’ve joined and yep unashamably here is my link http://www.uVme.biz/55937 but I really think its worth you guys checking it out
Saludos Ian