User:Vovkjn/Popularity of virtual worlds

Popularity of virtual worlds

Membership, total amount of users counted by the virtual world consultancy kzero.co.uk, of virtual worlds grew by 39% in the second quarter of 2009 to an estimated 579 million. Some of these user accounts are likely to be unused or inactive, but this is still a massive increase. Nowadays there are over 800 thousands of active unique users in Second Life. Much of the growth comes from children, particularly in the age group of 10-15. Habbo, one of the most popular virtual worlds, has approximately 135 million members - it is incredibly popular among teens. Second Life allows users to create their own content, unlike the rest of the newer virtual worlds. Whilst’s OpenSimulator lets the user to build up a virtual world on the hard drive of their own computer, it possible to link this personal extent with other worlds, such as, Second Life. As a result, more and more of virtual worlds develop. Users of these environments try to create something unique, to give the chance to people feel themselves as gods and to create all necessary for them in this life [Harvey, C. (2009, August 1). Retrieved from Virtual Worlds Growing in Popularity: http://chris.superuser.com.au/virtual-worlds-growing-in-popularity].