Rockstar San Diego's hit cowboy game Red Dead Redemption accrued about 17 million hours of worldwide playtime in the first two weeks of its global availability, during which time players committed nearly 132 million murders, according to newly-released data gathered by GameSpy's ATLUS stat-tracking service.
That puts the overall murder frequency within the game at 9.42 per hour on average, or one approximately every six minutes. Murder is by far the most common crime among those whose stats were released by GameSpy; by comparison, there were only 1.9 million instances of horse theft occurred over the same period, 862,000 robberies, and 809,000 acts of arson.
It is not clear how many hours the average player spent in Red Dead Redemption during that time. Around two weeks after launch, Rockstar owner Take-Two said the game shipped 5 million units worldwide, and this week NPD reported the game sold 1.5 million units in the United States this May. The game has seen similar chart-topping success in several other regions.
Roughly estimating total worldwide consumer purchases to be roughly 3.5 million would put average playtime at nearly five hours per player in the first two weeks.
GameSpy has released a detailed infographic highlighting numerous other bits of trivia about aggregate player activity so far, including revelations that $3.33 billion has been spent within the world, the average resident of the fictional New Austin drinks 8.6 liters of alcohol per year, 28 percent of Read Dead protagonists have spent 28 percent of their in-game lives in jail, and 5.8 million hats have been shot off in duels.
"Roughly estimating total worldwide consumer purchases to be roughly 3.5 million would put average playtime at nearly five hours per player in the first two weeks."
Nonsense. There is no way the average playtime for that game is 5 hours for the first 2 weeks. Double it at least. Oh and brilliant game. Probably deserves game of the year. Shame we'll have to wait 5 years for a follow up.
We already know it's shipped through 5m and including June numbers it has sold 3.5m+.
Anyway I don't know who did the motion cap but they nailed it when you get drunk. Most worryingly it's exactly how I stagger around before collapsing after a few too many sherberts.
Nonsense. There is no way the average playtime for that game is 5 hours for the first 2 weeks. Double it at least. Oh and brilliant game. Probably deserves game of the year. Shame we'll have to wait 5 years for a follow up.
Weak... here in the real Austin I think we average that per week.
"12,5M characters trampeled by horses; enough for every player to have been run over 5 times"
So that would be about 2,5M players.
That would make the average playtime about 5,5 hours.
Anyway I don't know who did the motion cap but they nailed it when you get drunk. Most worryingly it's exactly how I stagger around before collapsing after a few too many sherberts.