how many people play a game?

Is there a way to find out how many people play a game or hours logged for each game? I remember gamespot a couple of years ago use to update daily top 10 games by hours played through online or something.

 

You can take a look at the stats of steam users here - Steam: Game and Player Statistics

 

Interesting. Skyrim finally fell off #1 in that Steam list.

 

Skyrim has been out for 4 months now. And unlike the #1 game on the list, TF2, while Skyrim is an awesome game and has absolutely enormous amounts of content, it's still 1) a single-player only game, and 2) not free.

 

You can only measure how much people have played a game if they use some kind of service which monitors their activity. The most used service out there is Steam, and it is not 100% accurate (because it is not everyone who uses Steam) but it gives you a hint to what people are playing right now.

 

For Steam-exclusive games, it's accurate. (which Skyrim and TF2 both are)

 

I can't understand the Hat Economy in TF2. My friend is hooked indefinitely into that game and cannot stop talking about hats. The game is fun and all, but I don't understand this obsession with hats.

 

They're a status symbol. For people who invest a lot of time into the game, sometimes stuff like that is important. I don't play as much TF2 as I used to, but I have an Unusual hat (much rarer than normal hats, some of these can sell for hundreds of real-world dollars), and I'm proud of it.

 

Here's a graph for most MMO's played (starting at 1 million):

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

Couldn't find a list for other genres, though

 

Maybe the total stats on Steam are accurate, but for personal stats I know there's several games that I know I spent dozens of hours on yet it only says like 2 or 3 hours played. Half-Life 2 is one of them it says 32 minutes played. Same with BF2, says 6 hours played. I put over 600 hours in that game (according to bf2s), granted not all through Steam, but at least 100 through Steam.