Lots of people have thought that if we ever prefect Virtual Reality systems, for example like the Holodeck on Star Trek, it would be more addictive than the most powerful drug. We are a long way from being able to reproduce the Holodeck or anything like it but today we do have massively multiplyer online games that are played in Virtual worlds.

Some of my friends play so much many people might say they are addicted. The game they are playing will tell you how much time you've spent playing so far. According to the game, for the last year each of them has played approximately 36 days. Think about that, 36 days * 24 hours or 864 hours. Another way to put that, we base work days on 8 hours a day. 864 hours is 108 days of work. There are probably an average of 22 work days a month. 108/22 = nearly 5 months of work spent playing that game last year. WoW!!

Of course there are other ways of looking at it. 864 hours / 365 days = about 2 hours and 20 minutes a day. That may sound like alot but I know people that spend more than 2 hours 20 minutes a day reading or watching TV or writing e−mail or updating their blog. And, you could point out that playing online is interacting with other people where was reading and often watching TV is not.

Still, looking at the time spend in terms of work days it is an interesting way to look at. 5 months. For a small game project that could be an entire project.