Margaritaville Online Serving Up Impressive Social Play Stats

^[1]THQ’s Jimmy Buffett-inspired world Margaritaville Online ^[2],  developed by Vancouver’s Exploding Barrel Games ^[1], made headlines over the weekend when it took home the ‘Best Social – Casual Game’ award at the Canadian Videogame Awards ^[3].

Since its launch in January (please see editor’s comments below), Margaritaville Online has helped bridge the gap between the music and social video game industries, as shown by the recently announced or launched Facebook and Online games for Grateful Dead and Jay-Z’s ‘Empire’, both based around their music and life stories. These musicians and video game companies have created a new way to experience music and games, using iconic songs and lifestyles as the backbone to the storyline.

Margaritaville Online has seen great success and some impressive data points include:

• # of countries playing MVO: 210 (based on FB country codes) ^[4]
• Total player hours played since launch: 2,997,137 hours (341.9 years)
• # of objects hacked (bamboo): 12,877,842
• # of objects smashed (barrels/crates/rocks): 68,349,432
• # of objects netted: 14,279,550
• # of times players have dug: 4,684,060
• # of times players have changed outfits: 618,291

Additionally, the minigames have had some extensive playtime:

• Total played since launch: 2,599,862
• Hammock Time: 591,890
• Limbo: 312,414
• Pirates: 1,349,381
• Steel Drum: 139,136
• Tile Puzzle: 207,041

Hrm….the above notwithstanding, and without a desire to cause controversy, but if Margaritaville Online was officially launched to the public in January 2012, it does not follow the CVA guideline of “released in 2011 ^[5]” – unless a closed beta counts as a release, in which case you can disregard the preceding statement, but to me it appears as if the game was officially released by THQ on January 25, 2012, although Exploding Barrel announced the game as being live on January 18th, 2012. Either way, a 2012 release date would theoretically make Margaritaville Online ineligible for this year’s awards – wouldn’t it? Perhaps someone from the CVAs or Exploding Barrel could clarify this for us?