Call of Duty Black Ops Takes 8 Lives in One Day

Eight lifetimes were spent playing Call of Duty Black Ops on XBOX Live by then end of launch day on November 9th.  Sensational, I know, but let me explain.

I've always found this math concept interesting, where you compare lifetimes to an event, especially if you equate it to big events like the Super Bowl.  Basicaly any event where they brag about the number of viewers, or hours spent, or time committed to something means that lifetimes were used up.  Major Nelsons recent tweet about Call of Duty Black Ops having 5.9 million hours played in the first day reminded me of this strange thought, so I had to find out.  How many lifetimes were used playing Call of Duty on that first day?

Major Nelson's tweet from Nov. 19th, 2010

The math is easy, so let me walk through it.

First off, what is the life expectancy of the average person?  I decided to use the US average, since its probably the majority of players and is also fairly high.  According to the CIA, the average life expectancy of a US citizen in 2010 is approximately 78 years.

1 lifetime = 78 years

Second is determining how many years 5.9 million hours is.  5,900,000 hours is 245833 days (5900000 hrs / 24 hrs/day) which is 673 years (245833 days / 365 days/year).

5,900,000 hours = 673 years

The rest is simple.  If a lifetime is 78 years, and 673 years were spent playing, that means that 8.6 lifetimes (673 years / 78 years/lifetime) were spent.

673 years = 8.6 lifetimes

What does this mean?  Well, nothing really.  It's just an interesting number related to life.  It doesn't mean lives were wasted, because many many more are spent in more mundane things every day (such as traffic).  It's just interesting to see how we spend our time.