Halo 3's One Billionth Game Played

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Halo 3's One Billionth Game Played



Over the weekend, a three-minute-nineteen-second match on Halo 3 was something more than a simple round of Infection on Foundry - it was the game's one billionth multiplayer match played since launch.

Yes, that's "billion," with a B. It's one hell of a milestone - but there are a few ways to look at it that make it alternately less and more impressive, depending on how you slice it.

On the one hand, Halo 3 is one of the best-selling games of all time: As of last January (that's 2008, not 2009) it had moved over 8 million copies. If every one of those 8 million gamers played just 125 rounds online, Presto! We'd have our one billion matches - and it should be easy to rack up 125 games in a year and a half, right?

On the other hand, expecting every single person who bought the game to play it online - let alone for that long - is a bit of a tall order. Furthermore, some of the other stats that Bungie has released to accompany this milestone are staggering: If every match lasted only 3 minutes, gamers have sunk a combined 2,300,000 days into Halo 3 online, or 6,301 years.

But really, 3-minute matches are on the short end of things, aren't they? In order to be more accurate, Bungie got their database guru, RocketMoose, to crunch some numbers to find out total playtime: If ten players played in a ten-minute match, their database would record that as 100 gamer-minutes spent online. The numbers were crunched, and the data spit out - the sum total of how long people have played Halo 3 online.

Are you ready for the numbers?

2,023,153,340,764 seconds. Two trillion seconds. 64,109 years. This doesn't count Custom matches - or frat kids playing splitscreen offline, either. That is an absolutely mind-blowing number. I suppose it's a good thing Neanderthal Man didn't have Halo 3 64,000 years ago - who needs to invent fire when you have deathmatches to play?

Interesting timing on the milestone, too - kind of feels like Bungie's own "Ha, take that, Killzone [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/5812-Review-Killzone-2]!" But seriously, one billion - even Halo 2 hasn't gone that far yet. According to Bungie, it's still "sitting pretty" at a mere 798 million matches played.

(Videogamer [http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=CGHV33KGD2R9D3W9V4QY7MF9Q])

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L.B. Jeffries

New member
Nov 29, 2007
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If you were to stack all of those matches up, it would go all the way to the sun and back around to the Earth! That's enough social slayer matches to convince 82 congressmen at once that they can suck up another family values vote with a game censorship bill.
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
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Wow.
Like it or not, I suppose you can't deny the popularity of the game...and this only solidifies that fact. Makes me want to pick it up again for the multiplayer, since when I had the game I didn't have high-speed and never played it online...but I have no money. Oh well!
Good show, Bungie!
 

The Shade

New member
Mar 20, 2008
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Some of that is me! I've contributed my share of hours/matches to the tally.

You're welcome, Bungie.
 

shadow_pirate22

New member
Aug 25, 2008
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If you've been reading some of my posts, you'll know I'm not a Halo fan. But I can't say I'm at all surprised. Mind you, I don't dislike Halo, I just don't think it's the greatest game ever like some people do.
 

Eldritch Warlord

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Jun 6, 2008
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Indigo_Dingo said:
And at the same time, celebrating their 1 quintillionth expleteive uttered during the game.
The Fanboy Strikes Back!

Man the ion cannon! We must abandon Hoth!

Concerning the topic, is the Escapist totally incapable of using any other Halo 3 picture?
 

bad rider

The prodigal son of a goat boy
Dec 23, 2007
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Indigo_Dingo said:
And at the same time, celebrating their 1 quintillionth expleteive uttered during the game.
Only their quintillionth? Man that falls short of expectations.
 

Brokkr

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Nov 25, 2008
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It is amazing how much time was spent playing these matches since last January.
 

Vlane

New member
Sep 14, 2008
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Which game has the most online matches played? CSS?

Anyway. Nice number.
 

dalek sec

Leader of the Cult of Skaro
Jul 20, 2008
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Indigo_Dingo said:
And at the same time, celebrating their 1 quintillionth expleteive uttered during the game.
I think that number might be a little conservative there Indigo.
 

Anton P. Nym

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Sep 18, 2007
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Apparently I need to look at these announcements sooner and more closely; fan site Halo.Bungie.Org says that the "billionth game" announcement piece had two Live code keys for free copies of the upcoming Mythic map pack hidden in it. I don't know where, and they're used now, but that sort of stuff is why I like Bungie as a studio.

-- Steve
 

scotth266

Wait when did I get a sub
Jan 10, 2009
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Bwah!
Glad I wasn't drinking something when I read this.
Hooray for Halo 3. Can't wait to see what games try to top this number.