Skyrim is the year's most played game already according to Raptr

It's interesting to note that many of the year's most played games came out relatively recently. Case and point: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the year's most played RPG and most played game overall, and it was released just under a month ago. Those bugs and memory restrictions apparently having that big an effect on playtime.

Game community and statistic tracking company Raptr has released their awards for the most played games of 2011, based on data gathered from its 10 million users. Keep in mind that Raptr only automatically tracks PC and Xbox 360 gameplay. Wii and PlayStation 3 play must be tracked manually by users, which they might not always do for every game.

It's interesting to note that many of the year's most played games came out relatively recently. Case and point: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the year's most played RPG and most played game overall, and it was released just under a month ago. Those bugs and memory restrictions apparently having that big an effect on playtime.

Other awards go to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for Most Played Shooter, Batman: Arkham City for Most Played Open-World Game (apparently Skyrim doesn't count as "open-world"), The Sims Social for Most Played Social Game, FIFA Soccer 12 for Most Played sports Game, L.A. Noire for Most Played New IP, and DC Universe Online for Most Successful Paid to Free-to-Play Game.

Other bits of trivia of note include the fact that Call of Duty: Modern Wrfare 3 was played twice as much in its opening month as Battlefield 3 was in its opening month, and Skyrim has been played six times as much as its RPG category runner up, Dragon Age 2.

Even without reliable PS3 and Wii data, this list looks pretty legit. (Most of the winners are multiplatform games.) Check out the Raptr blog for less vague statistics.

Staff article by Rhody Tobin (December 09, 2011) Rhody likes to press the keys on his keyboard. Sometimes the resulting letters form strings of words that kind of make sense when you think about them for a moment. Most times they're just random gibberish that should be ignored. Ball-peen wobble glurk.