Modern SQL databases that are commonly used (MySQL,Postgres,Oracle,MSSQL,etc) allow you to schedule stored procedures to be run with arbitrary time intervals. It's a very light weight method of running updates like this and removes the need to invoke external script or program to do it for you.

This also allows the database to optimize the query you run just once, instead of doing it every time external script invokes it, so it's very useful from performance standpoint. Of course this only applies if your updates are trivial enough to be programmed in your databases own scripting language. Resource updates, automatic logouts, record purging and the likes are excellent candidates for these scheduled stored procedures.

Modern SQL databases that are commonly used (MySQL,Postgres,Oracle,MSSQL,etc) allow you to schedule stored procedures to be run with arbitrary time intervals. It's a very light weight method of running updates like this and removes the need to invoke external script or program to do it for you.

This also allows the database to optimize the query you run just once, instead of doing it every time external script invokes it, so it's very useful from performance standpoint. Of course this only applies if your updates are trivial enough to be programmed in your databases own scripting language. Resource updates, automatic time interval log outs, record purging and the likes are excellent candidates for these scheduled stored procedures.

Most likely the load your database is experiencing comes 99.9% from page loads, game engine updates and the like, as a popular game can easily have hundreds of thousands of queries per second. Compared to the load that arises from running a few queries (although ones that touch large portion of a table) once a minute or so, the load should not be an issue. That is, unless you update values that are indexed by the database. You should avoid updating indexed columns at all costs if you worry about performance.