Via Spill, via PopCap, a vertiable treasure trove of Casual Games statistics:
Player makeup
76% of players are female; 71% are 40 or older and 47% are 50 or older; 46% are college graduates with 14% holding a master’s or PhD; 53% have an annual household income of $50,000 or more; 67% are married and 53% have at least one child.
Player habits
77% of respondents stated they have been playing casual games for at least three years and 49% indicated they have been playing for five or more years; fully 21% said they’ve been playing for 10 or more years, essentially since casual games first appeared on the Web. More than half (57%) of all respondents say they play casual games on a daily basis, and 90% said they play twice or more per week. On the same note, over half of the respondents (52%) stated that they play casual games for at least five hours per week, and 29% said they play for 10 or more hours each week.
Player habits by Gender
while the overall audience for casual games is predominantly female, the percentage of women under 40 who play casual games (26%) is significantly smaller than men under 40 (36%). Further, of those men who do play casual games, their history of playing such games is generally much longer than their female counterparts’ – 61% of men said they have been playing casual games for 5 years or more, while only 46% of women said they’d been playing that long.
Player goals
44% of women included “stress relief” among their choices, compared to 33% of men. In addition 17% of women chose “entertainment” as a reason for playing compared to 24% of men.
88% of players indicated they experienced stress relief from playing casual games and 74% cited mental exercise as a benefit; when asked to choose the most important reasons for playing, 41% picked “stress relief/relaxation,” more than twice the number (19%) who chose “entertainment”
Player habits
Asked to name their favorite genres of casual games, survey respondents selected puzzle (85%), word (62%), arcade (61%) and card games (51%) as their top choices; asked when they play casual games, respondents chose weekday evenings (51%), “late at night before going to bed” (47%) and weekends (35%) as the most common times they play – with 11% stating they play during work hours.
PopCap are really pushing the health benefits of Casual Games, too:
Dr. Carl Arinoldo, a Stony Brook NY-based psychologist of 25 years and an author and expert on stress management who has played casual games and advocates them as a source of both stress relief and cognitive exercise, was not surprised by the survey results. “Casual word and puzzle computer games, such as ‘Bookworm’ and ‘Bejeweled’ can actually develop new cellular brain connections thereby helping to keep the healthy brain active and vital,” he stated. “And by seriously attending to the word and puzzle games, people can control stress by cognitively ‘blocking out’ the negative stresses of the day and ultimately train themselves to do this more reflexively. Unlike traditional videogames that tend to over-stimulate while they engage our minds, casual games have a calming effect while still providing an acceptable level of distraction and entertainment.”
hugg this
Previous posts: The Decline and Virtualisation of PHP, Casual Games 2.0, One Year of Millions Of Games, Casual Game Statistics, Steam, XNA and Casual Games, Agile Eco Development, and more in the archives.
Related posts: Casual Game Statistics, The Opposite of Avatar, Casual Games, Slight Return, The Decline and Virtualisation of PHP, casualities, The mass amateurisation of everything, in code, and more in the archives.
Related posts: Casual Game Statistics, The Opposite of Avatar, Casual Games, Slight Return, The Decline and Virtualisation of PHP, casualities, The mass amateurisation of everything, in code, and more in the archives.
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