[...] guess that’s still somewhat vague. Regardless, here’s two good links off Raph Koster’s site [...]

[...] http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RaphsWebsite/~3/130823151/http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/07/05/npd-offers-a-new-gamer-demo-study/I blogged about the original pass of this study. Now there’s an update. It’s focused on gamers specifically, and it looks like it was a pretty deep study — over 11,000 folks surveyed. [...]

The entire core “game industry” is of course based on those 2%. And given the revenue stream, it’s easy to see why.

I don’t follow. According to those stats, for every 100 people, the “Heavy Gamers” buy 26.2 games a quarter (13.1×2). And the combination of “Avid” and “Secondary” gamers, who almost certainly play the same kinds of games, buy 63.8 games a quarter (33×1.4+22x.8).

A agree that the game industry is built based on that 2% of heavy gamers, but I don’t see why in the economics. I think it has more to do with Pavlov than anything else.

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Secondly, this push for item selling by you and other Indi’s bothers me a great deal. I can see why, funding is hard to impossible to get and this seems the way, or else we do without (or with much lower quality). I fear that the kind of game I really want isn’t going to be made, because of the lack of funding. It’s for this one reason that I’ll say what I never thought I’d say. I agree (under duress).

But here’s my thoughts on what’s acceptable in the item sales pitch, for a game I’d play and purchase in.
No item sold should have any effect on game play and success in the game.
-No game money. That would mean that those who spend more than me have an advantage over me.
No special abilities, weapons, armor, faster horses, etc.
No items used for production.
Both of the above give a player what he didn’t get in game, and if he didn’t earn it, and it’s advantageous, I don’t want to see it.

The kinds of things I can live with?
Special looking things, like unique cloths and armor. (Think uniforms and guild crests here)
Penants, flags, etc.
Art adaptations to existing items like weapons and armor.
More attractive versions of things, as above, but also pets and horses, etc.
Things like carved ship prows, glassed windows, tatoos, and things that mean nothing to the games mechanics, but would be attractive to players.

I think from that you can get my drift.

But with that said, I’d leave this game in a second for another that didn’t have item sales, all things otherwise being equal (but the items being available through game play, discovery, production, whatever). And I’d pay more for that game too.

[...] posted on his blog today about the gamer breakdown, and how the ‘real’ games you’re referring to are [...]

And I agree with you that the core of the games industry lives off the “heavy gamers”. I think we’ve known that for a while. The trouble is, they may buy a lot of titles, but there are a lot of publishers competing for their dollars – hence the high failure rate of titles (about 5% of titles contribute 50% of revenue in this market).

Always interested to see data.

Best wishes!

[...] ralph_kosterhttp://www.raphkoster.com/2007/07/05/npd-offers-a-new-gamer-demo-study/I blogged about the original pass of this study. Now there’s an update. It’s focused on gamers specifically, and it looks like it was a pretty deep study — over 11,000 folks surveyed. [...]

I was pursuing Raph Koster’s blog found “real” stats (realer than mine) so I’m changing the blog to discussing purely indie game dev topics and random technical issues. Kid MMO stats Voice vs. Text argument NPD gamer study My favourite web game – Kingdom of Loathing! Casual games from investor POVs