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NPD offers a new gamer demo study

July 5th, 2007 (Visited 1959 times) Tags:

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.

Avid PC Gamers: 33%. 13.6 hours a week mostly on computers, and buy 1.4 titles a quarter.
Secondary Gamers: 22%. 6.8 hours a week, again mostly on computers, and buy 0.8 titles a quarter. Only a third of this group owns a PS2.
Avid Console Gamers: 20%. 10.7 hours a week, and they own 1.6 consoles and 0.8 portable platforms. 1.9 titles a quarter.
Mass Market Gamers: 15%. 8.9 hours a week, mostly on PS2 and PC. They own 1.8 consoles — more than avid console gamers, probably because they don’t sell their old consoles for store credit.
Casual Kid Gamers: no % given, I deduce 8%. Kids 6-12, owning 1 console and 0.5 portables (which doesn’t match the kids I know, all of whom have Gameboys of some stripe). Just 3.6 hours a week of playtime, probably because of pesky parents. 0.8 games per quarter.
Heavy Gamers: 2%. 39.3 hours a week, mostly on 360 and Wii. Own 2.8 consoles and 1.9 portables. And they buy 13.1 games a quarter, or around 4.5 a month.

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

Of course, if you make a game that manages to click with an assortment of these segments including heavy gamers, and then apply tiered pricing so that the Heavy Gamers are monetized 10x more… you clean up and get the best of both worlds. And that is why the item sales model is so attractive to so many publishers.

One thing that sticks out is that the Mass Market category isn’t all that mass market for the industry right now. In fact, the “big game” is actually PC gamers of the two sorts, which account for half the entire gaming market, and can be monetized at least once a quarter. But at that sort of volume, there’s plenty of opportunities for other sorts of revenue streams, such as ads. The size of this segment bodes well for all the web-game startups out there now, especially if they design for their market.

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Casually Hardcore devlog wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

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

friends (default) wrote on July 5th, 2007 at 11:09 pm:

[...] 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. [...]

SteveStreeting.com » We Love Katamari, we do wrote on July 6th, 2007 at 7:06 am:

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

raphkoster_rss: NPD offers a new gamer demo study wrote on July 8th, 2007 at 4:28 pm:

[...] 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. [...]

Demographic help needed! - SeaShadow Consulting Forums wrote on July 14th, 2007 at 3:45 am:

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

Chris said on July 6th, 2007 at 6:41 am:

I’m confused… this data makes it look like the Heavy Gamers are the ones buying all the Wiis…? Surely this is a mistake. At least one of the other clusters must be purchasing Wii (the number don’t add up otherwise).

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!

Amaranthar said on July 6th, 2007 at 8:54 am:

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.

———

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.

Raph said on July 6th, 2007 at 9:02 am:

I am not necessarily pushing the model myself. But I do think that tiered pricing in general is an obvious evolution.