The Casual Gaming Demographic Isn’t What You Think It Is
There’s a lot of interest surrounding casual gaming at the moment. Whether it’s on games console platforms, like Xbox Live, or Apple platforms like iPhone (and even iPod), there’s no doubt that people feel there are billions of dollars to be made from casual gaming.
The question arises - who is it that’s playing casual games? Well, maybe the demographic isn’t what you think it is. For example, take one of the biggest casual gaming web-sites, Pogo.com. Owned by EA (Electronic Arts), Pogo.com has around fifteen million unique visitors per month, many of whom play these so-called “casual” for several hours a day. EA’s information is that the largest group of people that are playing these games are 35+ year old women - more specifically, what are known in the US as “soccer moms“.
Pretty surprising, and pretty interesting, I think…
Asam Bashir wrote:
Is it the moms playing the games or their toddlers??
Isn’t part of the Wii stratergy aiming for the female demographic?
Posted 16 Feb 2007 at 11:24 pm ¶
simon wrote:
It’s the Moms…
Yes, Nintendo is trying to go after everyone.
The typical so-called “hard-core” gamer is male, aged 18-35. These people want state-of-the-art graphics, and games that are almost impossible to play well until you’ve invested huge amounts of time learning them.
People that aren’t male, aged 18-35 seem to want something else from games. Now, many would have said that people outside this hard-core group don’t want video games at all. However, it turns out that they just don’t want the same games that the hard-core gamers want.
The massive success of sites like pogo.com, where the “typical” user profile is “female, aged 35+”, shows that the right games can attract a totally new audience.
And what’s really interesting, of course, is that casual games don’t need anything like the “Hollywood movie-scale” development budgets that the hard-core games need. So, if you’re looking for where real gaming innovation is going to come from, there are pretty strong arguments to say that casual gaming will be where it happens.
Posted 17 Feb 2007 at 8:26 am ¶