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The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

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Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#2

Post by nik_0_0 »

Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of women are visiting casinos/e-casinos and gambling? That seems like a HUGE number.

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#3

Post by davidtyleryork »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #2

Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of wome…

Hey nik, thanks for the comment. So you know, the number is that 81% of women prefer to play slots when they go to casinos. This doesn't mean that they are 81% of slot machine players (the actual ratio is closer to 52% male, 48% female).

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#4

Post by PeterInouye »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #2

Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of wome…

It's definitely true that different demographics crave different types of competition!

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#5

Post by nik_0_0 »

davidtyleryork wrote: post #3
nik_0_0 wrote: post #2

Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of wome…

Hey nik, thanks for the comment. So you know, the number is that 81% of women prefer to play slots when they go to casinos. This doesn't mean that they are 81% of slot machine players (the actual ratio is closer to 52% male, 48% female).

That makes far more sense :) Thanks for the clarification, I didn't read the data closely enough.

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#6

Post by davidwparker »

Not surprising.

Also, if you haven't read the article/story/blog "Who killed videogames: a ghost story", then you should check it out: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-g...

It talks a lot about the behavior mindsets of social video games.

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#7

Post by gojomo »

A casino or other social-gaming company is often A/B testing variants to 'increase engagement'. However, such engagement is arguably against the mental/physical health interests of the test subjects.

Is A/B optimization in such a case thus an illegal/unethical experiment on human subjects without their informed consent? (Can Zynga 'Whales', that minority of their users contributing most of their revenues via payments of hundreds of dollars a month, actually give informed consent? Or are they on a binge?)

Tobacco companies lost giant class-action lawsuits because they (A) hid known harmful effects of their products; and (B) engineered their products to be more addictive. Could companies pushing gamification no matter the cost become the tobacco-company-pariahs of the mid-21st-century?

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#9

Post by davidtyleryork »

davidwparker wrote: post #6

Not surprising. Also, if you haven't read the article/story/blog "Who killed videogames: a ghost story", then you should check it out: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-g... It talks a lot about the behavior mindsets of social video games.

Great article, thanks for sharing :)

Re: The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

#10

Post by davidtyleryork »

username3 wrote: post #8

There's a page not found for your link in the article to Exposing Social Gaming's Hidden Lever. The link under You may also like works. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3165365

ACK! Fixed it, thanks for the heads up
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