More than 1.2 billion people are playing games worldwide, according to a state of the industry report by Spil Games.
Above: Spil Games data regarding gamer gender.
Of those, about 700 million play online games. That amounts to 44 percent of the world’s online population, according to comScore data cited by Spil Games.
“Many people don’t know how big gaming is,” said Oscar Diele, chief marketing officer at Spil Games, a maker of online and mobile games that are mostly targeted at girls. “Gaming is a huge part of people’s online activities. It’s really mainstream, crossing age and gender boundaries.”
Netherlands-based Spil Games collected research from a variety of sources, including Newzoo, World Population Clock, comScore, eMarketer, Goo Technologies, PopCap, Cisco, SpotXchange, Brightroll, and Akamai. It mashed the data together in a 17-page report.
Spil Games itself reaches lots of girls, an untapped market, through its websites. The company reaches more than 50 million girls. It makes both online games based on Adobe’s Flash format as well as multiplatform mobile titles based on HTML5.
Diele said in an interview with GamesBeat that developers should make their offerings like TV shows, with cliffhanger moments that keep the audience engaged. He also said that advertisers should start to spend more on video ads within games.
Above: A breakout of where people play games.
“Not a lot of data is available, and that’s why advertisers don’t spend as much as they should targeting gamers,” Diele said. The majority of Spil Games’ revenue comes from ads.
The data shows that 46 percent of gamers are women and 54 percent are men. The top categories for boys and men are racing, sports, and action games. The top categories for women are puzzle, quiz, word, matching, and mahjong games. The top categories for girls are cooking, dress-up, and pet care games.
About 47 percent of females ages 15 to 24 play games, while 54 percent of males do. On the upper end, 41 percent of females and 37 percent of males over age 45 play games.
The most common place people play games is on the couch, and 69 percent said they do that. Fifty-seven percent play at home in bed. Forty-one percent play in front of the TV. Thirty-four percent play on the toilet. Fifty-five percent play waiting for an appointment. And sixty-three percent play as a passenger in a bus, train, or car. We’re glad they don’t play while they’re driving.
In terms of territories, gaming has spread the world over. Seventy percent of the online population in Turkey plays games. Fifty-three percent of Brazil’s online population and 62 percent of Argentina’s plays games. And 54 percent of Poland’s population plays online games, according to comScore.