social gaming!

Social gaming…hmmm it was not a familiar word to me. To be honest, it is the first time I heard about this word. So I searched it to know its meaning.


Wiki said, it is playing game, but in a way of social interaction. Usually not playing games alone, two or more people are included so they can interact.
The big purpose is to interact with other people through games.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_gaming)
If you want to know more about social gaming definition, click here!http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1069763p1.html





After read this definition, I did some more research to understand this clearly.
Definition is what is above, so I decided to find who is playing this game and what is, to be clearer, what kind of these games are, and how popular they are.


Result of Googleing and search in yahoo, I found some blogs which have answer that I was wondering and wanted to find. These blogs are interesting and have many postings about social gaming, so I like to share. I’ll link it bottom of this posting, so anyone who are interested, click it!


The first blog I looked in to are these. I wanted to know what kind of game are there and what is going on gaming industry, so I looked in to theses.


blog 1.http://myfarmcommunity.com/showthread.php?7661-Social-Gaming-Roundup-iPad-Frosmo-Statistics-More&p=64185

blog2.

blog3.

blog4.

blog 5.

blog6.


blog7.





After reading this, I knew there are many games like poker, farm vile, zen bound, frosmo, penny drop, Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, crowdStar and the others as well. These are playing in all kinds of social media networking sites such as facebook, my space, ipad, and the other sites as well.



People play these a lot. A game like crowdStar and play dom, these had been downloaded more than 20 million MAU, with DAU at 2.56 million and 47.5 million MAU with 10.8 million DAU. (statistics are from http://www.vaibhav.us/2009/12/top-facebook-social-game-developers.html )



Some of the games are not only playing in USA, they also expand their market to Asia. A game such as Frosmo.



Frosmo is a game that tournament and team-based platform game. It is popular among social gamers so they decided to expand their market to Asia. So now, people living in China and Asian countries can play this game too!
They have all sorts of games, so there are many options to choose. From kids to elders, they can choose games they like. They can raise pets or have farm and run them, or play zynga or cross words. It is for every age.


But most of internet users are young so, there are lot of games at their age. Like simulation games but still there are many games for all and it was good to have many options.



Now I know what kind of game they are playing and what is famous. My next question was who are playing these games. So I search again and I found this blog.




As this postings theme said, it was a big help and answer to my question.
According to this blog, 55% of social gamers are women and 45% are males. And in UK, 58% are women and 42% are men


I thought men are more game type but in social gaming it tends to be women play more than men. Among these female gamers, 38% said they play multiple times of game a day and 29 males said it too. Women more like to play with people they know (68% / 56%) and males play more with strangers (41% /33%)



I think it shows difference of gender. There are many types of people but generally girls tend to play with people they know. And I think women tend to more careful about being with strangers than men.

The strange thing about who is playing social game was the players age. According to this blog 46% of social gamers are over 50 years old in United states.


And UK, only 23% are young age gamers. The average age of social gamers in US is 48 and UK, 38.



This was really strange to me. I thought young people do more social networking so, they would play more. But somehow, olders do it more. So It is really strange to me. Maybe, younger people do more social networking but don’t do the game and olders do more games.


Social gamers are all over the age and all over the world! It is getting bigger and bigger. According to this blog, One hundred million(!!)



people are playing these games and about $1 billion(!!!) in revenue is expected this year(2010). It’s getting bigger and bigger and many companies are diving into the market.



It is a rising market so dive in to it before it is too late!:)




These are the blogs that I left comments.

http://socialgame7.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/treasure-isle-video/#comment-113

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/03/13/social-gaming-roundup-ipad-frosmo-statistics-more/comment-page-1/#comment-14613

http://socialgamesnation.com/?p=50&cpage=1#comment-11

http://www.massively.com/2010/04/06/richard-garriot-and-the-choppy-waters-of-social-gaming/










These are the websites/ blogs that I read

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_gaming_legit_gameplay_or_a_play_for_your_ca.php

http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1069763p1.html

http://www.socialgamestips.com/blog

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/category/socialgames/

http://friskymongoose.com/social-gamers-are-younger-in-the-united-kingdom-says-popcap/

http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/social-gaming-survey/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/

http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1069763p1.html

http://socialgame7.wordpress.com/

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/category/socialgames/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_gaming_legit_gameplay_or_a_play_for_your_ca.php

http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1069763p1.html

http://socialgamesnation.com/

http://www.massively.com/tag/social-gaming/
http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/social-gaming-survey/

http://myfarmcommunity.com/showthread.php?7661-Social-Gaming-Roundup-iPad-Frosmo-Statistics-More&p=64185