“Lonely, pizza-obsessed gamers sitting alone in the dark playing video games for hours on end – isn’t that what everyone thinks? Truth or fiction?” ask Bigpoint who wanted to know, and so the game producers surveyed a total of 6,663 online gamers from around the world about their gaming habits and everyday life. During the Casual Connect from Feb. 8–10, 2011 in Hamburg, Germany, Bigpoint will unveil the final results of this survey.
Attractive, peaceable and sociable
The Bigpoint Gamer Survey presents a completely new image of online gamers: attractive, healthy, cultured and popular with the opposite sex. Gamers are sociable individuals, both online and offline. 62% of the surveyed players said they have more friends in real life. And the percentages increase with age: 55% of players under 20 have more real friends than online friends and 73% of gamers over the age of 50 have more real-life friendships.
A total of 28% of the people met most of their friends online but have since gotten to know them in real life. Only a tenth of all gamers said that their only real friends were online gamers. Gamers also like to socialize in their free time. More than half of them – 52% in fact – meet up with their friends regularly each month.
A third (34%) even see their friends on a daily basis, though most of these tend to be younger players. Gamers are aware that online communities are no replacement for family. Most of them indicated that their family comes first, and not their clan or guild.
And contrary to popular belief, playing computer games has nothing to do with being aggressive: Online gamers play primarily to have fun, and most of them would rather resolve conflicts with words than fights. Breaking the stereotype with social and casual games According to Bigpoint’s press officer Janine Griffel the image of a lonely gamer playing on their own is a thing of the past.
“Our study shows that online gamers are attractive individuals with healthy and active social lives. Social and casual games are very popular among our users for the reason that they emphasize being social. The trend’s definitely moving away from single-player games to social-based experiences.”
The organizers behind the Casual Connect, the Casual Games Association, also believe in this trend. In their opinion, it will be social network games such as those found on Facebook to shape the future of games.
