Blockdot, a casual games company that also produces advergames, recently conducted a survey among 500 of its Kewlbox.com players to find out about gaming lifestyle and behaviors.
"The old concept of a teenage boy glued to a game console has been blown away by the mass-market casual online game player," Blockdot commented. "These online players are engrossed in quick-play engagements that can last from 5 to 45 minutes per user session."
Although Blockdot's survey may not be the most indicative of typical console gamers' habits, since its sample of players is likely already skewed in the casual direction, the company still saw some interesting gameplay habit changes. The drop-off for interest in shooters is particularly interesting given the huge popularity of Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo and others.
Below, you'll find some of the survey highlights:
- Most dramatic shift in gaming preferences since 2008: First-Person Shooter Games, once very strong with males, are now losing appeal. 20% decline in positive intent to play and 70% increase in negative intent.
- Puzzle Games remain extremely popular with female players. Action-Puzzle Games is a growing genre for both males and females.
- Traditional Board Games remain one of the most popular gaming genres, with 88% of females and 80% of males indicating a positive intent to play these games
- Most desired new trend of games is the ability to earn trophies and achievements.
- 49% of participants have a webcam, but only 17% use it.
- Very few participants have used their webcam for Augmented Reality games — while a quarter of participants don’t know what Augmented Reality is.
- Despite the growing attention focused on multi-player games, most people still prefer single-player gameplay.
For those interested, the entire survey is accessible right here (pdf).
3 Comments
July 22, 2010
Because the industry turns the shooters to sh*t, mostly. And the consoles of corse, bloody gamepad control ruins every shooter by default.
July 22, 2010
From a statistical standpoint, this survey says nothing about the overall appeal of first person shooters. I can't believe that Blockdot has the ignorance to assert such a comment when they only survey their own customers who are casual gamers (unless I'm taking that quote out of context.)
A good survey to find out what their own customer base wants, but not a good survey to draw conclusions about the entire gaming market.
The author, James, did point this out in the third paragraph.
July 22, 2010
"The drop-off for interest in shooters is particularly interesting given the huge popularity of Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo and others"
Like Royalwuff said this would tell you something already obvious. And that is that surveying 500 gamers out of millions is not going to produce accurate results. And if those 500 are on a casual game makers site they could easily be people who'd rather play Flower than even consider a FPS like RFOM. The funny thing is i've said it and i've read comments from others saying that they're tired of too many shooters but yet and still Cod sells 17M copies or whatever.
What I will say from personal experience is that i've tried to get my Sister interested in let's say god of war or some shooter and she won't even pick up the controller but she'll happily play some lame facebook game where you pretend to cook food. I found this out because she dropped my nephew off to go to school and asked me could I serve some plates for her in 30 minutes because she was running late and couldn't do it. I just shook my head in disbelief because I don't see the appeal. So I have seen a non-gamer or really now a casual gamer get hooked on one of these free casual internet games.