Rightly or wrongly, many people have a picture in their minds of the average online gamer, and it probably involves someone not yet old enough to vote, huddled in their parents’ basement killing dwarves with mystic powers in games like World of Warcraft. A growing category of what are called “social games,” however, appeals to a much different demographic, according to a recent study. The study — sponsored by PopCap, creator of popular social games such as Bejeweled and Insaniquarium — looked at game players in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and found that the average player of these online social games is a 43-year-old woman.

More than 24 percent of those who responded to the survey (full results in PDF form here) said they regularly play social games, a category that includes Facebook games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and Happy Aquarium. According to survey company Info Solutions Group, that level of response suggests a total social gaming population of approximately 100 million. Social gamers were defined as those who said they play games on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace at least once a week. The market for social games has been growing so quickly that companies that make them, such as Zynga and Crowdstar, have become investment and acquisition targets.

Social gaming seems to appeal to a much older demographic than traditional video games, perhaps in part because social games are easier to play for short periods of time, are largely free, and don’t involve sophisticated equipment or gratuitous violence. According to a recent survey by Royal Pingdom, the average age of social networking site users in general is also older — the largest single group is between 35 and 44 years of age. More than 60 percent of Facebook users are over 35.

The PopCap study showed that 55 percent of all social gamers in the U.S. are women, as are almost 60 percent of those in the UK. The average age in the U.S. is 48, which is substantially older than the 38-year-old average in the UK, and 46 percent of American social gamers are 50 or older, compared with just 23 percent in the UK. Only 6 percent of all social gamers are age 21 or younger.

According to the survey, women make up the majority of avid social gamers, with 38 percent of female social gamers saying they play social games several times a day, vs. just 29 percent of males. Women are also more likely to play social games with their real-world friends than men are (68 percent vs. 56 percent) and are nearly twice as likely as men to play social games with relatives (46 percent vs. 29 percent). The vast majority (95 percent) of social gamers play multiple times per week, and nearly two-thirds play at least once a day.

The largest single group of social gamers — 41 per cent of those surveyed — work full time, while 13 percent are retired and 11 percent are homemakers. In terms of educational background, less than half of those who play social games in the U.S. are college graduates. One-third of those in the U.S. earn less than $35,000 a year while 17 percent earn between $35,000 and $49,000; 21 percent make between $50,000 and 75,000 and 21 percent earn more than $75,000 a year.

Other points of interest from the study include:

• More than 60 percent of social gamers say their average session lasts more than half an hour, and 10 percent say it lasts 3 hours or more. About a third (35 percent) say their consumption has increased over the past three months, compared to 10 percent who said it has decreased.
• Facebook is by far the most popular destination for social gamers, with 83 percent of those surveyed saying they play games there, compared with 24 percent who play on MySpace, 7 percent on Bebo and 5 percent on Friendster.
• Social gamers spend 39 percent of their time on social networking sites/services playing games, compared with chatting with/messaging friends (17 percent) and playing solo games (15 percent). Nearly half (49 percent) said that when they connect to social networks, they do so specifically to play social games.
• The most popular games are Farmville (69 percent of those who play it say they play once a week or more), Bejeweled (65 percent say once a week or more), Texas Hold’em Poker (63 percent) and Cafe World (61 percent).
• A little over half (53 percent) of social gamers say they’ve earned and/or spent virtual currency in a game, but only 28 percent have purchased virtual currency with real-world money and only 32 percent have purchased a virtual gift.

“This study establishes social games as a fast-growing and quickly maturing pastime for an enormous portion of the population,” Robin Boyar of Thinktank Research said in a statement. “With more than 80 percent of social gamers stating that playing social games strengthens their relationship with friends, family and colleagues, social gaming reinforces the core appeal of social networks.”

See the original article at GigaOM.

Are video games really all about feeding your ego? Maybe, suggested legendary game designer Will Wright in a keynote interview at the Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday morning.

"Most people are very narcissistic," said Electronic Arts‘ Wright, creator of the Sim City and Sims franchises and now last year’s avant-garde Spore, onstage with Federated Media’s John Battelle. "The more you can make the game about that person, the more interested, the more emotionally involved they will get."

Advancements in technology have made it possible for the customization craze of the social-networking world to permeate the console and PC gaming sectors, and that has begun to open up the industry to new users who didn’t see the appeal in hardcore gaming or immersive role-playing virtual universes.

He suggested that virtual world Second Life was on the right track by making it possible for members to create elaborate in-game items, but they were too difficult for most members to partake in. "The sophistication…was pretty high," Wright said. "For a lot of people, programming does not sound like entertainment."

Even though games–especially role-playing games–have a reputation for being a lonely form of escapism, Wright suggested that mainstream appeal can be found in, well, getting to be yourself. And that’s where it gets back to the narcissism.

See the full article at Webware.

Along with the usual news and excitement of the Game Developers Conference, going on this week in San Francisco, a speech by gaming guru Jane McGonigal stands out for one reason: She challenged game designers to actually make gamers happier.

McGonigal, the self-described "game designer, a games researcher, a future forecaster, and a very playful human being" and one of the 20 Most Important Women in Gaming, planted the seeds for GDC speech on her blog Avant Game. "Reality is broken. Why aren’t game designers trying to fix it?" But if you think the argument is just another run-of-the-mill criticism of the violence, tension and attendant gore that pervades most videogames, then you’re going to be sadly disappointed.

Instead, McGonigal has a set out a sequence of design challenges to future gamemakers run to the heart of what a game could be about: entertainment, boosting human happiness, and having real-world impact.

She explains that games can "fix" broken reality by making artificial reality "happier, smarter, more engaging, and more resilient." Given that some of McGonigal’s previous projects have involved "World Without Oil"–a simulation intended to brainstorm and thus potentially avert a future post-peak oil crisis–McGonigal also foresees that over the next decade, game designers will become the "architects of extreme-scale collaboration" In particular, it’s an important part of future games design to create "diverse massively-multiplayer communities [that] tackle real-world, open-ended problems." It’d be nice to think we could game our way to a solution to the world’s issues, wouldn’t it?

Here are McGonigal’s five challenges: 

1. If you could: Make one person measurably happier. Who would it be, and what game would you make for them?
2. If you could change: What one person does every day, or how one group thinks about one thing. What would you change, an how would your game do it?
3. If your game could get: 100 people to do one thing online. What would it be, and what would it add up to?
4. If you could make a game by: Embedding one micro-controlled board or one sensor in one physical object. What would it be, and how would you play with it?
5. If you could make a game that: Connects two unlikely communities to do one extraordinary thing together. Who would it be, and what would they collaborate on?

It’s inspirational stuff, a pleasant intellectual contrast to the mindless hard-fragging first-person-shooter games we’re all familiar with. And its hard to argue with. The challenges are typified in McGonigal’s online global game "Top Secret Dance Off," which challenges participants to complete dance "quests" and e-mail in digital footage of themselves in action. The game relies on the principle that "dancing together = happy … humiliated together = even happier." Check out the compiled video of some entrants for the recent Dance Quest 3: Dance In a Crosswalk. It’ll make you smile.

Original article: Fast Company.

Wish you could play Crysis in your Web browser? Two influential organizations are banding together to try to bring accelerated 3D graphics to the Web, a move that eventually could improve online games and other Web applications.

The Web is gradually becoming a better foundation for applications with splashy, sophisticated interfaces, but 3D graphics on the Web remain primitive. Now, though, Mozilla, the group behind the Firefox browser, and Khronos, the consortium that oversees the widely used OpenGL graphics interface technology, are trying to jointly create a standard for accelerated 3D graphics on the Web.

In response to a Mozilla proposal, Khronos established an Accelerated 3D on Web working group to create a royalty-free specification. The goal is to produce a first public version within 12 months, Khronos said in an announcement at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.

Underpinning the proposal is a trend toward significant speed improvements in JavaScript, the programming language used to write many Web-based applications. The proposal involves a mechanism to let JavaScript tap into the OpenGL standard to produce the accelerated graphics.

"Accelerated 3D graphics with the super-fast next-generation JavaScript engines from nearly every Web browser vendor means that we’re going to be able to start to see more and more advanced applications written using open Web technologies," said Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard in a blog post Tuesday. "3D is a huge part of that story and we’re happy to bring our proposal to the table."

Mozilla plans to release the technology first as an extension to its browser sometime after Firefox 3.5 is released.

See the full article at Webware.

The video games industry continued to defy general economic realities in February, posting a 10 percent year-over-year sales increase and a 10.5 percent boost over January.

For the month of February, the industry recorded sales of $1.47 billion, up from $1.34 billion a year earlier, according to numbers released Thursday by industry analyst NPD Group. And the February numbers also outpaced January’s $1.33 billion. In February, software accounted for $733.5 million in sales, while hardware and accessories came in at $532.7 million and $207.1 million, respectively.

According to NPD, Microsoft‘s Xbox 360 had its second best non-holiday-season sales month since its launch, with 391,000 units sold. But once again, it was Nintendo that had the best overall performance. It sold 753,000 Wii consoles, as well as 588,000 DS handheld systems. Those numbers were up 10.8 percent and 15.1 percent, respectively, over January.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2 didn’t have quite as successful a February. The PS3 moved 276,000 units, while just 131,000 PS2s were sold. However, those figures did represent a 35.8 percent and a 29.4 percent jump over January. In February, Sony’s PSP sold 199,000 units.

Nintendo also dominated the software sales side of things. Six of the top 10 best-selling titles in February were for either the Wii or the DS, including the repeat No. 1 performer, Nintendo’s "Wii Fit.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier said March looks good for the industry as well, despite the recession, because of titles such as Halo Wars, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Resident Evil 5, and more.

"The sheer quantity of great content coming to market early in the year should keep industry sales humming throughout 2009," Frazier said in a statement.

Source: CNET News.

Startup Conduit Labs has launched Loudcrowd, a online community that integrates a virtual world with social gaming and music. Loudcrowd users can create their own virtual world with avatars and access music playlists while playing a series of music-themed games with friends. Loudcrowd is launching with 50 artists and over 250 songs featured on the platform, including music from the Indie rock bands Justice, Phoenix, Santigold, and Friendly Fires.

Loudcrowd wants to create the feel of an online concert or dance club for users. The site will feature social games that will be played simultaneously with music tracks as well as daily playlists from guest DJs. Loudcrowd’s feature Dance game is similar to the popular game Dance, Dance Revolution and is pretty innovative. Loudcrowd says that the dance game has been played more than one million times since they entered private beta, with over 25 percent of users visiting the site more than 100 times a month. The games are all built on Flash and the animation is disarmingly good.

See the full article at TechCrunch.

Valve’s Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year’s Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which “resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title’s original launch performance.” They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount.

See the full article at Slashdot.

We’ve seen colleges, in an effort to coolify their stuffy catalog, offer classes that use video games to explain academic concepts, applying a chocolate coating of gaming fun to help the pill of education to go down easier. What we like about a new StarCraft class being offered at UC Berkeley is that it’s just that: A class to help you be better at StarCraft and enjoy playing it more. Really.

From the course description: “What may look like complex topics are just ways we want you to think more deeply about the game to derive a greater satisfaction from playing. Furthermore, this understanding should have applications in real life, to further synthesize new information from limited inferences.”

Read the full article at Joystiq.

Quake Live, the upcoming free in-browser version of Quake, is sending out beta invitations to the service. Users are directed to beta.quakelive.com

This is a grand new experiment in gameplay. Instead of charging users a monthly access fee, id Software is teaming with IGA Worldwide to add advertising and sponsorships to the game to make money. Early reviews of the game are a thumbs up, and it looks to be a one way train to zero productivity at work. We’re trying to track down video of the beta environment.

The trailer for Quake Live is here.

See the full article at TechCrunch

We spied the Logitech G13 Gamepad when it was announced earlier today, and now Engadget Chinese has caught wind of something else that may be in store for us. The keyboard pictured above is apparently the G18, and we while we have almost no solid info on it, we can glean a few things, such as the apparent groupings of fast function keys on the left side of the board (some which seem to be numbered G11-G15), not to mention that tiny display at the center. We don’t know when we can expect this beast to arrive, but the G13 Gamepad is expected in January so fingers crossed.

Read the full article at Engadget