Gamer Social Media Survey Results

Global Gamer Social Media Use

Introduction

Using SurveyMonkey, I created and promoted the first survey to address the use of social media tools and services by gamers.

The survey had 328 respondents, of whom 283 completed the survey, for a completion rate of 86.3%.

The motivations behind the survey were four.

1. To gather the first hard data on the use by gamers of an increasingly important and popular way of communicating online, including product recommendations and reputation building.
2. To identify the best and most popular tools for communicating marketing messages to gamers.
3. To identify the best and most popular tools for entering into long-term conversations with gamers.
4. To inspire the creation of further studies on the topic.

Due to limited promotion, and presenting the survey only in English, the majority of the respondents were from the U.S., other English-speaking countries, and Europe.

I have bolded unusual or conclusive responses. When it comes to engaging in conversation with gamers, or reaching them via targeted advertisements, these responses are important.

Thanks to everyone who took the survey and helped to promote it. A special thanks to Michael Blenden for getting crunchy with the numbers.

This is a summary, focusing on the most important issues. If you would like a copy of the results (aggregated), including the open-ended questions, please email me at curth@garagegames.com with "Share Survey" in the subject line.

Summary

Gaming

89.1% played games on a PC-Windows, followed by online (47) and Xbox360 (42.5)
65.4% considered themselves "hardcore" gamers, but 60.7 called themselves "casual" and 35.8 "social" (I'm no mathematician but that seems distinctly non-Euclidian - people seem to have chosen opposing labels)
29.6% bought games each month, 28 between once every 1-3 months and 25.2 less than once in a 3-month period
78.7% bought online and 67.7 at a game store
55.8% play games at least once per day and 28.2 several times each week
44.5% play games with others occasionally, 35.8 most of the time
30.5% never used an online/casual site, the most popular among those who do are Steam (37.5), XBLA (29.2) and PopCap (14)
54.9% don't play MMOs, 26.7 play WoW, 54.7 play for less than an hour a week

The last five games played by respondents (292)
1. World of Warcraft (20)
2. Guitar Hero 3 (13)
3. Halo 3 (13)
4. Team Fortress 2 (12)
5. Portal (9)

The top five favorite games of respondents (262)
1. World of Warcraft (9)
2. Planescape: Torment (7)
3. StarCraft (6)
4. Baldur's Gate (5)
5. Deus Ex (5)

Blogs

79.4% of respondents read blogs, 28.6 read one or two, 19.9 three to five, 12.9 five to 10 and 11.9 over 10
45.2% have been reading blogs for over two years
31.5% have their own blog, Blogger.com at 8.7 and Wordpress.com at 5.8 are the most popular blog-hosting platforms
13.5% write only on gaming, 14.2 write 75% about gaming, 12.9 over 50%
Only 7.5% of gamers use a microblogging service (like Twitter)

Forums

94.1% of respondents visit forums
70.7% visit a forum every day
84.5% visit to ask a question, 81.1 to answer one, 61 to socialize and 44.7 to register a complaint or praise
29.7% of respondents use forums solely for gaming, 25.1 for 75% and 16.2 for over 50

Top three forums used by respondents (276)
1. GarageGames (91)
2. Ars Technica (61)
3. Gamedev.net (6)

Social Networks

65.9% use online social networks
35.5% use Facebook, 30.4 MySpace and 26.8 LinkedIn
34.7% alter their pages less than one time per month

Media Sharing

50.7% do some sort of media sharing
35.3% photos, 30.9 video and 18.2 music

The most popular photo-sharing site among gamers is Flickr at 27.3, Photobucket at 16.9 and Picasa at 11.9
45.6% upload photos

The most popular music-sharing service is iTunes, 43.8%, and Pandora, 12
44.1% download music vs. 26.7 who stream it
10% upload music

45.1% listen to non-music audio online
49.3 download non-music audio
7.6% upload non-music audio

YouTube, at 77.2%, is the most popular video site, followed by Google Video, 35.5
29.2% watch videos at least several times a week, 14.1 every day
79.5% watch video online vs. downloading
67.3% watch user-generated videos, vs. professionally-produced

Social Bookmarking

19.7% use social bookmarking
12.6% use del.icio.us, 6.7% StumbleUpon

Other Social Media

63.4% use wikis
29.9% use Digg
Of the social media tools the respondents are currently using, 16.6% would like to blog more, 14 would like to use wikis more, 9.1% would like to use social bookmarking more
Of the social media tools the respondents are not currently using, 10.7% would like to try virtual worlds, 9.1 would like to use a news ranking site, like Digg

Demographics

94.6% male
46.1% are between 21 and 30, 39.3 between 30 and 40

Top five respondent countries of residence (275)
1. United States (174)
2. Canada (22)
3. UK (20)
4. England (10)
5. Australia (8)

Top five respondent languages (275)
1. English (243)
2. Danish (4)
3. German (4)
4. Spanish (4)
5. Dutch (3)