Whenever I think of gaming, I think of board games, card game as well as computer and console games first. Most game involve more than just one character and even those who can be played on your own are more fun being played with a friend. Social interaction is a common element in almost all kinds of gaming, so it is obvious that social media should have a big impact on gaming.

Prism Casino took a look at Facebook user satisfaction scores to come up with a top ten list of favorite social games to compile an infographic. Casinos, hidden objects and role-playing games top the list of favorite styles, passing trivia games like “Trivial Pursuit,” word games like “Scrabble,” and strategy games like chess that are very popular offline.  The “Scrabble”-style game “Words With Friends” is on there, but in terms of actual usage, “FarmVille,” “Mafia Wars” and “Bejeweled Blitz” remain the top three social games played in the US and UK.


I did not expect the console market to be so far behind the mobile game market but there more I think about it, the more sense this statement makes. While the console is stuck in your livingroom plugged to the wall on the one side and a TV screen on the other, you can carry around your mobile game all day. Whenever you feel in mood to play a game, you can. Competing with other real players on the web makes it even more interesting for most of the gamers. 14 percent play at least an hour per day, and even in public placed, which seems to be reasonable as you can just use your dead times to get into your favorite game. The business model for social gaming is also different from that of board games, playing cards, and even traditional video games in that people can’t just buy a self-contained game and bring it home. The infographic gives stats on revenue through advertising and virtual goods.  The free version of Words With Friends, for example, shows gamers an ad after every word they play. It must be working, because ad spending on gaming has increased 60 percent since 2009.

In my point of view location based mobile social gaming can be the next stage as it gets the gaming experience closer to your real life while opening huge opportunities for additional revenue by knowledge about your location. A move in this direction is going to be a win-win situation for players and gaming companies.

Thanks a lot to Socialtimes for sharing the infographic.

Infographic: Social Games on Facebook and Google+ What makes them so popular? created by Prism Online Casino

Image by Cienpies Design by Shutterstock.

 

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