Study: Social Gamers Have More Friends

A new study suggests that social gamers might be significantly more social than non-gamers, with company MocoSpace quoting a study of its own users to reach the conclusion.

The company says that it has obtained data from more than 10,000 anonymous users on its official smartphone-based social-networking platform during the month of March 2011.

The study shows that a social gamer spends 141 minutes gaming on the site while non-gamers spend just 45 minutes on it.

Social gamers were also found to have an average of 50 friends with which they engage online while non-gamers only had 18.

Social gamers have also uploaded twice as many photos as the control group.

The data that MocoSpace uses was aggregated anonymously from more than 10,000 people that use its services, some of them gamers and some of them not.

Michael Cai, who is the vice president of Research at Interpret LLC, has stated, “From MocoSpace’s research, there’s no question that the fastest growing consumer segments on the mobile web are social gamers, and now that many of these gamers are armed with smartphones, we expect smartphones to become the next frontier for social gaming.”

The Chief Executive Officer of MocoSpace, Justin Siegel, has added, “The study validated our decision to prioritize games over user-generated content as a means for engaging with other members on MocoSpace. By the end of the year, we will give advertisers access to the game related inventory, which is something we are getting continued requests to do today.”

Smartphone gaming is one of the fastest growing segments of the industry and making a title social is one of the prerequisites for success.

Electronic Arts is the biggest mainstream publisher which aims to push into this space, acquiring Playfish in the process and delivering social based companions for its biggest franchises.