Insights on Casual Games Analysis of Casual Games for the PC August 2009 Introduction The term “casual” refers to games that are typically inexpensive to produce, straightforward in concept, easy to learn, and simple to play. Casual games span game genres with casual game titles occupying most, if not all, genre categories. Casual games are available across platforms, including PCs, video game consoles, handheld game consoles and mobile phones. In Nielsen GamePlay Metrics data for March 2009, we tracked 847 PC casual game titles. Those 847 titles were played by over 43 million unique persons. On average, those 43 million players played around 30 minutes a day. Casual games account for 75 percent of the total number of minutes of PC video game play across all video game titles we track. Players of casual games are the dominant gaming group on the PC platform. This group has the vast majority of play minutes and a very high frequency of play. Looking at the top twenty casual games in our May 2009 game play data, two genres are dominant—Card games, with 88% of casual game players playing a card game, and puzzle games, with 9.5% of casual game players playing a puzzle game. Methodology Key Takeaways The analysis in this report is based on data • The most popular casual game genres are from the Nielsen RDD/Online® sample of card and puzzle. more than 185,000 US tracked PCs pro- • Casual games have a high recurring game cessed by the GamePlay Metrics syndicat- play rate and can match or exceed the ed service. This software-based metering recurring play rate of other non-casual technology identifies individual program games with high recurring game play. executables. When a program runs on a PC, a Nielsen meter collects the program • Casual games for purchase can achieve name, active window and demographics similar recurring audience numbers to for the person(s) using the PC. those for free casual games. The primary source of information for this • The average length of play sessions for analysis comes from the Nielsen Game- popular casual games is less than half that Play Metrics product, a monthly syndi- for non-casual games. cated reporting service. The GamePlay • Players of casual games predominantly are Metrics product gives you unparalleled female and use less powerful computers insight into video game console usage and when compared to players of shooter or PC game play. RPG genres Copyright © 2009 The Nielsen Company. 1 Results Figure 1: Trend of Recurring Play for Unique Players (January 2008 to July 2008) , NOTE: Dual Axis 5,000,000 Recurring Play e) 40,000,000 4,000,000 The first characteristic we examined was olar Bowler raft) 30,000,000 s (P recurring play: Does a casual game title s (Solitair 3,000,000 draw the same player back month after rc month? To answer this question, we 20,000,000 2,000,000 Wa of studied video game players for a 7-month rld 1,000,000 period. Figure 1 shows the number of 10,000,000 Unique player Wo Unique player people who played the game in two or 0 0 more months in the 7- month period. For 2 3 4 5 6 7 example, 47 million unique gamers played Number of Months of Recurring Play Microsoft® Solitaire at least once in two separate months during the 7-month Solitaire Polar World of Warcraft period. Just over 9.3 million individuals played Solitaire at least once in each of Source: The Nielsen Company – GamePlay Metrics the 7 months measured. Data for World of Warcraft®, the most popular role-playing game for the period measured, appears on the graph as a basis of comparison. Over 5 million people played World of Warcraft at least once in Figure 2 : Paid versus Free Games and Recurring Play (January 2008 to July 2008) two separate months during the 7-month period, with more than 580,000 playing re at least once every month. re 50,000,000 NOTE: Dual Axis 12,000,000 45,000,000 Solitai Solitai 10,000,000 Figure 1 also shows data on Wild Tangent® 40,000,000 Polar Bowler™. More than 644,000 users 35,000,000 played Polar Bowler at least once in two osoft 8,000,000 30,000,000 separate months during the measurement eat Escapes s Micr 25,000,000 6,000,000 Gr period. Less than half of those players, s 20,000,000 however, played the game at all for three 4,000,000 or more separate months. World of War- 15,000,000 craft and Polar Bowler follow the same 10,000,000 2,000,000 trend closely, though with lower amount Unique player 5,000,000 0 Unique player of unique players (note dual axis on figure 0 1 graph). 2 3 4 5 6 7 Number of Months of Recurring Play Recurring Play and Paid Versus Free Games Microsoft Solitaire Great Escape Solitaire Polar Bowler and Microsoft Solitaire are Source: The Nielsen Company – GamePlay Metrics both considered casual games; however, they have some key differences. Solitaire is a free game and included in most PCs running the Windows® operating system. The retail cost of Polar Bowler is $19.99 and is typically obtained by a web down- load. Polar Bowler does offer a free trial period for play. Copyright © 2009 The Nielsen Company. 2 As Polar Bowler and Solitaire have very different recurring play patterns, the question of cost and accessibility appear to be factors in recurring play. To analyze these factors, we looked at data for a different solitaire game which, like Polar Bowler, has a cost and is typically downloaded from the Web. The most popular solitaire game available for purchase that was tracked in GamePlay Metrics during the study period is Game Center Solutions™ Great Escapes Solitaire. Figure 2 shows the number of unique play- ers against recurring play, similar to Figure 1, with results for Microsoft Solitaire and Great Escapes Solitaire. While Microsoft Solitaire has a distinctly larger base of users, no doubt helped by being pre- installed with the Microsoft Windows operating system, both games have a similar recurring play pattern. Duration of Play Another question that arises is: Are casual and non-casual games played for the same duration per session? To answer this question, we looked at four popular casual games and four popular non-casual, core games. The popular Figure 3: Average Duration per Session for Selected Casual and Non-Casual casual games represent a cross-section Games (October 2008 to April 2009) of genres: sports, board, card, and puzzle games. The non-casual games include two first-person shooters, one simulation Polar Bowler and one role-playing game. All games are Chessmaster Challenge among the highest-played ones measured Great Escapes Solitaire in GamePlay Metrics by audience size. Average durations were calculated using Chuzzle data from October 2008 to April 2009. Americas Army: Operations Figure 3 shows the casual games Half-Life 2 evaluated had average play duration of 31 Spore minutes, where the non-casual core games had significantly longer play World of Warcraft duration of 80 minutes. Even if we were 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 to exclude the very popular game World Average Session Time in Minutes of Warcraft, which has an average session length of almost 2 hours, the average Casual Non-Casual session duration for non-casual games drops to around 70 minutes, which is Source: The Nielsen Company – GamePlay Metrics still double the session length of the casual games measured. Copyright © 2009 The Nielsen Company. 3 Characteristics of Casual shooter and RPG video game players are Game Players predominately in the heavy-user tercile. In addition, the prevailing PC memory To understand and put into context the configurations in the shooter and RPG traits of casual game players, we com- categories show these users have larger pared the predominant characteristics of memory configurations than PCs typically casual game players against those of play- used by casual game players. ers of the two most popular game genres, shooters and role-playing games (RPG). Focusing on gender, Figure 4 shows For all three groups examined, the primary females are the preponderant players of race is white, and the dominant age break casual games. This raises the question, is persons 25 to 54. “Are the casual games that females play different from the casual games males Figure 4 compares user type (a tercile clas- play?” To answer this question, we looked sification of game play time segmented at the 20 most popular casual games into three buckets of heavy, medium, and by gender and excluded casual games light), gender, the memory configuration bundled with the Microsoft operating of the player’s PC, and the player’s top system. When comparing the list of the alternate gaming genre. top twenty casual games for males and The data shows those who play casual females, fourteen of the titles in those two games primarily fit into the light user lists are the same. category of gameplay. Conversely, Figure 4: Primary Characteristics of Groups (May 2009) Casual User Type: Light 35% Gender: Female 58% Memory .5 - 1 GB 33% Top Alternate Genre Role Playing The dominant Shooter User Type: Heavy 43% Gender: Male 75% age break is Memory > 2 GB 36% 25–54 Top Alternate Genre Role Playing RPG User Type: Heavy 56% Gender: Male 63% Memory > 2 GB 39% Top Alternate Genre Shooter Source: The Nielsen Company – GamePlay Metrics Copyright © 2009 The Nielsen Company. 4 Figure 5 shows these 14 games and the Figure 5: Average Minutes of Weekly Play for Top Casual Games (May 2009) weekly average minutes played by each gender.