In my daily work I get to see a staggering amount of data about casual gamers. To be more specific, I am talking about desktop gamers, not about your typical mobile gamer crowd. I work at Gametop.com and we serve about 80 million unique users yearly, so this gives me a good vantage point to make some analysis of these two very different markets: India and the United States. Our focus is not in the big name titles such as World of Warcraft or Skyrim, but smaller casual games typically from independent studios.
Obviously, the data is based on the users we have, the games we provide and the overall service, but I think we can still draw some rough conclusions.
Female and male gamers
Both genders are active casual gamers, but in India the guys have about 60 percent share of the total players. In the United States, females and males play almost equally. Of course, the ratios would vary in certain gaming categories and titles, but this is how the data looks on a more general level.
In terms of categories, the Indian community loves car games. They do play a variety of action games as well, but the most popular titles would fit into the “racing” category. Americans, on the other hand, play hidden object and puzzle games the most.
Gamer interests
This is hardly surprising, but Indian casual gamers are also active on movie and TV show websites. Additionally, they are keen on sites that cover technology and mobile phones. American gamers are interested in similar things, but I would say the priority order would be different. Our American audience is first and foremost interested in gaming and casual games in general. Movies and TV is also in the top 5 interests, but only after gaming.
Age gap
While the two countries share quite a lot of characteristics when it comes to gaming, age is not one of them. The stereotype of a gamer would be someone that is somewhere in their teens and while this holds true in India, it is almost the opposite in the United States. More than 70 percent of the Indian casual gamers are under 34 years old. Additionally, more than half of them are in the 18 to 24-year-old bracket. This is stark contrast when compared to our typical user from the United States. More than half of our American casual gamers are above 55 years old.
The growth of mobile
Lastly, the growth of mobile users has exploded in India in the past year. We are looking at a 20 percent increase in mobile users and at the same time there is an equal decrease in the use of desktop computers. The trend is similar in the US and worldwide, but our data suggest that India is really skyrocketing in this field.
Image Credit: Chris Nuzzacco
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