Social gaming more popular than ever

PopCap games today released the results of their “social gamer” survey, which targeted people that play games like Farmville on Facebook and MySpace. The survey revealed some surprises, such as the fact that the average social gamer is a 43 year-old woman.

Twenty-four percent of the social gamers said that they played regularly, which means approximately 100 million people in the US and the UK are playing all the time. This giant market is expected to generate more than $1 billion in revenue in the U.S. alone in 2010.

More women appear to be social gamers than men, with 55% of responders in the US being female, and 58% in the UK. The average age of a social gamer is 48 in the US, 38 in the UK and 43 overall. Forty-six percent of social gamers in America are over 50 years of age, while only 6% of qualified survey responders were under the age of 22.

Eighty-three percent of social gamers are playing on Facebook, while 24% play on MySpace and 7% and 5% play on Beebo and Friendster, respectively. Forty-six percent of the time when social gamers logged onto these networks, it was specifically to play games.

Farmville is, unsurprisingly, the most popular social game, with 69% of respondents claiming to play. Bejeweled Blitz, Texas Hold’em Poker, Café World and Mafia Wars are also highly popular, with over 50% of social gamers claiming to play them.

Twenty-eight percent of players said that they had spent real money to gain virtual currency, but 32% said that they would. Twenty-five percent said that they had been mislead by ads related to the game in some way, which ended up being bogus.

Many players enjoy social gaming because they can play with friends and relatives. Sixty-two percent of qualified survey respondents played with real life friends, with only 37% saying that the play primarily with strangers.

No matter what your opinion on social gaming, these numbers clearly indicate that it’s not going away anytime soon. Considering that FPS games appear to be coming to Facebook in the near future, perhaps it’s only a matter of time until there is no distinction between gaming and social gaming, and many embrace both their Xbox 360 and Facebook account as valid mediums of play.