Everyone's a (casual) gamer

I spotted a press release today that probably landed in at least 8-bazillion other people’s inboxes, talking about a study PopCap Games put together on the game playing habits of white-collar workers:

Among the 7,102 consumers who answered the survey, 40% were identified as “white collar” workers. With conservative estimates pegging the casual games market at over 200 million people, this representative sample suggests that as many as 80 million white collar workers play casual games. Of those white collar workers surveyed, nearly a quarter (24%) said they play “at work” – with fully 35% of CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives saying they play at work.

Now, if you’re interested in what a “casual” game is, you’d probably do better to read through this past month’s Round Table posts, including mine, about what exactly makes a game “casual” or “hardcore,” and if, or if so, why, anybody even gives a sh*&t about the distinction.

But I digress. The survey is interesting mostly because I don’t think it tells us anything we don’t already assume that we know. I’ve pasted some more stuff after the jump.

Of all white collar casual gamers, 65% indicated they earn $50,000 or more in annual income (compared to 53% of casual game players overall), 22% said they earned $100,000 or more per year, and 58% indicated they had a college degree (compared to 46%). 91% of white collar gamers are age 30 or older, 68% are 40 or older, and 39% are 50 or older.

Playing At Work: Of those who said they played during work hours,

* 14% admitted they had played casual games during business meetings or conference calls, with two thirds (65%) of those saying they did so at least once a month.
* 61% said they play during lunch or other official break periods.
* 52% said they play “during my work day, when I need a short break.”
* 19% said they play “at the end of my work day, to unwind.”
* 11% said they play “at the beginning of my work day before I get started.”

In addition, those who said they played during work hours said they do so with considerable frequency:

* 53% said they play at work at least once a day.
* 79% said they play at work several times a week or more.
* 84% said they play casual games at work for between 15 and 60 minutes each day, on average.
* 11% said they played casual games at work for an hour or more each day

As to the effects of playing casual games at work, those who do so acknowledged the following effects after taking a short game break at work:

* 84% said they felt “more relaxed and less stressed out.”
* 52% said they felt more confident, more energetic, more productive and/or more mentally focused.

So I can conclude: rich people play casual games at work. It helps them relax.

When I did my little informal poll the other day, I should probably have included “casual games” in the list of categories that people play. It’s a distinction I wanted to avoid making, but it would have been useful to know how many rich, bored-at-work, stressed out people read my blog ;)