A new report by social gaming network Raptr details how Zynga and its gamers are still a forced to be reckoned with. Tapping into the playing habits of its 10 million members, Raptr has found that Zynga's "Ville" games are as popular - or more popular - than hardcore console and PC games.
“Zynga has had an undeniable impact on the gaming landscape,” said Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr. “However, little is known about the behavior of Zynga’s players. By looking at the actual gameplay habits of real users, we’re able to get a deeper understanding of how Zynga has been able to dominate the social gaming space and command one of the highest projected IPO valuations this decade.”
The report reveals that fans of Ville-series Facebook games (FarmVille, CityVille, etc.) log as much cumulative playtime as fans of the top core gaming franchises. The data shows that players log into these Zynga games eight times per day, while core gamers play fewer but longer sessions. Raptr also says that Zynga’s top games rack up three times more hours of playtime than the rest of the top 10 social games combined.
Zynga also has one of the highest conversion rates from game to game, consistently pulling in more than 90 percent of its players from the user base of its other games. A third of Xbox 360 players have said that they have played a Zynga game, which is up 50 percent from the year before, indicating a growing crossover trend. Zynga's most active players, or "Two-Percenters," play more than 120 minutes a day.
This report is based on data collected from members of Raptr’s service who played the following Zynga games: Empires & Allies, CityVille, Treasure Isle, FrontierVille, Café World, FarmVille, Texas Hold’em Poker, PetVille, YoVille, and Mafia Wars. Data is compiled from the launch of Raptr (2007) to August 2011.
You can check out the full report here. It even offers fancy bar graphs and pie charts.
