Benjamin Franklin said that “games lubricate the body and the mind,” and you could probably generate a lively debate as to whether the founding father’s wisdom applies to video games.

There’s no debating the importance of video games to a huge audience of players. Which means that there’s no debating the need for market research professionals to turn their gaze and consumer insights expertise toward understanding gamers– not just as game-players, but as fully-contextualized consumers.

As we’ll point out, mobile game apps aren’t just a gateway to fun for their users and a river of potential profits for their creators, but also a pipeline for all kinds of consumer insights into how gamers fit into a larger universe of shopping and buying.

Newzoo, a marketing and analytics consultant that tracks the gaming and esports industries, estimates the North American video games market at more than $34 billion in 2018, up 14% from 2017. It recently reported that there are 2.3 billion gamers worldwide, who it estimates will spend $138 billion this year, including $70 billion spent by mobile gamers. It’s the first time mobile will have accounted for more than half of annual worldwide gaming revenues.

Market researchers who want to get to know those many mobile gamers are in luck. Thanks to mobile-app targeting, they can be reached with 100% accuracy. You can design a survey that blankets users of the top five gaming apps, or just a single app.  You can ask about their gaming preferences – or their snack and beverage preferences. Mobile app-targeting from MFour gives you a 100% Incidence Rate for connecting with consumers by the apps they use. We simply match the apps you want to target against the apps used by the validated, first-party mobile consumers who’ve downloaded our Surveys On The Go^® research app. 

For example, back when the Pokémon Go craze broke out, mobile app targeting enabled us to be the first organization to conduct a systematic survey of Pokémon Go players. Within a single day, we got 1,000 completed responses from 100% validated players. It wasn’t just proof of Pokémon Go’s popularity, but of Surveys On The Go^®'s effectiveness, thanks to its own popularity among 2.5 million U.S. consumers who have downloaded it and are beyond-willing to participate in your research.   

If you’re looking for insights into what players think of various video games, app-targeting obviously gives you a fast, direct connection. But it will be just as useful for understanding consumers ages 13 and over for whom playing video games is just part of who they are.  They’ll readily engage with you about products and services across any consumer sectors. Remember, your IR is 100% – a big first step toward getting insights on a fast-turn deadline.

Of course, the same kind of targeting can be done with consumers who use banking apps, news apps, or streaming apps for sports and entertainment. You can focus on their satisfaction with the apps themselves, or just use the connection to get feedback on the snacks these app-users buy, the other forms of entertainment they consume, which electronics stores they frequent, and any other subject that may or may not have to do with their gaming.

You can even ask them if they agree with Ben Franklin that games are good for the mind and body. 

As promised, here’s a look at our study of 1,000 Pokémon Go players, completed in a singled  day just after the game’s July, 2016 debut in the U.S. Just click here.

 

This study was a joint effort by Marketcast and MFour Mobile Research leveraging MFour's mobile survey platform. The topic of study was what gamers expect (and want) from digital distribution.

Compared to around 2/3 of movies watched at home that are bought digitally, less than 1 in 5 console games purchased is a digital download. The majority are still bought via traditional physical discs.

Major publishers report that while their digital revenue is growing substantially, full game downloads make up a much smaller portion of this than subscriptions and add-on downloadable content.

Most coverage in the press focuses on the industry impact, and especially on the overall growth of digital revenue, of which game sales are still a small part. Instead, we decided to talk directly to gamers and find out how they feel about the digital shift in gaming compared to other forms of entertainment, and what they want from this shift.

Using MFour's native app, Surveys On The Go, respondents were asked to use their front facing cameras to capture deeper insights. Here is what they had to say:

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Current-generation console owners are more likely to be buying games digitally than previous-gen gamers, where only 2 in 5 gamers have bought a game digitally in the past year.

Gamers who subscribe to their console’s premium tier – Xbox Live Gold, PlayStation Plus – are also more likely to be buying games digitally than those who just belong to the free tier.

And gamers who play on both console and PC may be accustomed to downloading games on their computers via Steam, but being a regular Steam user doesn’t carry that download-know-how over to console usage; playing games on Steam has no impact on gamers’ willingness to download games on console.

Among HD console owners, men are a bit more likely to download games, but women are not too far behind. The gap between men and women downloaders is fairly similar to the gap between men and women gamers overall.

And, although teens might be hooked on digital-everything, older millennials and parents are actually more likely to be downloaders.

All of these console owners tend to have Netflix subscriptions, and they use their cable’s video on demand about equally. But downloaders – along with older millennials and parents – are big on spending their entertainment dollars at home, so not only are they buying games digitally, they’re also subscribing to more digital platforms like Amazon, Hulu, and HBO Go.

Compared to non-downloaders, gamers who buy games digitally spend 15-20% more on last-gen games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 overall. And they spend 30-40% more on games for current gen consoles.

Even though most still prefer physical copies, gamers admit that they’re personally driving this shift toward digital forward. Almost no one says that they expect to be downloading FEWER games in the future.

A majority of both downloaders and non-downloaders all agree that digital distribution is the direction that we’re headed in for video game purchasing.

Downloaders are more likely to say they’re pleased that digital downloading is the future of gaming, but even they are not 100% ready. Non-downloaders still mostly think that downloading is the inevitable future, but they’re more likely to say they aren’t happy about that.

This is true regardless of what group you look at. Males and females, teens and adults all prefer physical copies. So do those who pay to subscribe to premium tiers like Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus. Even downloaders prefer physical copies over digital when it comes down to it.

The act of having a physical disc feels more real and as a result tangible value becomes intangible value. Physicality creates a perception of more value; having something tangible is important on its own. But also, down the road, it becomes a form of currency.

Those two forms of value – the tangible use of games as currency, and the intangible feeling of ownership, make up the main reasons why gamers keep purchasing physical rather than digital. The other side of physical purchasing is mostly made up of a sense of security: people fear that they will be prevented from keeping their purchases because of hard drive space, consoles crashing, or gaming companies changing the rules.

Gamers are actually very satisfied with the functional experience of downloading. Aside from storage space, the tech is not a problem.

They personally feel that not having to interact with store employees, along with not even having to go to the store, is one of the advantages of downloading over buying physical copies.

Virtually everyone wins except for the physical retailers. Gamers are optimistic that they will benefit from a digital shift in the long run, and they expect brick-and-mortar stores to be the only ones who really suffer.

In the world of movies, the retailers played a part in encouraging the digital shift along. Big-box stores promoted DVDs and Blu-Rays as loss-leaders, with heavy markdowns and those big boxes of random DVDs to dig through. This helped make the physical product seem less valuable, and consumers placed less premium on owning the discs, which primed the market for a digital shift.

That’s not likely to happen in the gaming world. Games are sold with a comparatively higher volume out of gaming-specialty stores rather than big-box stores, and gaming-specific retailers are unlikely to turn their main product into a loss leader by cutting down the base price.

And what do respondents think about the long run for downloading games?

Or, instead of downloading full games, consumers are open to the gaming industry taking a fully different route and following directly after the footsteps of movies and music, to offer something like a streaming service membership. This is still in its infancy, but services like PlayStation Now are trying to redefine digital gaming with streaming possibilities. And gamers are definitely open to that.

In fact, a monthly subscription is more appealing than a future console with all digital downloads… with the exception of one that makes games cost less overall.

While some gamers note that the file size and the need for zero lag will be a hurdle to overcome for streaming games, they like the idea especially because it overcomes the fear of getting stuck with a dud that you can’t return or sell back.

For more information on MFour's mobile solutions, click on the solutions tab at the top, or fill out the form below.

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