Study: Social Gamers Will Pimp Themselves for Virtual Money

In early March 2010, I posted a video of Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell in which he talked about unexpected gaming successes – Club Penguin, Farmville, Wii Fit – and how he expects gaming to become even more integrated into everyday life in the future. Part of his prediction involves players watching ads or otherwise letting companies market to them in exchange for points, credits or some other type of gamerly interaction. With that in mind, here’s part of a press release on just that subject:

While most game developers struggle to monetize even three percent of their users through direct payments for virtual currency, new numbers released today by Offerpal Media at the Game Developers Conference show that alternative payment methods enable developers to monetize significantly larger portions of their user base. Derived from a study conducted by comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, as well as from Offerpal’s own network-wide monetization performance, the numbers verify that social gamers are enthusiastic about alternative, or indirect, payment methods as a way to earn virtual currency for free rather than having to pay for it directly.

According to the comScore study, 53.3% of the total respondents reported that they would be “very likely” to complete a marketing action such as filling out a survey, watching a video, shopping at online retailers or signing up for a subscription in order to get points for the games they play on leading social networks. By comparison, only 22.8% of the respondents reported that they would be willing and are able to buy the points using cash payment methods such as credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers or mobile billing.

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