I took the survey off line today. 226 people responded, though 33 didn’t answer all the questions. Still that isn’t a bad sample size. Thank you to everyone that participated, even if you didn’t manage to answer all the questions. A quick scan though the answers tell me these things:
- Mobile games have an awareness issue. Eleven people had never heard of Minecraft, 112 people had’t heard of Cut the Rope. 178 people haven’t heard of Ingress, the AR game that according to some sites, is “taking the world by storm.” Just 32 people said they’ve played a game that uses their device’s location.
- Specialist gaming handhelds are the least popular play medium. 121 respondents said they “never” used a device like a Nintendo 3DS or Sony PSVita. And only 47 said they “sometimes”, “mostly” or “always” used one. By way of comparison only 51 people said they “never” used a phone to play games, and 124 said they “sometimes”, “mostly” or “always” used one.
- Of the 202 respondents that answered the question about their phone, 97 have an Android, 67 an Apple, 22 don’t have a smartphone, eleven use a windows phone, and five a Blackberry.
- SMS is the most popular method of messaging, 109 said they use it daily, compared to 30 for iMessage, 23 for Google, nineteen for WhatsApp, and 11 for Snapchat.
- Facebook is the most popular social network still. 110 people said they use it daily.
- Of the 193 people who answered the question on age, one was over 60, 59 between 41-60, 83 were 26-40, 47 were 16-25 and three claimed to be under 16.
- 101 said they loved in the UK
But that’s just a first look through. The real interesting stuff will come after I’ve crunched the numbers on gaming motivations.
The Interpretation Game 
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