Your Average Joe Plays More Video Games Than You (and that’s a good thing!)
Recently, The Daily Walkthrough (TDW) conducted a survey regarding people’s esports habits and thoughts on the gaming and esports community and industry at large. Over the next week, we’ll release a series of blog posts detailing our findings and highlighting any interesting insights.
For the sake of making interesting comparisons, we surveyed two different audiences: our very own Daily Walkthrough newsletter subscribers and adults nationwide who say they play video games (dubbed the general gaming public).
Not Gaming as Much as we Expected
Although both audiences certainly have their different tastes in video game genres, we saw in our responses that neither actually spend that much time gaming in the first place.
Overall, TDW subscribers spend less time each day playing video games compared to US adults. Only 21% of industry insiders play more than 3 hours per day, while 33% of the general gaming public (GGP) play that much.
Regarding TDW subscribers, one possible explanation for these lower-than-expected hours spent playing video games is that a large part of our subscribers are esports industry insiders who mainly read our newsletters to keep up to date with the industry happenings. They may not necessarily spend a lot of time playing video games.
A Surprising Favorite Genre
When asked about their favorite video game genres, TDW subscribers rated their two favorite genres as multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA) and first person shooters (FPS) at 36% and 32% respectively. On the flip side, the GGP overwhelmingly favored card games – sitting at 40% of the total respondents – with the first person shooter genre sitting far behind in second place at 16%.
Considering that MOBA and FPS games are the two most popular esports genres globally, we are not surprised to see this trend among the TDW subscribers. We are surprised by the popularity of card games, however.
Breaking the GGP down by age, most 18-34 year olds’ (29%) favorite genre is actually first person shooters, with real-time strategy (RTS) taking a distant second place at 18%. We see card games dominate the GGP due to the older demographic, where 45% of 35-54 year olds and 56% of 55+ year olds indicated that card games are their favorite genre.
Perhaps in a future survey, we can ask these people which card games they enjoy playing!
Low Amount of Social Media Consumption
When asked about their social media habits, both audiences indicated that they do not use social media too often. 64% of TDW subscribers only use social media for 3 or less hours per day, while 75% of their general public counterparts spend the same amount of time on social media.
Taking a closer look at the GGP, a lot more 18-34 year olds (32%) spend more than 3 hours a day on social media. On the other hand, only 18% of the 35-54 and 19% of the 55+ age demographics spend that same amount of time on social media each day.
Social Media Platforms: Even Stronger Differences
The majority of GGP individuals (48%) selected Facebook as their most used social media. While a good percentage of TDW subs also chose Facebook as their primary mode (32%), the most popular social media platform among them is Twitter; in fact, 40% of industry insiders chose Twitter, compared to only 6% of GGP respondents.
Snapchat and Instagram, while trending right now, fall far behind, with Snapchat being only the most popular social media platform for 5% of the GGP and 1% of industry insiders, and Instagram the most popular for 11% of the GGP and 1% of insiders.
What’s Coming Up Next?
Up next, we’ll take a look at some current hot topics in the esports industry, including a deeper dive into school shootings vs video games, and sexism in the industry. Our Daily Walkthrough subscribers and the general public have conflicting opinions on these topics, so you’re not going to want to miss out!
Methodology
Between 05/29-05/30, we surveyed 3,942 individuals of the general gaming public via landline and cell. The general gaming public were defined as nationwide adults who indicated in the survey that they play video games. Between 05/23-06/03, we surveyed a representative sample of our readership via email. More specifically, only individuals who are subscribed to our email newsletters were surveyed. Margin of error is ±1.6 for the general gaming public. Sample was weighted by age, gender, and income levels. Results were then re-balanced based on these cohorts.