A survey from Ipsos OTX MediaCT's GamePlan Insights finds 21 percent of gamers who are aware of FarmVille play the Zynga title daily, nearly 30 percent play it weekly, and some 45 percent play it at least every few months.
As part of its tracking study, GamePlan has surveyed 1,000 gamers -- aged 13 to 59 years old -- each week since October 2008, polling hardcore gamers, mainstream gamers, and other audiences in-between. The firm found that in comparison to FarmVille, only 16 percent of gamers responded that they play Cafe World, the second most popular game on Facebook (also developed by Zynga), every day.
FarmVille is not only Zynga's most popular game; it's also the most popular app on Facebook. GamePlan points out that with almost 80 million monthly active users, FarmVille has more players than the top-selling current generation video gaming console, Nintendo's Wii (around 67.5 million as of December 2009), despite launching on the social network years later.
According to the study, 80 percent of female, PC-owning respondents said they're aware of the farming simulation game, compared to some 65 percent of males. GamePlan's data shows a a greater percentage of women compared to men typically to know about the most popular social games. The group also found that 51 percent of the surveyed daily FarmVille players are female.
Of those daily FarmVille players, 57 percent own a Wii and 39 percent have a Nintendo DS. High definition home consoles and other handheld systems are less popular among the same crowd, as 34 percent of those users own an Xbox 360, 29 percent own a PlayStation 3, 29 percent own an iPhone or iPod Touch, and 16 percent own a PSP.
Among the surveyed FarmVille players who own a Nintendo DS or Wii, 23 percent played their consoles on a daily basis. 21 percent of PS3 and 20 percent of PS2 owners played with their consoles every day, while 18 percent of iPhone/iPod Touch and Xbox 360 owners said the same for their systems.
Despite the game's popularity, 82 percent of FarmVille players do not spend any money in the free-to-play game. Around 5 percent spend $1-5 in the game, and about the same amount spend $6-10. 3 percent of FarmVille users, though, spend more than $20 a month. Those figures aren't surprising considering that 57 percent of players also said they don't like spending a lot of money on gaming (46 percent of "average console gamers" said the same).
Players of the Zynga title also showed a greater tendency to look to video games for entertainment, as 48 percent of FarmVille players said they consider gaming their primary form of entertainment, compared to 34 percent of average console gamers who said the same.
Lastly, when asked which gaming sites they visit the most, 79 percent of respondents said Facebook, 41 percent said Zynga, 28 percent said Yahoo, 27 percent said Pogo, 26 percent said MySpace, and 20 percent said PopCap.
