Tencent today published a report profiling the attributes of paying gamers within the China gaming market. According to the report, client-based games have the highest payment penetration ratio (14.9%), followed by web games (4.8%) and mobile games (2.9%). Male players accounted for the dominant portion of the total paying gaming users, with 78.5%, 76.3% and 85.9% for mobile games, web games and client-based games, respectively. Paying users are mainly young people, with approximately 65% of total paying players being between 15 and 30 years old. Users who have a high school diploma tend to have greater interest in client-based games and web games, accounting for 43.1% and 38.8% of total paying users. Some 43.2% of paying mobile game players meanwhile have a bachelors degree.
According to the report, more than 60% of total paying players use Weibo and 91.4% paying mobile game users are active in QQ Zone, implying that social connectivity plays an important role in online games. We also note 61.9% of paying client-based game users like watching online videos. Many of the facts and figures above should offer a good yardstick with which to evaluate whether a gaming platform if over-monetizing or under-monetizing, although in the absence of other metrics such as ARPU’s, the picture is somewhat incomplete.