How the new "whales" are spending in games

33% of total in game spending for mobile and web games is done by the top 1% of new players with 90% of total in game spending done by the top 20% of new players, according to a recent report on spending behaviour.

Social game analysis firm Playnomics examined the spending behaviour of over 1.7 million new web and mobile games players, that is people who started playing social games within the first two weeks of the first quarter of 2013. It found that around 14,000 players chose to pay for in-app purchases in games, roughly 0.77 percent. Courtesy of Gamasutra.

The data shows that the spending of the top 1% ranges from around $700 to $7,400 for a single person, with the average at around $1,400. Playnomics say the results resemble "a power law distribution, where a small proportion of whales account for a large portion of total in game spend."

"Some of the players in our initial cohort of 1.7 million will likely monetize for the first time after Q1 2013, and some of our existing monetizers will likely keep spending beyond Q1 2013," they add.

The report also found that the average session length was 26.7 minutes per player and players completed 5.9 game sessions on average. Players in Turkey have the highest level of engagement at an average of 45.9 minutes per play session while players in Japan showed the highest number of player sessions at 22.5 per person.