Where is mobile gaming happening? At home, in bed

Mobile gaming conjures up images of people playing on subways, waiting in line and walking down the street. But you’re much more likely to find mobile gaming happening at home and in bed, according to two new surveys.

Mocospace, a mobile entertainment site, surveyed 15,000 users and found that 96 percent of them say they play mobile games from home, ahead of waiting for an appointment (82 percent), commuting (73 percent) and at work (64 percent). That’s not exactly surprising. We’ve heard from gaming companies that game play happens a lot in stationary places like home and work. A survey announced Wednesday from mobile game company Miniclip and ad supplier MoPub drove that point home. When given only one choice of response, 44 percent of people said they played at home, while 22 percent said they played while waiting in line, 21 percent played while traveling and 13 percent played at a restaurant.

But what’s more interesting is that the gaming at home is taking place most often in bed, according to the Mocospace survey. When given only one answer to choose from, 53 percent of home gamers said they played from their bed while 41 percent said they played in the living room, 5 percent played from their bathroom and 1 percent played from the dining table. Nokia found similar results in a survey in January, with people saying they play mobile games most often before sleeping in bed.

The Mocospace study found that 52 percent of respondents play more than one hour a day and almost a third (32 percent) play more than three hours daily including 10 percent of people who play that much while at work. The most popular mobile game category is social (62 percent), action (52 percent, puzzle (40 percent), casino style (28 percent)

The numbers show that mobile gaming is increasingly a threat to console gaming in the home. The more people play on their smartphones and tablets at home, the less time they have for dedicated gaming systems. As MocoSpace co-founder and CEO Justin Siegel said in a press release, “Mobile gaming is not a companion to consoles, but rather it’s attacking them on their home turf: the couch, the La-Z-Boy and even the bedroom.”

I think the recent surveys highlight just how personal these mobile devices are. People are on their devices right up until the time they go to sleep and as an iPass survey last year found, 43 percent of mobile workers keep their smartphones within arm’s reach when they sleep. That same survey found that 35 percent of respondents check their email in the morning before anything else, including getting dressed or eating breakfast. That means that for many people, the device is accompanying them to bed, occupying their last seconds before they fall asleep and the first thing many reach for in the morning.

Photo courtesy of Flickr users Ben Dodson.

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