Singapore Spends More on Facebook Games, But Some Not Aware of Virtual Currency

Q: Why do you purchase game credits? (MOL)

Online payment provider MOL has conducted an extensive survey among Singaporeans on Facebook to learn more about the nation’s social gaming habits. The results show that Singapore is pretty serious about it casual gaming, spending more money than most of its Asian neighbors.

MOL put a number of questions to Facebook users, each one receiving a varying amount of responses. Not surprisingly, students make up the majority of the social gaming audience, or 84 percent of 3378 respondents. As for spending, 41 percent of 3657 respondents say they have used Facebook Credits. I found it interesting that the preferred method of payment is by using pre-paid cards, based on 57 percent of 804 users polled.

Oddly though, 45 percent of 1221 respondents said they had not heard of virtual currencies, although many said they would use them if assured of their safety.

Craig White, the president of global operations at MOL Global remarked on the survey:

As social gaming is becoming pervasive among social network users in Singapore, it was timely for us to gauge the behavior of these users and share these insights. Inevitably, we found that social gaming is mainstream and creating deeper engagement and interactions for players.

Popular games among Singaporeans, according to MOL, are Bejeweled Blitz, CityVille, Cafe World, and (the ever popular) Mafia Wars. But according to Asia One, MOL also stated that 60 to 70 percent of its game card revenue is spent on Zynga Poker. As someone who has yet to find a casual Facebook game that I have liked (let alone that I would spend money on) this makes far more sense to me.

Singapore’s enthusiastic Facebook population is still climbing according to Social Bakers (see below), even though the nations reported 2.5 million users represents an already whopping 53 percent penetration rate. And even though the market size is tiny compared to other Asian nations, the fact that a high percentage of them are willing to pay should be reason for game developers to give Singapore some attention.

The full report can be viewed here.