Who Spends The Most Money In Freemium Games?

So, you’re ready to make a freemium game. You’ve got the designers, you’ve got the coders, and you’ve got the rough idea for what you want the game to be about — now, who the heck are you making it for?

As the latest installment in their series of data dives on the topic, research firm Flurry has parsed out the data for which age group spends the most time and money in freemium games. Any guesses how it’ll all work out? (Hint: one group spends more time, while another spends way more money.)

To cut right to the chase: 18-24 year olds spend the most time in-game, but 25-34 year olds are spending far more money than anyone else. Perhaps even more surprisingly: even in second-to-last place in terms of time spent, the 35-54 year old group is spending more than any group except for the “Shut Up And Take My Money” 25-34 year olds.

This data is pulled from Flurry’s analytics tool, which is built into around 110,000 iOS/Android apps with a cumulative install base of around 20 million.

So, what can we take away from all this? At a quick glance: while you probably shouldn’t go all out and make the goriest, booty-filled freemium game the world has ever seen (if only because Apple would give it the boot in a heartbeat), it might not be as important to be as overly kid-friendly as smash hit freemium games like Smurfs’ Village might lead you to believe. If you focused on making a game that the 18-39 year old crowd would dig, there’s plenty of potential to walk away with quite the cash pile.

Of course, this all makes a good amount of sense: save for exceptions, getting older means less disposable time but more disposable income (until people hit 55+, apparently, at which point they just seem to stop caring altogether). To a 13 year old on their summer break, the grind of the game is the game. To a 25 year old churning away on their coffee break, it’s worthwhile to buy some disposable e-goods that help them get to the meat of the game that much quicker.