Study Tries To Break Down Who Buys In-Game Items—by Race

A study found that whites and, by a slighter margin, blacks were more likely to account for purchases of in-game items from mobile games, in a study that examined purchasing habits by ethnicity. What it seeks to prove, I have no idea, but the mobile entertainment portal MocoSpace sounds pretty smug that it’ll change the face of mobile games development.

First, the numbers. Caucasians made up 18 per cent of the 40,000 gamers analysed, and accounted for 26 per cent of the in-game item purchases. African-Americans accounted for 36 per cent of the survey population and 38 per cent of the purchases. Statistically speaking, that’s something called “over-indexing.” In layman’s terms, it means white people buy in-game items like this and black people buy them like this.

Hispanics were more thrifty, comprising 31 per cent of the survey population and just 21 per cent of the purchases. Asians, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans clocked in at 4 per cent and 4 per cent.

Like I said, I’m sure this is useful to someone; what it accomplishes by being made public, beats me. I’m sure there’s an insulting stereotype to be made out of an ethnicity’s purchase behaviour one way or the other. MocoSpace touted it as information that’ll help developers exploit the shit out of hone their offerings to mobile gamers.