spreading jam

Over the last few years we’ve watched social media grow, and with it – social gaming. It’s a different facet to the gaming world, and it’s dominated by an entirely different demographic – mums. That’s right; mums are the new hardcore gamers.

When I was a hardcore gamer, I enjoyed playing Grand Theft Auto. I was a gangster; I’d run rampant around a digital city and steal cars and pick up hookers. I’d do this for hours, and my mum would always frown, tell me it was bad for my eyes, and then suggest perhaps taking a walk in the fresh air.

Now, with the social gaming boom, the tables have turned – and we’re seeing a different type of gangster, picking up a different kind of hoe.

It seems like social games like Zynga’s FarmVille (2009) and Mafia Wars (2009) have been around since the dawn of time, well at least since the dawn of the internet, and that’s because when they arrived, they went viral. I can’t pin-point the exact day when my Facebook news feed started to fill up with FarmVille invites and updates, but I do know that when it happened it was all I saw for at least a month – the social gaming wagon wheeled past, and one by one my friends jumped on for the ride.

Thankfully, for my news feed – and sanity – this soon died down, but in its wake came…the mums. As Zynga’s Global Director of Brand Advertising, Manny Anekal, rightly said: social gaming is the new daytime TV. The mums have taken the gaming world by storm and, move over Jeremy Kyle, they have cabbages to plant!