ANKARA
Played World of Warcraft lately? Or Diablo III? If so, you've got a lot of company.
A great many of us, it seems, are a good amount of time and money on playing digital games. The market for digital games, both online and off, is growing by leaps and bounds with millions of players around the world.
Nearly a fifth of the population -- 18.75 percent -- are active game players, according to research done in the 110 largest countries in the world. The reserach was done by the international market research and consulting company Newzoo in 2013.
According to the research, there are 2.4 billion internet users and 1.2 billion active game players.
The research shows that China alone has 180 million active players. This number is almost equivalent to the number of players in all of Western Europe.
The digital games industry is expected to exceed $75 billion by the end of this year, counting games played online and off..
The sector had a market value of $66.3 billion dollar in 2012. It grew by 6.1 percent in 2013 and reached a market value of $70.4 billion dollars.
And the projections are that the growth will continue. The value of this market is expected to reach to $75.2 billion at the end of 2014, and $80.5 billion dollars in 2015.
"Online and multi-player games," which account for about 21 percent of the market, were in demand over the last year, according to the research.
Having approximately a $14.9 billion dollar market, this sector grew a full 14 percent compared to the previous year.
And what games are people playing online?
American statistics site Statista published a list of most-played online games on the online gaming platform Raptr.
"World of Warcraft" tops the list, with 9.36 percent of the users.
Second is 'Diablo III' with 8.39 percent of total users.
Two similar games -- "DOTA 2" -- and "League of Legends" -- have almost the same user numbers. "DOTA 2" is in third place, with 7,11 percent of the users. "League of Legends" accounts for 7.09 percent of the users and is edged into fourth place.
The research mainly zoomed in on the 30 million active internet users aged between 16 and 50.
The majority of these consumers, 72 percent or 21.8 million to be exact, play games. This share is higher than in Western countries.
At the same time, the share of gamers that spend money on games stands at 52 percent, slightly lower than in Europe or the U.S.
Massively multiplayer online games are also in great demand in Turkey. More than one dollar in five spent on games in Turkey goes to such games.
This share, 21 percent, is higher than in any Western or Emerging country investigated.
The average age of the 9.8 million Turkish massively multiplayer online game players is slightly younger than in the West -- 80 percent are under 35.
The share of paying massively multiplayer online game players in Turkey is 46 percent, comparable to other countries, but average monthly spending is several times lower than in the U.S.
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