Video games of all shapes and sizes are quite popular with the console gaming population amassing millions. However, a new breed of gamers is former over on social networks like Facebook who pride themselves in tending to their farms and building cities. Yes, I’m talking about FarmVille and CityVille.

While I won’t dive into the gameplay of these respective titles what I will say is that they’ve made Zynga (their developer) quite the mammoth of a company. In fact, due to a recent investment of $250 million, Zynga has now been valued between $7 and $10 billion dollars. Pretty incredible considering the concept of their games are quite simple.

If you aren’t aware of how Zynga makes money and don’t want to actually dive into one of these games it’s all about micro-transactions. First, they have you complete certain tasks with a limited amount of energy. More often than not, in order to actually complete the task you need more energy than you are given and the only ways to get more is to buy it (with real cash) or wait until it’s replenished. Thus, Zynga profits.

via nytimes

Gamers may be more social than others might lead you to believe – at least, according to a survey commissioned by IGN, anyway.

The 3000 respondent survey was conducted by researchers at Ipsos, in which they found out that single gamers were twice as likely as non-gamers to go out on a date. Gamers were also by a slight margin more likely to be non-romantically social.

Interestingly, gaming households on average had substantially more money than non-gaming households – $79,000 versus $54,000 annually. Gamers also tended to be the cultural influence, reporting their family and friends on pop culture and technology.

"It’s obvious that the gaming market has outgrown many commonly held stereotypes about the relative homogeneity of video gamers," said Adam Wright, research director for Ipsos.