Social gaming like Words With Friends, FarmVille and Mafia Wars is big business. An infographic released by Prism Online Casino explores Facebook social games, particularly the reasons why each are so popular.

Among the observations are that people are into the games for stress relief, mental stimulation, social interaction and relaxation. The average social gamer is 39 years old. 54% of them are male and 46% are female. 14% of social gamers play at work for an hour or more per day.

The number of people who play social games has increased 71% over 2010, and they play for an average of 9.5 hours each week.

33% of console gamers have said that they play on a console less now that they have started playing on social networking sites.