While the world press is focused on the most high-profile news events, such as the Paralympic Games in France, the arrest of Pavel Durov (the founder of Telegram), the release of new entertainment films and reviews of high-profile new products in the gaming industry, such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, many game development companies are focused on improving the realism of graphics and finding new game mechanics. The puzzle game genre remains outside the information field, which creates the false impression that this area of the gaming industry is not in demand by users. Nevertheless, the market for casual games and puzzles, in particular, is growing every year. The team of our project decided to understand the phenomenon of the growth of the audience of games of this genre and its reasons, as well as try to create a conditional portrait of the average player of online puzzles. Our study will be based on the analysis of the audience of the tenhou.net website, which presents a solitaire version of the game "Mahjong" in various variations. The choice in favor of this site was made not only due to the appropriate genre, but also because this website is constantly updated and shows a steady growth of the audience. The goal of our study is to identify the specifics of the audience of websites with puzzle games and the processes that form it. To do this, we set ourselves the following tasks: Categorize the audience of websites with online mahjong. Identify the factors that contribute to the growth of popularity of such projects. Conduct an analysis of user motivation in using these services. Form a portrait of the average online mahjong player. As a source base, we used anonymous statistics of the online game "Mahjong" (tenhou), obtained through the Google Analytics service. In particular, data on visitors from all over the world and the United States in particular, who used this service (tenhou.net) in the period from 09/01/2023 to 09/01/2024, as well as user messages received through the feedback form. The statistics data includes the following anonymous information: Anonymous data on the total number of users, including the percentage of growth compared to the previous period. Anonymous data on the countries from which users visited. Anonymous data on large cities from which traffic to the site came. Anonymous data on the biological sex of users. Anonymous data on age groups. Anonymous data on the selected language. It is worth noting that Google Analytics reports have an error, which can be from 5% to 15%. This is due to the operation of third-party extensions in the browser, such as the "incognito" mode, the user's Internet speed (which affects the speed of loading and running scripts). The research methodology was based on statistical methods, as well as methods of historical anthropology, such as comparative analysis and interviewing. There are several ways to categorize the audience of sites with casual games. The first, most obvious, is to identify user groups by age. According to the available statistics, we can identify the following age groups of users: 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+ Based on the statistics obtained for the year (from 09/01/2023 to 09/01/2024), we can identify that the themahjong.com website was visited by a total of 1,675,745 unique users. Among them, we are forced to disregard a significant portion of users equal to 1,428,995, since we cannot determine their age. However, the remaining sample of users, which is equal to 246,750 users, is no less relevant. Analyzing the obtained data, we can highlight the following percentages by age groups: 18-24: 11.42% (28,171 unique users) 25-34: 7.91% (19,512 unique users) 35-44: 5.76% (14,219 unique users) 45-54: 9.00% (22,216 unique users) 55-64: 15.56% (38,390 unique users) 65+: 50.35% (124,242 unique users) According to this data, the largest user traffic is made up of the "65+" group. The smallest group is made up of visitors in the age group from 35 to 44 years. If we consider the age groups "55-64" and "65+", which are the most significant in terms of audience, we can see that together they make up 65.91% of the total traffic. If we look at the traffic of users from the USA for the same period in detail, we can see the same trend. According to statistics, for the period from 09/01/2023 to 09/01/2024, the site was visited by 631,388 unique users from the USA, of which we can establish age groups for 104,258 unique users. According to the data, the following values are observed: 18-24: 11.24% (11,718 unique users) 25-34: 6.23% (6,492 unique users) 35-44: 4.69% (4,886 unique users) 45-54: 8.74% (9,116 unique users) 55-64: 15.73% (16,397 unique users) 65+: 53.38% (55,649 unique users) As in the worldwide data, we see a significant predominance of the “55-64” and “65+” user groups. This is due, we assume, to the fact that these groups include older people, usually retired and living without children, who have more time for personal leisure, including entertainment, which includes games. This theory is also supported by statistics on the least numerous user groups, which include the 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54 groups. As a rule, family and working users fall into these age groups. According to this data, we can assume that due to the availability of full-time jobs and the need to devote time to the family, people in this age group prefer other leisure activities, such as watching movies on streaming services, and show less interest in casual games and puzzles in particular. As in the data for the whole world, we see a significant predominance of the user groups "55-64" and "65+". This is due, as we assume, to the fact that these groups include older people, usually retired and living without children, who have significantly more time for personal leisure, including entertainment, which includes games. This theory is also supported by statistics on the smallest user groups, which include the groups 25-34, 35-44, 45-54. As a rule, these age groups include family and working users. According to this data, we can assume that due to the presence of a full-time job and the need to devote time to family, people in this age category prefer other leisure options, such as watching movies on streaming services, and show less interest in casual games and puzzles in particular. The existing percentage of users from these age groups (25-34, 35-44, 45-54), to a large extent, as we assume based on the statistics of visits on weekdays and weekends (relative to weekdays, visits on weekends decrease by 16-20% among these user groups), are office workers. As a rule, this category of workers does not have the opportunity to install more demanding games or use streaming services during working hours. At the same time, they have the opportunity to replenish moral strength by being distracted by pre-installed games in the systems or their online analogues, which include casual games. If we talk about the language affiliation of users, the majority of users are native English speakers or use it. The top five most numerous languages also include Russian, German, French and Chinese. Indonesian closes the top ten most popular languages. In percentage terms, this looks like this: Percentage of users by language in the world English: 56.30% (943,454 unique users) Russian: 11.24% (188,382 unique users) German: 8.11% (135,886 unique users) French: 7.43% (124,502 unique users) Chinese: 2.20% (36,888 unique users) Spanish: 1.67% (28,050 unique users) Portuguese: 1.10% (18,434 unique users) Danish: 1.02% (17,073 unique users) Italian: 1.00% (16,750 unique users) Indonesian: 0.32% (5,356 unique users) Observed a significant percentage of the urban population among users from Russia. For comparison: during the selected period, 36,393 unique users from Moscow played on the site, which is the highest figure among other populated areas around the world - 2.17%. For clarity, here are the statistics for the top 10 cities by number of users: Moscow: 2.17% (36,393 unique users) London: 1.00% (16,798 unique users) New York: 0.86% (14,377 unique users) Montreal: 0.76% (12,699 unique users) Sydney: 0.74% (12,484 unique users) Saint Petersburg: 0.72% (11,991 unique users) Toronto: 0.71% (11,882 unique users) Brisbane: 0.67% (11,189 unique users) Chicago: 0.66% (11,040 unique users) Ashburn: 0.55% (9,196 unique users) As you can see, this The statistics do not correlate with the data above for the countries where we observed a clear predominance of users from the USA. It can also be noted that several cities from Russia made it into the top 10. This is most likely due to their lifestyle: a significant part of the Russian population strives to live in large cities. At the same time, the part that lives in rural areas or suburbs shows little interest in such entertainment as online puzzles. On the contrary, only three large cities made it into the top 10, despite a very high percentage of players from the USA. Based on the statistics, we can assume that in the context of the USA, as well as a number of other countries, such as Canada, a significant share of players are users of small towns and suburbs. Often, this is where people over 50 move in search of a calmer and more measured life. And it is this age category that makes up the majority of the audience of such services. If we compare the ratio of players to the number of residents of a locality, we will get the following data for the United States of America. The percentage of players from New York relative to the city's population (8.336 million) is 0.17%; Los Angeles (3.822 million) - 0.21%; Chicago (2.665 million) - 0.41%. At the same time, the percentage of players for smaller towns is usually higher. For example, Hilliard (37.114) - 0.60%; Lakewood (79.063) - 1.80%; Grand Junction (68.034) - 3.04%.