Models hold Samsung's Galaxy Note II smartphones during a Sept. 26 unveiling ceremony in Seoul.(Photo: Ahn Young-joon, AP)
Story Highlights
- Women are more likely to play with others and use Facebook game invites
- Women are also more likely to play mobile games with family members
- Touch screens have made video games more accessible
3:52PM EST September 30. 2012 - Women have become major players when it comes to mobile games.
That's because they make up nearly 60% of players on mobile devices and are more likely than men to play mobile games, especially multiplayer games that involve social engagement such as Words With Friends and Draw Something. More than six out of 10, or 63%, of female mobile gamers play social multiplayer games, compared with about half, or 52%, of men who play mobile games, according to a new survey by EEDAR, a research firm based in Carlsbad, Calif.
But this only begins to hint at the growing clout of women in the $1 billion U.S. mobile wireless games industry, according to the survey of 2,491 active mobile gamers aged 15-64. Women it turns out also have a strong influence over what games are played at home. The reasoning is that they are more likely to play multiplayer games with family members and are more likely to send and accept Facebook game invitations.
"What we are finding is tapping into that female client is more important than ever before," says EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich. "It really is changing the face of gaming."
Back in 2002, men made up nearly three-fourths, or 72%, of video game players. That has nearly leveled out a decade later to a 53%-47% split of male as compared with female console and PC gamers, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
Console and PC games were dominated by men, especially young males, as video games evolved into the PlayStation and Xbox era. "Maybe it was because of the nature of the adoption of technology … what you saw was the growth of a big base of male players. The games catered to them," says Travis Boatman, senior vice president of mobile at Zynga, which scooped up Draw Something in its March acquisition of publisher OMGPOP for a reported $200 million. "But what has changed with these new touch-screen devices is that it has made (games) much more accessible to everybody."
The social nature of the doodle-sharing Draw Something and Scrabblesque Words With Friends -- you play with another person but can have multiple games going simultaneously -- leads to a female majority, Boatman says. "And women gravitate to games that were designed for the (mobile) platform because they are much more intuitive to them."
Women are even dominating mobile titles such as Big Fish Casino, a Vegas-style game that includes Texas Hold'Em Poker and blackjack, says Paul Thelen, CEO and founder of Big Fish Games. "You would think Texas Hold'Em would skew male," he says, "but we are seeing 65% of the revenue coming from females."
Big Fish started in 2002 as a PC game company but since it released its first iPhone game four years ago has become a top ten iOS publisher, with games on Android devices, too. "If you are building for mobile and you want to scale to the broadest possible audience of purchasers, you do need to absolutely focus on the female."
Even mobile device makers have their eyes on the female audience. Even though early marketing efforts for the upcoming Wikipad tablet have been aimed at "the serious gamer," Wikipad's messages as the Oct. 31 release date nears for the Android-based device will skew toward women, says CEO James Bower.
The company's market research for the launch of a 10-inch gamer-centric tablet with an attachable controller with joysticks and buttons revealed, Bower says, "how much of influencers (women) actually are on these type of devices, whether it be for buying gifts for the members or actually buying it to play games themselves."
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