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Game Makers Target Fast-Growing Numbers Of Girl Gamers

Posted on: Friday, 3 October 2008, 15:45 CDT

Video game makers are tapping into one of their fastest growing markets, female gamers, seeking to expand their audiences by offering titles beyond traditional male-appeal games such as Grand Theft Auto.

Teenagers such as 16-year-old Gina Sutton, a self-described girl gamer who traveled from her home in Virginia to spend her 16th birthday at the Nintendo World Store in New York, represent a “pot of gold” for the industry, according to George VanHorn, senior analyst at market research firm IBISWorld.

"The gaming industry has market characteristics that many would die for," he told Reuters.

Sutton can’t understand why anyone would think video games are just for boys.

"It's like saying boys play with action figures and girls play with dolls," Sutton told Reuters while using her Wii Zapper to skillfully strike down several targets as they pop up on the screen in front of her in a game called Link's Crossbow Training. 

"I'm the girl who plays with action figures."

According to IBISWorld, 38 percent of U.S. gamers are female, a 33 percent increase in just five years.

Females ages 18 to 45 comprised 28 percent of the total industry revenue from January through August of 2008, ranking second to males ages 18 to 45, who made up 37 percent.

Women make up a significant portion of so-called casual games, a market software makers have targeted with a variety of non-violent, easy-to-play games.

Video game makers have also stepped up acquisitions of smaller online game makers, such as Walt Disney Co’s purchase last year of Club Penguin, which appeals to girls and boys aged 6 to 14.   

Eight year old Fatima Gomez bounced from one game to the next at New York’s Nintendo World Store this month, searching for short, easy games and never spending too long on any single title.  

She prefers Bratz, Disney Princess and Hannah Montana to shooting games, said Oscar Gomez, her father, who brought his family on vacation from Mexico City.

"She doesn't care if she wins or not. It's different with this guy," he told Reuters, pointing to his son.

"They like to win."

Anita Frazier, a video game industry analyst from the research firm NPD Group, said females accounted for 21 percent of the industry's total sales growth last year, but many more are playing than were showing up in these statistics.

"The challenge is not to get them to play, but to get them to spend more of their time and money on games," she told Reuters.

One game that appeals more to girls than boys is Horseland, developed by Christina Johnson and her father, Phil Gerskovich.  

When Johnson was 12, she lobbied her parents nearly every night for a horse. Gerskovich created a horse avatar for his daughter instead, eventually resulting in the online pet game and social network Horseland, which they launched together in 1994. Today, Horseland boasts more than 5 million users, a line of merchandise and a partnership with DIC Entertainment for an upcoming CBS cartoon show.

The crossover appeal of casual games from the online world to consoles like Nintendo's Wii is another factor that is making girls and women a greater force in gaming. As of July 2008, Wii Fit had sold 1.4 million units in the U.S. since its launch in May, drawing significant numbers of female gamers, according to data from market researcher NPD Group.

Other games, such as Electronic Arts' Rock Band and Activision's Guitar Hero, in which players perform in a virtual band using consoles such as Sony Playstation, Wii or Microsoft Xbox, also appeal to girls.

Electronic Arts also publishes the female-centric popular virtual life game The Sims, which has sold over 100 million copies since its launch in 2000.

"The expanded audience of women joining the gaming community is very exciting," Katie Cray, public relations manager for Nintendo of America, told Reuters.

The market potential of females will only continue to grow if the current growth continues, she said.

NPD Group data shows the top selling hardware in the U.S. in August was the Nintendo DS, a portable player that hosts girl-friendly games such as Brain Age and Nintendogs.  Originally sold in only black or white, it now comes in metallic rose and silver versions.

Sony’s Julie Han said pursuing the female market is part of the broad strategy for the Sony Playstation console.   The company aims to release other "gender-defying" titles like Little Big Planet, due out in October, in addition to others titles such as Rock Band, she said.

Amid the U.S. economic downturn, the industry is looking to female gamers to grow its business, said Edward Williams, managing director of equity research at BMO Capital Markets.

"Publishers and developers need to create the right content that appeals to more girls in order to maintain the health of the industry," Williams told Reuters.

Nevertheless, Williams said the video game industry remains fairly small, and is subject to cycles of console and game releases rather than to the broader economic environment, so it should be continue to expand over the next few years.

"As people travel less, the money spent on a video game is a little more justifiable," he said.

"It provides a fair amount of entertainment value per dollar spent."

Meanwhile, some gamers bemoan the fact that many female-centric games reinforce stereotypes and lack substantive content.  For example, Ubisoft Entertainment's "Imagine" games target preteen girls with titles such as Master Chef, Fashion Designer and Babyz, a game where girls overcome obstacles to becoming "the best babysitter on the planet!"

Data from the International Game Developers Association show that just 11.5 percent of game designers are female.

And the trends in female-oriented games are fashion, pink boxes, cooking, babies and makeup, according to Didi Cardoso, managing editor of the online video game review Website Grrlgamers.com.

"I think a girl's world is a little bigger than that," she told Reuters.

Meanwhile, Sutton, who is in New York to celebrate her 16th birthday at the Nintendo World Store, called games that focused on cooking, fashion and babysitting “demeaning”.  

However,  “I'm a little guilty of playing Cooking Momma, so I shouldn't judge," she added.

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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