Girl gamers on the rise

2008-10-03 22:16

Deborah Jian Lee

New York - Gina Sutton takes aim and deftly strikes down several targets in a row as they pop up on the screen in front of her.

A self-described girl gamer, she travelled from her home in Virginia to spend her 16th birthday at the Nintendo World Store in New York, and she 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," she said as she used a Wii Zapper in a game called Link's Crossbow Training. "I'm the girl who plays with action figures."

With her nimble fingers and bubbling enthusiasm, she is one of a fast-growing posse of female gamers in the United States and elsewhere capturing the attention of video game makers - expanding the market beyond male-appeal games like Grand Theft Auto.

Girls and young women are a "pot of gold" for the industry, said George VanHorn, senior analyst at market research firm IBISWorld. "The gaming industry has market characteristics that many would die for."

Increase in female gamers

According to IBISWorld, 38% of US gamers are female, up from 33% in just five years.

From January through August of 2008 females aged 18 to 45 made up 28% of the total industry revenue, ranking second to males ages 18 to 45, who made up 37%.

Software makers have churned out a throng of non-violent, easy-to-play games in a bid to capture so-called casual gamers - those who don't spend a lot of time on games - and women make up a big part of that target audience.

Companies have also snapped up smaller online game makers. Last year, Walt Disney Co bought Club Penguin, which appeals to girls and boys aged 6 to 14. In 2005, Viacom Inc bought Neopets Inc.

At the Nintendo World Store in New York this month, Fatima Gomez, 8, bounced from one game to the next, looking for short, easy ones and never spending a long time on one.

Girls don't like shooting games

She likes Bratz, Disney Princess and Hannah Montana and she doesn't like shooting games, said Oscar Gomez, her father, who brought his family from Mexico City on vacation.

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

Females accounted for 21% of the industry's total sales growth last year, according to Anita Frazier, a video game industry analyst from the research firm NPD Group.

Frazier said many more females were 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."

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

When Johnson was 12, she stood at the kitchen table nearly every evening and lobbied her parents for a horse. While most parents might try to satisfy these demands with a stuffed animal or a day trip to the stables, Gerskovich created a horse avatar for his daughter.

The result was Horseland, an online pet game and social network, which they launched together in 1994.

Today, Horseland lassos more than 5 million users, and has a line of merchandise and a partnership with DIC Entertainment for a CBS cartoon show.

- Reuters