An ever-widening audience of female electronic game players is bringing new meaning to the phrase, "You play like a girl." Despite the long-standing stereotype that dedicated electronic gamers are young and male, a number of studies have shown that adult women are giving the boys a run for their money, particularly in the online games arena.

More than half of the 117-million active game players in the US play online games and nearly 64% of these online game players are women, reveals Nielsen Entertainment’s 2006 Active Gamer Benchmark Study. These numbers are backed up by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)’s findings that "women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population than boys age 17 or younger." Furthermore, adult women are also almost twice as likely as men to spend 20 hours per week playing PC games, reports the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Put simply, women of all ages love to play games.

So are women playing Halo all night long?

Not necessarily. These studies are using a broad definition of games, which includes old standbys like Solitaire and Hearts along with the more "hardcore" games like Halo. But that‘s what is so important about these findings– it’s not just the serious players that you typically think of who are spending the most time online. Women might not be playing Halo all night long, but they are devoting significant amounts of time to games like Slingo, Bingo and strategy games.

Anecdotal evidence supports that female players tend to gravitate toward games which are mentally or socially rewarding. This includes games with well-developed storylines and multiple options for female characters, multiplayer games with cooperative play capabilities, or those which call upon strategy and reasoning skills. Online communities for game players are popular with women as well for this same reason. The most popular games tend to be those which are easy to pick up and learn, yet at which it’s difficult to excel. Women like a good challenge, the same as men, but often can’t dedicate as much time to mastering complex game-play. Word games, puzzle games, board games, casino and arcade games fit the bill in this department as they can be played online in short bursts or for hours at a stretch. Casual games, such as Mahjong or Bejeweled, have proven to be hugely popular among female gamers. While female gamers may enjoy straight-forward shoot-em-ups or racing games, at the end of the day the games need to offer something more satisfying than just action or gore to hold their interest.

What does this mean for game makers?

With findings like these, it’s no wonder that the game industry is beginning to pay real attention to the growing demographic of female gamers. Publishers and developers are quickly realizing that their primarily male-focused products and messaging need a fresh approach to better target and tap into this consumer segment . While female game players already enjoy playing the same games as men across a variety of game platforms, there is an opportunity for the game industry to do more to attract the female audience in greater numbers.

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