She Got Game: Women now make up nearly half of video game fans

Kirk Baird

Monday, Oct. 4, 2004 | 8:23 a.m.

Receiving a gift certificate to Game Stop as a wedding gift might anger some spouses.

Not Julie Flynn.

In fact, the 32-year-old promotion director for KXPT 97.1-FM (The Point) is actually quite a fan of video games.

"I have found they help me unwind and I get a lot out of it," she said. "And it's a great way for us to enjoy time together on the weekends and not spend any money." Flynn, in particular, enjoys such titles as Tiger Woods 2005, Final Fantasy, Hot Shots Golf and Kingdom Hearts.

And even those games she doesn't enjoy playing still fascinate her.

"He'll go off and play his Madden (Football) and Grand Theft Auto, and I just sit and watch," she said. "The games are so incredible looking, as a bystander, I have a ball watching them."

Flynn isn't alone in her passion for video games.

According to a recent Associated Press article, the Entertainment Software Association reports about 40 percent of gamers are women.

The bulk of that percentage comes from "casual" online games, such as Electronic Arts' Pogo and Club Pogo and Microsoft's Gaming Zone.

The games range from card games such as solitaire and hearts to classic board games such as checkers and chess. There are also several original titles, including Word Whomp, Tumble Bees and Poppit. All the games are simple to learn, easy to play and require considerably less hand-eye coordination than most console games.

Lesley Mansford, vice president of Electronic Arts Online, said the simplicity of the games is appealing to those who play to relax, as well as to those who don't have the time to invest in playing more intricate titles.

"We refer to these people as casual gamers,' as opposed to what we would call the hardcore gamers' who purchase retail games," she said.

According to industry estimates, 70 percent of women gamers are playing casual games online, while 15 percent are playing console games and 10 percent are playing PC games.

Pogo.com, Electronic Arts Online's free site, attracts on average 16 million users a month, 55 percent of whom are women. Club Pogo, a subscription-based service, meanwhile, has 500,000 members, about 70 percent of whom are women.

It's much the same with Microsoft's Gaming Zone, a similar gaming-type Web site, where two out of every three gamers are women.

But the appeal of these games goes beyond the ease of play. Players can also communicate via the Internet in real time.

"The community exists where (women) can play these games that are fun, simple and at the same time, they can develop friendships or continue friendships that may be geographically in another country," Mansford said. "It's a very social experience, which is something that I think is also very appealing to women."

Could these games make a casual female gamer more likely to become a hardcore gamer? Mansford said there is some truth to the Pogo sites being a "gateway drug."

"We have seen some crossover between active Pogo members and them now becoming purchasers of EA products," she said. "Where appropriate, we do try and encourage that behavior."

Sometimes, though, encouragement is not needed.

Adrianne Offermann, a 22-year-old account coordinator with public relations firm Kirvin Doak Communications, has been playing video games since the days of Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the mid-'80s.

These days she's advanced to popular Xbox titles such as the Madden NFL series and The Simpsons' Road Rage.

The Las Vegas High School graduate is even a good enough gamer to routinely beat her husband in Madden.

"Yeah, but I think he lets me" beat him, she joked. "I've seen him completely kill some people when he plays them."

While Offermann does enjoy the sports and driving games, she's not a fan of most of the shooting games ("the graphics have gotten so bloody") or games in which buxom women in skimpy outfits act as pixilated eye candy to teenage boys and adult men.

She also doesn't appreciate titles that pander to her gender.

"I don't want to buy a game that's for me to accessorize Barbie," Offermann said. "I want to buy a game that's a girl stunt car driver or a GI Jane, where it's a women going around shooting.

"There's something that draws you to a game when the character is a female."

Broad appeal

Creating games for women often has been a problem for the industry.

While popular role-playing games such as the SIMS and EverQuest series -- both of which allow women to play as female characters -- tend to have universal gender appeal, most titles targeted toward women typecast.

"They try hard to focus on the stereotypes of what they think women do," said Lisa Mason, an associate editor for Game Informer magazine. "It's stuff that really appeals to teens, and women in their 20s don't do the same things that women in their teens do.

"I don't know if you could design a game for women," Mason concluded. "I don't know of three women who do the same thing that you could take and make it into a video game."

Still, the video game industry is attempting to broaden its appeal. In an effort to acknowledge the growing market of women gamers and to create a better representation of that market in the business, the industry put together its first Women's Game Conference last month in Austin, Texas.

More than 120 people attended the two-day conference to discuss such topics as career paths for women in the industry, gender-inclusive game design and women and girls as consumers of games.

"It made everyone aware of a lot of the opportunities in the industry," said Laura Fryer, an executive producer with Microsoft Game Studios who was also a conference speaker.

"We've always known (women) are a part of the market. And I think you are seeing a lot more awareness of women in the industry."

Consequently, much of the focus of the conference was to encourage more involvement by women in the industry, not only as players but as game designers.

At present, the ratio of male-to-female game designers is 90-to-10, according to industry estimates.

But for the industry to expand its female audience, that percentage has to change, said Sheri Graner Ray, senior designer for Sony Online Entertainment.

"Anytime you reach a broader audience or market, then your workforce should reflect the market you're trying to reach," said Ray, who also spoke at the conference. "The more women in the workforce, the more diverse the workforce and the broader the audience target can reach, which is good for the health of the industry.

"We're seeing more and more women in design and also in productions of the games, which is very, very exciting."

While adding more women game designers will undoubtedly create more gender-balanced titles, Mason said what will ultimately attract more female players to the video game world is a much simpler solution: a high-quality game.

"What I want is a good game," she said. "What I don't want is a game made for my specific gender. And I think that's the same for guys."

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