Women & Gaming

It’s not a hollow generalisation to say that women have been underserved by the games industry. And whilst the telecoms industry hasn’t bent over backwards to design their products and services to appeal specifically to women, they have embraced mobile telephony like the natural born communicators they are.

According to new research carried out by independent research agency SKOPOS, and commissioned by I-play, women are more inclined than their male counterparts to have ever played a mobile game (48% Vs 44%). Who hasn’t explored what’s on their mobile, on a train journey home, or bored in a meeting – and come across Snake?

Women’s penchant for puzzle gaming is no new phenomenon. Their fondness for this past time has grown steadily over the last decade with sites like EA’s Pogo.com attracting a puzzle community of millions of users in North America. It’s therefore no surprise that casual gaming has a similar popularity on mobiles. However, the fact that less than 5% of women are successfully downloading games points to an opportunity currently being missed.

Although more could be done in terms of designing content specifically for women beyond puzzle gaming, a huge part of the problem is that the process of downloading is not straightforward. Overall, the industry needs a fairly dramatic overhaul in order to move things along. Phone interfaces need to be more user-friendly. Currently, on some devices, a downloaded game goes into the “Applications” folder instead of the “Games” folder, so even if the game has been downloaded the user may never find it. Some handsets sold are still not pre-configured for WAP or GPRS, which is like selling a PC with no icon for web access.

For those not technically savvy enough to attempt to download content, quality-pre-loaded game demos with an unlockable code, which allows full access to the game to be purchased gets games into hands more quickly. Publishers need to be encouraged, via more generous revenue shares and co-marketing funds, to reach out to potential mobile game consumers via advertising, PR and promotions.

Most consumer goods are available from multiple sales channels; so enabling consumers to buy mobile games from more places will help. We should also take advantage of the fact that women communicate more than men. By encouraging them to build and sustain communities and discuss games with friends, usage can be driven.

Some parts of the value chain are beginning to respond to this need. Forward thinking handset manufacturers will be bringing out handsets later this year that are designed and marketed specifically to women, including embedded content. The phone is a great communication device: we now need creative ways of using this functionality in games to drive women to play and download. They have so far managed to wet their appetite for mobile games almost all by themselves, but now the industry must collectively sit up and think about the full scale of the opportunity that will be wasted unless we help nurture this exciting opportunity.