That’s right! According to a recent article published in The Age (Green Guide edition), more than 40% of Australian gamers are female.
Despite this growing trend, most games on the store shelves, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, Iron Man, are marketed almost exclusively to males. Such commercial games have no interest to women and thus, they tend to shy away from these games especially when publishers use semi clad women to promote the games.
So, the question you should be asking is what games appeal to women and, why aren’t game publishers such as, EA and Rockstar Games, making games targeting this new market of female gamers.
Well, believe it or not, trivia games (Buzz trivia on XBOX 360), karaoke games (SingStar on PS2 and PS3), puzzle games, shoot them up games such as Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament and even, popular handheld games like Nintendogs and Brain Training, are just some of the games that appeal to the ever growing audience of girl gamers.
In Australia, around AU$1.3 billion is spent on video games and console(43% increase from 2006) and 74% of the paying customers are female. With such astonishing statistics, it’s time for game developers to start focusing on making games that women would love to play. Hopefully, EB Games, Big W and other retailers will realise that this growing trend of female gamers and start selling more games targeted to this new market.
