Women love online games

“Stop playing games and do your work!”

This phrase is typically attributed to mothers who are trying to motivate their teens to start their homework or do their chores. But, in a virtual society of electronic fun and 24-hour e-service, it's no longer just kids becoming sidetracked from their tedious duties; it's their mothers too.

An online study, conducted in January, 2004 by AOL, shows women over the age of 40 spend around 50 per cent more time playing online games than men and teens.

According to the survey of 3,613 respondents, 44 per cent of women spend less time reading or being physically active because of their game play.

Jan Bozarth, an independent producer of children's and family programs and 8 award-winning CD-ROM games, says the most recent statistics show women comprise 70 per cent of all online, casual game players and a total of 52 per cent of all Internet users.

Unfortunately, Bozarth says, most major game companies still refuse to acknowledge women as significant consumers within the gaming industry. She says they ignore their female customers for economic reasons.

“Casual games are not as lucrative as complex games,” Bozarth says.

In the gaming business complex programs are developed in response to the industry's definition of the word ‘game' – an activity in which a player resolves a conflict to achieve a goal or a ‘win.' Most computer games are produced for a primary target of males aged 15 to 25. Developers focus on creating games that model the male method of conflict resolution through confrontation. So most games have win or lose scenarios with death and injury as the consequence for error.

Sheri Graner Ray, co-chair for the Women in Game Development committee of the International Game Developers Association, says that most females don't enjoy such games.

"Females," she says, "choose to resolve conflict with diplomacy, negotiation and compromise." In other words, no bang-bang shoot to kill game will attract much of a female audience.

Graner Ray says this doesn't mean that women don't like competition. She says they just compete in a different way than men. Women, she explains, prefer games where they, as players, don't have to do anything that directly prevents other competitors from performing their gaming tasks.

“This (female) competition takes a slightly different form in that it is usually either team oriented or it is indirect competition,” Graner Ray says.

So what do women do if they have the urge for some virtual combat without the testosterone-induced guns, gore and glory? There must be an outlet for female focused games if, as AOL's survey suggests, so many women are staying up at night to duke it out online.

The women surveyed tended to play mainly word and puzzle games – a fact confirming Graner Ray's theory that women relate to computers as tools to increase productivity and self-improvement.

Click "Next page" below for some free online games that may ignite your female fire for computer competition.

Be sure to give games a chance because as Graner Ray says, “We cannot expect women to excel in technology tomorrow if we don't encourage girls to have fun with technology today.”