Gaming girls get aggressive

As the Nintendo Wii helped penetrate and create a new casual gaming market, new research indicates that coed gaming may be the next challenging opportunity for video game manufacturers, according to Anderson Analytics, reports MarketingCharts.

College students in particular are heavy gamers, Anderson Analytics found in its latest survey of 1,000 college students across the US: About two-thirds of students play games - 82 percent of male students and 59 percent of female students.

In the Anderson Analytics GenX2Z College study, only about one quarter of gamers said they play games often with someone of the opposite sex. However, the majority of the gamers expressed a desire to see games that are specifically designed to encourage coed game play, particularly offline.

"This may be both a promising opportunity as well as quite a challenge for game makers, since male and female gamers tend to be drawn to different genres," said Tom HC Anderson, managing partner of Anderson Analytics.

Action/adventure games (70 percent), shooters (52 percent), sports games (48 percent) and strategy games (47 percent) are the top game categories among male college students.

Females tend not to select shooter and sports games are as their favorites, though some do play action/adventure games (49 percent) and strategy games (40 percent).

Also, compared with males, females have a more diverse list of favorites, including puzzle (55 percent), party/family fun (46 percent) and rhythm (33 percent) games.

Among other findings of the study:

• On average, college students spend 6 hours a week playing videogames during the school year; however, 6 percent of students spend more than 15 hours a week gaming during the school year.
• Despite of the growing gaming trend among college students, particularly among college women, gaming has not yet overtaken television: On average, students spend 9 hours a week watching TV.
• Among college women, the Wii seems especially popular.

Early this month, a new site called Chicks Dig Games was launched to help dissolve stigmas preventing women from entering the hardcore gamer demo.