Rally Marketing Group is acquiring PassionFruit Games, a developer of casual video games aimed at female gamers. The agency points to importance of female shoppers to its client base as one reason as well as the growing numbers of casual female gamers. Female fans make up 40% of all video game players, according to the Entertainment Software Association, with women over the age of 18 representing a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33%) than boys age 17 or younger (20%).

Underserved

In general, however, this group is underserved by the gaming community, which tends to design games for the stereotypical teenage male gamer. There are few female-oriented games on the market, although, as the Daily Telegraph recently noted, some games tend to resonate more with women. These include Rock Band, Tony Hawk: Shred, Mario Kart, The Sims, and of course, World of Warcraft. The issue of how to attract more women to games was highlighted recently on a gaming developer’s website.

Not Just Female Oriented by Romantic Too

What is unique about PassionFruit is that it doesn’t just focus on female gamers but a specific type of female gamer: those intrigued by paranormal romance novels. PassionFruit Games recently released Tiger Eye Part 1: Curse of the Riddle Box, which has become one of the top-selling, novel-based casual games released to date. Future releases may include tablet and mobile versions it said.

The purchase is a new direction for the company, but it intrigued by what it sees as a attractive and relatively untapped market, Brenda Narciso, vice president of strategy and planning, tells Online Media Daily. She pointed to such states as the 30 million regular romance novel readers and the surge of popularity in paranormal romance thanks to the "Twilight" series.

Narciso said Rally will be working on a second game in the "Tiger Eye" series, due for release in September.