That's the shock discovery made by I-play when it commissioned a survey into mobile gaming habits recently. The leading publisher employed independent research agency SKOPOS, which interviewed over 2,500 respondents aged 12-44 across the US, UK, Italy, Spain and Germany. Here's some of what they discovered:
- 48% of all females have played a preloaded game on their mobile – compared with… - 44% of males
In the US: - 42% of females played a single game for over 20 minutes compared to - 27% of men
In the UK: - 22% of females played for over 20 minutes compared to - 15% of men
I-play also theorised that gameplay simplicity will be a key driver to growth of female gamers in the mobile market. And, sure enough, according to the survey:
- 41% of females compared to 31% of males, claim that simplicity of gameplay convinces them to download games.
However, perhaps the most telling statistic was buried away in the middle of the report...
- 69% of respondents have played a mobile game, including games embedded on handsets, but only: - 25% of mobile gamers had actually tried to download a game onto their phones, and just - 5% have successfully downloaded a game.
Five percent? That's shocking! It means 80% of people who tried to download a game failed miserably, probably accruing several pounds worth of network charges in the process. The network operators have really got to sort this out.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand, and I-play's underlying conclusion - that people, or more specifically women, want simple mobile games - is clearly valid. Arriving in my in-tray just hours after I-play's press release was the Java download chart for April, courtesy of ELSPA. And here it is:
1 LEMMINGS - IFONE 2 WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? - MACROSPACE 3 TETRIS - IFONE 4 PUB POOL - INFOSPACE 5 NEW YORK NIGHTS - GAMELOFT 6 TOMB RAIDER – THE OSIRIS CODEX - INFOSPACE 7 SPLINTER CELL CHAOS THEORY - GAMELOFT 8 SPACE INVADERS - I PLAY/DIGITAL BRIDGES 9 PRO BOWLING - MFORMA 10 PUB DARTS - INFOSPACE
Most of these are simple casual games, and in fact, Gameloft's fun social sim New York Nights is aimed specifically at women. The old theory about mobile phones being the perfect Trojan device to trick women into playing games may be sexist and patronising, but lord help us, it appears to hold some weight.
