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Now Women Favoured By Gaming Companies
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An Indian woman is the most influential member of a family and games aimed at her could be the best opportunity to target the whole family. Kids would be attracted to play games suggested by their mother. Usually its mothers who stop their children from playing, and imagine if mothers themselves start playing, then there’s no question of games being forbidden for kids.
The global casual games market generated nearly $2.25 billion in revenues last year, according to PopCap Games (of Bejeweled and Zuma fame), up from about $1.2 billion dollars in 2004.It was found that women buy more casual games than men, too, while the opposite is true for conventional console, portable and computer games.
And it seems other entertainment industries have taken notice. Recently we’ve seen the release of two new casual games based on nongaming franchises: author James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club novels and Rob Reiner’s film The Princess Bride. Even Indian gaming companies don’t want to miss this opportunity.
Alok Kejriwal, founder and CEO of Mumbai-based Games2win, says:
“Across the world, women have increasing access to the internet. Women are the most important customers for most brands because they make the biggest purchase decisions at home. As online games are advertisement-supported, you have to make games around the decision-maker (read women), whom advertisers are chasing.”
He further adds,
“Games2win creates games based on the ‘intuition’ platform, which enables women gamers to enter the site and play a game purely by intuition rather than reading instructions”.
It was found that house wives, after finishing their house hold work, are spending their leisure time at playing the online games just like their children do, keeping this idea in view, 7Seas has decided to introduce its beautiful house hold cookery game “Indian Recipe” for women and put it in its above official gaming portal. The game conveys a sense of hospitality, Indian tradition and Indian style of cooking.
When Viren Thambidorai of FX Labs tells you that there are many women aged 40-60 taking to gaming in a big way, it really comes as a surprise. For a long time, most of the games available for play on a console or a PC were ‘made for boys’, full of action, cars, violence and such. The few that women liked were those like Tetris (and puzzle-type) and the Super Mario Bros series which were strategy based and were adventure-based, which didn’t call for aggression (something that does not come all that naturally to women). Then came in games based on TV shows such as Powerpuff Girls and Pokemon, which were not so violent, and became famous among women. On the whole, however, a large number of women haven’t played these games, and FX Labs claims to have understood the difference in the way games are played in India and are thus marketing a related strategy.
Marking a humble beginning, zapak.com, a Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, recently announced the launch of zapakgirls.com, labeled as an entertainment destination for the trendy women. Zapakgirls.com will offer international quality games which have simple yet mind tickling gameplay.
Rohit Sharma, COO, Zapak Digital, says:
“There are currently 30 games available on the site. Our plan is to add almost 1,000 games by the year-end. The development of these games is already on in studios across the globe.”
Moreover, World Cyber Games USA 2008 National Final Video Game Tournament To Be Held at the E For All Expo in Los Angeles will also have women’s gaming invitational tournament.
Source - Business Standard
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