Over the past two years, as the gaming industry took off and in-game advertising rose with it, a surprising trend emerged. Gamers weren’t just teenage boys but increasingly their moms, women over 40 looking for a quick diversion from their daily lives. That’s become fairly common knowledge, but what what’s less known is just how devoted these gamers are. According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for RealNetworks, two-thirds of these women play digital, arcade, card or word games per week, and about 60 percent of them prefer games to talking on the phone, knitting or doing home improvement projects. Half say they prefer game playing to watching a movie or cooking. And nearly a third prefer games to TV watching. RealNetworks specializes in the types of computer games that these women play, puzzles that they see as both educational and good stress relief. Researchers also found that there’s little variance in women’s general interest in games across different demographic backgrounds. Michael Schutzler, senior vice president of RealNetworks’ games division, talks to Media Life about why games could surpass TV in popularity, what makes in-game advertising tolerable, and what women’s favorite game is.

What did you find most interesting or most surprising about this study?
 
The biggest surprise to me personally was that women prefer playing casual games to watching TV, watching a movie, reading a book, etc., and what’s interesting is why. Women over 40 are using games in a self-prescribed manner, where they pick game A for situation A and game B for situation B.

If women are wound up at the end of a workday, they play games that are wound up, where there’s chaos. If they have writer’s block or stressed, they’ll play a puzzle game. They find that playing the game gives them an immersion that will clear their heads for 15 minutes. It’s not just that they prefer it to watching TV. The reason is TV ends up draining them.
 

When did this minority of respondents start getting more interest in games than television?
 
The industry’s only been around for five and a half years, so only a couple years. But this isn’t a U.S. phenomenon, the same thing’s true in Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, it’s all across the globe.

 
Will we see this number continue to grow?
 
Yes, absolutely. This audience, women over 40, are using them because they are inherently interruptible. [Gamers] can come back five minutes later or three days later and pick up where they left off. It doesn’t have an addictive element like a role playing game has, which require hours of investment. The other thing that spawns off this is it lends itself to advertising.

 
Where will it top out?
 
Well, last year there were 100 million people that played casual games. That’s a lot of people. I think we have a long way to go, probably a decade, before this industry starts to top out.

 
What specifically makes games more appealing than TV to these respondents? Is there anything that television could do to woo them back, or are they "lost"?
 
I don’t think they’re lost. There’s times when the audience just wants to veg out and watch TV. If they’re interested in rejuvenating—75 percent are playing because they also see an educational benefit in it—there’s an actually cognitive element to it. I don’t think it’s taking away from TV, it’s just another outlet.
 

The numbers for women over 40 are particularly surprising. Is there a game or category of games that are driving these women's preferences?
 
The No. 1 game played more than any other is Mah Jong, hands down. There’s easily several dozens of versions available. Puzzle games are popular too. But Mah Jong, hands down, on a global basis, is the most popular.
 
 
Are we seeing more games targeted to women over 40 now that people are realizing that they will game?
 
Well, we’ve known for a long time that women were a predominant factor here. But the bigger insight that’s come out of the research is that this population of customers isn’t really interested in head-to-head competition.

They’re not using it to compete, they’re using it to keep their brains sharper, to meditate, rejuvenate. They want to do it on their terms, how they want to, when they want to. There’re implications here about how we market these games rather than how we design them. If there’s growth, it will be, “How do we attract gamers other than women over 40?”
 

That seems to be in contrast to movies, which many of these women said they would not choose over gaming. Is that because movies these days seem to target kids rather than adults?
 
Very much so, and I see that continuing. It’s become acceptable in this generation. What’s going on in the console industry is dad will buy Madden for his son, or so he says, then plays it with his friends. This has now become a bit of a trend in this industry, that women are discovering games—but they don’t think of themselves as gamers. Yet you’re now hearing professional women and stay-at-home moms talk about gaming, it’s kind of cool.

Also, targeting this demo has been noticed by Nintendo in Japan. They’ve had tremendous success with their Nintendog series with girls, and in addition, they’ve had smashing success with Brain Age, success with seniors. That has some implications for our industry—[in that game], when you’re done playing a level, it says, that’s enough for today and rewards you for getting three or four days of training in a row. [That means] not too much of one game in one day, a classic interpretation of what we’re talking about here.