Pretty, Pink and Pretty Smart: Computer Engineer Barbie’s Strides Send Girls on the Path to Silicon Valley

Computer Engineer Barbie (image courtesy GeekSugar.com)At this week’s American International Toy Fair, the Mattel Corporation announced Barbie’s latest career as a computer engineer. Decked out in a binary-print tshirt, leggings and sensible(ish) shoes, Barbie sports a Bluetooth headset and carries a pink laptop (with “Barbie” written in ASCII on the screen, cleverly enough). The Barbie® I Can Be…™ Computer Engineer Doll was created by Mattel to inspire a new generation of girls to become part of this growing profession. Let’s hope Barbie can use her computer engineering skills to inspire more girls to become part of the video game profession, a subset of the computer industry that currently has women comprising only 5% of its ranks.

Barbie’s inspiration notwithstanding, women have already begun taking a more active role as both developers and consumers of video games. The Guildhall at SMU, a graduate video game education program, has recently announced that 20 percent of their incoming class is female, and the Electronic Software Association’s most recent survey of gamers has asserted that 43 percent of online players are women. (The latter statistic could most likely be attributed to the popularity of casual games, but also may include games such as World of Warcraft, which has a surprisingly high female gamer population.)

For those who are interested in becoming part of the rising tide of women in the video game industry, the Frag Dolls blog has posted a list of 50 games industry women from whom to draw inspiration, including Corrinne Yu, the Principal Engine Programmer for Microsoft’s Halo Franchise Team and the first female Technical Lead for Microsoft Game Studios, as well as noted game designer Jane McGonigal and Fiona Cherbak, current head of the Women in Games Special Interest Group (SIG) for the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).

Fiona and the Women in Games SIG are spearheading initiatives to help inspire girls and women to take a more active role within the video games industry. Most recently, she and the SIG have created GameMentorOnline to “meet the growing need for peer-to-peer mentorship support in games,” as well as the Games2Girls Program Committee, (chaired by gaming industry veteran Margaret Wallace), which is working in conjunction with the Games Research Lab at Columbia in NY to develop course curriculum to help promote video games as a profession to middle school girls.  Other important programs include the Indie Women’s Game Design Competition, with winners to be announced at GDC 2010, and the Women in Games Preservation Committee, which showcases important women in games through its database and Wiki.

Join Barbie and the thousands of real-life women who are breaking the mold in the computer engineering and video games industries, one pink high heel at a time. For more information, check out the Women in Games SIG, or attend sessions at the upcoming Game Developer’s Convention in San Francisco.

2009: The App Store Starts Paying More Attention to Female Mobile Gamers

Though the mobile industry has successfully marketed specific phone features towards women, for example, the Samsung Egeo, the mobile app industry continues to lag behind the rapidly growing market of female mobile gamers. Studies show that there are currently more female mobile gamers than male mobile gamers – a point the mobile app industry began adapting to later this year. However, despite some changes, mobile app markets, like the App Store, have not adequately scaled themselves to meet the changing demographic profile of mobile gamers.

In March 2009, one third of the games available in the App Store were action themed and catered mainly towards male consumers. By July 2009, the number of games on offer had doubled. Puzzle games had become the largest genre, accounting for 16.4 per cent of the App Store’s games, with action and arcade titles trailing behind with 11.2 per cent and 11.1 percent respectively.

As the number of apps in the App Store soared past the 100,000 mark, mobile app developers slightly shifted their target markets creating more gender-neutral hit games such as Wheel of Fortune and Trism. However, the shift has been slow, and the App Store continues to overlook the market potential of female mobile gamers.

Canadian and US women rank Apple as their favorite technology brand and ranked the iPhone and iPod Touchnyt2 as their second favorite portable gaming device, after the Nintendo DS. Apple has a stronghold on the mindshare of the female consumer, particularly in the mobile marketspace, but it has yet to completely take advantage of this mobile game market opportunity. Not all female groups are quick to pick up the iPhone though. A survey of US mobile gamers indicates that there are more female mobile gamers than male mobile gamers between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four.

If the App Store targeted these particular female mobile gamer demographics, they could solidify their place as the leading mobile games market. The App Store’s success relies on their ability to play to growing market demands and how they counter the flack they’ve received from mobile app developers recently. Female mobile gamers are already playing, maybe to the surprise of the developers. The more the mobile app market comes to realize this, the sooner the mobile app industry is in for another growth spurt.

Nielsen Releases “State of the Video Gamer” Report, Women Now Largest Group of PC Gamers

Nielsen Games released its fourth quarter report “The State of the Video Gamer”, which highlights consumer demographics and behavior in the video game market.  The key takeaways from the report:

  • More sophisticated consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 attract the more engaged console users, who are less likely to be watching television in Prime Time than users of other consoles.
  • The PlayStation 2, while still leading all other consoles in total minutes of usage, continues to have the highest downward trending rate of usage. Trending data suggests by the end of 2009, the PlayStation 2 will no longer be the most used console in the United States.
  • Females 25 years of age and older make up the largest block of PC game players accounting for 46.2 percent of all players and 54.6 percent of all game play minutes in December 2008.
  • The most played games on the PC are card games from Microsoft, with the most played game being Solitaire with over 17 million players for the month of December 2008. 
  • Females 55+ over index in terms of their PC game play versus all other demographic groups.

To download the entire report, visit http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/stateofvgamer_040609_fnl1.pdf