Games push all the right buttons

IT'S a little after 2am. Karen Morrison is exhausted, but determined to press on. The hairpin bend in the snow-dusted mountain road is looming. She is not far from the finish line. Ignoring the throbbing in her fingers, Morrison presses down hard on the control pad of her Xbox. Her virtual car lurches forward, overtaking a rival competitor tearing around the Alpine race track.

Finally, yet another marathon session of Burnout 3 comes to a close, leaving an exhausted Morrison and her flatmates free to get to bed. The late-night entertainment may have been artificial, but the scene is becoming increasingly common as 20-something and 30-something women change the face of the once male-dominated world of gaming.

Since the arrival of the first video games in arcades and early home computers in the 1970s and 1980s, the pastime has been viewed as the preserve of teenage boys and young men who don't get out much.

But gaming has crossed the sexual divide, with even the Bridget Jones generation now picking up joysticks and control pads. The latest industry figures show that girl power now accounts for almost a quarter of Britain's active game-playing population.

Increasing computer literacy, sleeker, smarter technology and the broadband revolution are all credited with the change.

It is a phenomenon of which Morrison, 21, is acutely aware.

The third-year computer arts degree student began gaming seriously after starting at the University of Abertay, Dundee. She now has a 10-hours-a-week console habit on top of her course work.

"I love the thrill of driving games," said Morrison, from Glasgow, who has set her heart on a career in the industry. "There is a lot of escapism involved in gaming. It is something everybody needs in their life from time to time."

The latest multiplayer online games, which can attract hundreds of players from across the world at any one time, are also attractive to women because of the ability to communicate online. The change is forcing software designers and publishers to rethink their approach to this huge, previously untapped market.

Trade body the Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association (Elspa) predicts that revenue for the games industry will grow from 9.9bn in 2003 to 11.5bn by 2007. In Britain it is worth 1.15bn a year and, since 1995, 25 million gaming devices have been sold here - enough for one PC, Xbox or PlayStation per household.

In 2003, a survey published in America by the Entertainment Software Association showed that more women over the age of 18 than teenage boys play computer games.

Now this trend has been echoed in the UK, where an Elspa paper, Chicks and Joysticks, shows that 27.2% of British gamers are women.

The typical female gamer in the UK is 30 to 35, plays for around seven hours a week and spends 170 a year on games, according to report author Aleks Krotoski. "The technology has got to a point that the product being made is more interesting to women," she said. "More women than ever before are playing games. The games industry is interested in expanding its market. The 15 to 24-year-old male market is saturated, so it is interested in exploring different populations in order to reach a mass market."

Ella Clark is a member of the PMS Clan, an online female Xbox and PlayStation gaming group that started life in the United States but rapidly spread to Britain. Yesterday its members were in Edinburgh as part of a bid by retailer Gamestation to promote the pastime. Next week they will be in Glasgow.

Clark, a 22-year-old singleton who has been playing games since she was six and now works in a games store, said: "At one time, in the shop where I work, the only women coming in were mums or girls looking for presents for their sons or boyfriends. Now we are seeing women from 18 to 35 asking for and buying games themselves. There is a real richness and depth to so many games now."

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), many of which draw upon the role-playing themes of fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons, are 60% made up of female gamers.

Psychologists suggest women have become tuned into the social interaction that comes from gaming with others online and the sense of escapism and empowerment they feel in these alternative worlds. Similarly, the ability to alter their characters' appearance and attributes adds to the sense of enjoyment. Research shows that women are now the leading players of mobile phone games and simple online games such as poker, pool, bridge, bingo and puzzles.

Life simulation The Sims has also proved a hit with female gamers, boasting 50 million fans worldwide, including pop star Christina Aguilera. In this virtual soap opera, players rule over a town and choose to help the inhabitants do anything from finding love to decorating their homes.

Experts say it is no coincidence that 40% of The Sims development team was female, helping to attract a non-traditional audience in a way no other game has. Psychologist Dr Cynthia McVey, a lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: "Women have been looking for emotional content in games and are now finding it. There are real characters and believable stories."

Next month the second annual Women in Games Conference takes place at Abertay. It will be looking at why games have traditionally failed to appeal to a mass audience of women and examining how they interact with different genres.

Games consultant Ernest Adams, founder of the International Game Developers' Association, is one of the speakers. He said: "Women represent a market that the industry cannot afford to ignore but it will require a huge marketing push alongside games designed with women in mind. Existing games, especially in online role-playing, are succeeding with women in spite of their subject matter, not because of it. When we get more games which genuinely appeal to female players we can expect to see significant growth, but the industry has got to change first.

"The culture is one of recruiting talented young guys who are attracted to the cool image, working them hard until they burn out and starting all over again. That does not appeal to young women, who have just as much to offer yet want better prospects and security from a career."

Abertay, which is home to Britain's longest-running computer gaming degree course, has seen a gradual rise in the number of female students since it began giving promotional lectures in schools.

But as Morrison's passion proves, women are already firmly in the driving seat.