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Associated Press

Games are for everyone, and increasingly, that special little game for you is likely to be found in the mobile space. Recent game suggests the most diverse playing audience lives on mobile or, at least, the game-playing audience that is no longer traditionally male.
China to overtake US as world's largest mobile gaming market by 2016
At the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, gaming consultancy Electronic Entertainment Design and Research presented some illuminating data. While the industry as a whole is edging closer to gender parity, game consoles and gaming computers are still predominantly used by the male gamer. Mobile is a different story.
US start-up makes play for China mobile gaming
Women make up 55 per cent of mobile game players in North America. Overall, EEDAR founder Geoffrey Zatkin noted, North American gamers in 2015 leaned male 55 per cent to 45 per cent. But on home video game consoles, that number jumps to 60 per cent male. On PCs, it’s even more heavily male at 64 per cent.
China's mobile gaming market grew 400 per cent in 2014, due to overtake PC sector
It’s not that mobile games target one sex over the other. It’s simply that a wider variety of game experiences seem to appeal to those who have not typically been game players.
“Part of the reason for this on mobile,” Zatkin said at a conference talk, “is that mobile is … just doing a better job of marketing games that have broader appeal than handheld, console or PC.”
Certainly some of the most adventurous games of 2016 have been pocket-sized. Take the adorable, melancholic Love You to Bits – in which a young boy learns to live on his own after losing the love of his life, a robot female – or the tense, minimalist action of The Swords, in which ink wash paintings jut out of the edges of an iPhone screen, forcing players to frantically swipe up, down, left or right. It looks as is though it should be hanging at an art museum, but its blurs of lines and splatters simulate the chaos of a sword fight. At least I think so. I’ve never been in a sword fight.

Like my current favourite game Super Phantom Cat and Love You to Bits before it, The Swords is only available for iOS. Though Love You to Bits is coming to other platforms this year, I’d argue it hit the most important one first.
Of course, game consoles and gaming computers are where the industry targets some of its biggest-budget games – the US$100 million or so blockbusters that emphasise gunplay, such as the just-released Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Looking at Zatkin’s data, one could even reach the conclusion that console games are becoming almost exclusionary, focusing on core gamers – those who want expansive shoot-’em-ups and fantasy epics.
Consider them games by gamers and for gamers. Not since the Nintendo Wii has a home video-game console directly gone after a non-game-playing audience.
“The Wii,” Zatkin said, “was targeted at non-core game players, who over the last generation in a lot of cases have been migrating off of console and onto Web, social and mobile discretions.”
Me? I’m tired of guns. I want a phantom cat or some abstract swordplay. So it was distressing when Zatkin noted that just a small portion of the current generation of console titles has generated – by far - the lion’s share of retail revenue in North America since 2012. Get ready, perhaps, for more games that look the same.
“Another trend: we’re seeing the console shift from a balanced portfolio of games,” Zatkin said, “from both core and casual gaming, to a core-focused portfolio.”
The word “core” essentially means those focused on the hardcore gaming audience.
In 2007, for instance, top-selling genres such as shooters and action-adventure games accounted for 44 per cent of the retail revenue for consoles. In 2014, they made up 61 per cent. No wonder the market is constantly flush with games that encourage players to pull a trigger. It’s the safest bet.
And that’s a problem, especially when it comes to expanding the gaming audience. I long for a day when games are as vital a part of the morning conversation as an episode of House of Cards, Master of None or Orphan Black. That won’t happen unless the industry’s most powerful publishers look beyond the current established audience.
With fewer top-flight games made per year, the ones that do make it to market risk catering to a known audience rather than winning over a new one.
If you’re turned off by guns and a complex control scheme, it’s easy to write off The Division, Fallout 4, a Call of Duty Game or Star Wars: Battlefront as simply not for you.
This isn’t to say there aren’t great games released on consoles.
I’m excited, for instance, for Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4, as I do love big blockbusters. And the Santa Monica studio has shown an ability to craft well-paced stories. Additionally, my two favourite games of 2016 have homes on consoles – teen thriller Oxenfree and Firewatch, a spooky tale of loneliness.
But these latter two are titles that come from the still-burgeoning and typically risk-taking independent game sector. They’re also available on PCs. They’re games you should play, but I’m not so sure they’re going to sell consoles.
On the flip side, mobile game stores can be overwhelming. Last year alone, Zatkin said, there were more than 100,000 iOS games released in North America. Whew. It takes work, then, to find the one about a boy who is lovesick over a lost robot.
But it exists. And games like it exist, and not because one platform caters to men and another caters to women. These games exist because, once again, there’s a platform that believes games belong to everyone.


Why mobile gamers are mainly women, while most PC and console gamers are male

A recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco revealed that mobile gaming in North America has much better gender parity than mobile and PC gaming.

This handout image shows The action is abstract but stylish in "The Swords." . Photo / HANDOUT [11APRIL2016 FEATURES DIGITAL]

A scene from "Love You to Bits." (Alike Studio/Pati)

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The wider variety of game experiences available to mobile users seems to appeal to those who have not typically been players, while console and computer offerings target hardcore gamers
