Mobile Mavens

With Indian women playing more than men, should more games target them?

Is this engaged player-base overlooked?

With Indian women playing more than men, should more games target them?

Recent research has shown that, while women make up only 22% of all mobile gamers in India, they are more likely to be active and engaged players than their male counterparts.

It's not going unnoticed either, with Mumbai-based developer Nazara investing in London studio TrulySocial and commenting that its debut game "will be an instant hit with an online audience of Indian women."

But what do local developers think? We asked our Indian Mavens:

  • Are you surprised by these stats, or had you already observed a strong and active base of female mobile gamers in India?
  • Is this a group you feel more developers should be directly targeting?

 

Rituraj Behera Co-founder Cympl

My name is Rituraj Behera and I am Co-founder of Cympl, an Indie game studio started back in November 2012.

I had begun my career as an application developer but I always loved playing games which attracted me to the fast growing mobile games industry.

I had started the organization with a vision to create high quality mobile games and an attitude to learn & improve everyday.

What is surprising is that only 22% of the active user base is women.

Based on the report I had read from Superdata, and also from our own Google Analytics of Krishna Run with around 5,000 DAUs, it shows a 45% user base of women players.

Nevertheless, what I have noticed with my wife - who has been addictively playing games like Jelly Splash and Cooking Dash 2016 - is that she has few but really long dedicated play sessions every day. Once she likes a game she really sticks with it for a long time.

I predict that the female player base in India is going to increase very quickly in a year or two.
Rituraj Behera

Also, though there could be multiple games installed in her device she dedicates time only to one game. Therefore, she is definitely more active and dedicated gamer than most male players I know, including myself.

It would be definitely worthwhile to see more developers directly targeting the already-active Indian female gamers, especially with some great local content and efforts to really understand their psychology and design games accordingly.

Also, looking at the long-term I predict that the player base is going to increase very quickly in a year or two helping those developers even further.

But eventually, it depends on what your strengths and interests are as a developer and what types of games you want to invest your time and effort in developing.

Laxmi Desai-Khanolkar CEO and co-founder Apar Games

Due to the cheaper accessibility of internet, an increasing number of Indian women are consuming more and more entertainment content on mobile.

Star Chef has been a hit with Indian women

Women are mostly playing resource manganement, hidden object adventures, and match-3 puzzlers. The engagement and loyalty rate has been observed to be better with women - 99Games' Star Chef is one such example.

With our games, women are better paying users then men.

Manish Agarwal CEO Nazara

Mobile gaming and development has been massively dominated by men, slanted towards the larger demographic due to the overwhelming presence of male-centric genres on console and PC gaming - and hence, by extension, on mobile.

Consumption of mobile games is higher by women at 33%, with women averaging more than 5 game downloads a month.
Manish Agarwal

However, the success of Farmville on Facebook - seems like a game from a different era to some! - and subsequent success of builders/puzzles/cooking/narrative-based games on mobile have shown that there is money to be made in genres which predominantly appeal to women.

According to a survey by Gamesbond, consumption of mobile games is higher by women at 33%, with women averaging more than 5 game downloads a month.

With puzzles, strategy and casual gaming on top of the pile while action and racing are at the bottom. It also goes on to say how how 44% of women average more than an hour of mobile play daily.

Furthermore, 79% women are daily gamers compared to 71% of men.

The growth of women gamers in India has seen a rise, as statistics reflect. There is no denying they are more active and engaged, too.

Centered on this, it is safe to say that developers can create more women-oriented games.

We at Nazara are hoping that our next casual game with Truly Social, targeting women with a completely new gaming genre, will be a hit with the female audience.

Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.