Quote of the Moment: The demographic development drift

"I realized how much had changed when I received a text from my 37-year-old niece Pam asking me to be her neighbor in FarmVille. Friends and family who never understood my arcane language of loot drops and combat balancing had at last grasped the simple act of plow it, plant it and pick it. Repeat. Through Facebook, women in their 30's and 40's had become the new 'hard core' gamer. We were farming, playing with our virtual pets and becoming virtual neighbors with one another in numbers never before seen in video game history (82 million and counting for FarmVille alone).

I don't believe this shift in demographics is a temporary one either. While the new "hard core" gamer might not pick up the next DOOM or Quake, Facebook games have made gamers out of millions of women, the same women who might one day encourage their daughters to pursue a career in this field or pursue it themselves.

It is this new trend, Facebook's ability to merge fun and friends in a unique and super-social way, that paves the way for and calls out to the next crop of female developers."
-Veteran game designer Brenda Brathwaite discusses how social games are attracting a new generation of women to the joys of gaming