According to a report by Park Associates, online gaming in the US is even more popular than all those “Web 2.0” websites that the mass media see as the be all and end all of the internet.

James Kuai, analyst at Park Associates, informed that, “despite the growing popularity of YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, gaming remains the king of online entertainment, driven largely by casual gaming activities.”

Research shows that while 19 per cent of US internet users we’re interested in social networking, a hefty 34 per cent play games online. With this information now handy, advertisers are surely going to be much more interested in working within the games industry than simply spreading adverts around popular social networking sites. Plus, gaming has the advantage of monthly subscription payments.

Kuai agrees, saying, “Gaming also has business advantages. Unlike sites for social networking and video streaming, which rely solely on advertising revenue, casual gaming has more mature and heterogeneous revenue models, including web-based and in-game advertising, try-before-you-buy, subscriptions, and micro-transactions.

However, year-on-year growth rates show that one particular website has the potential to overtake gaming. Despite the 79 per cent rise in online gamers, video sharing site YouTube jumped up a huge 123 per cent. The industry better not rest on its laurels.

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An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but a new study by The Stress Institute has found that a few minutes of casual gaming per day may actually reduce stress and keep you from “going postal.”

According to The Stress Institute’s Dr. Kathleen Hall, players who take a break from their hectic lives and let the stress of the day melt away by playing casual games lead healthier and more balanced lives. Playing games such as those found on Xbox Live Arcade, the Wii Channel, the PlayStation Store or at Pogo.com provide needed mental breaks, reduce stress and restore the mind and body connection.

Some of the health benefits of playing casual games include stress reduction (playing even five minutes of games like Poppit! or Lottso! Deluxe can lower blood pressure and stave off anxiety, depression and disease) and brain health (games like Brain Age, Word Whomp or Tumble Bees stimulate the brain and help to keep it sharp and healthy).

So if you ever get razzed by your husband, wife or parents about spending too much time gaming, tell them you’re just relieving some stress and go about your merry way. Just remember that first-person shooters don’t necessarily have the same relaxing effect.

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Seattle’s PopCap Games just released the results of its most recent survey on casual games and gamers. The company says it was the largest survey of players of casual computer/video games every conducted.

Here are some of the findings:

Among the nearly 7,500 adult respondents who took part in the survey, nearly a third (31%) indicated they had children or grandchildren under 18 who played these family-friendly puzzle, word and simple action games in their home. And of these 2,298 “family gamers,” 80% said they played casual games with their children or grandchildren. Conservative estimates peg the casual games market as being more than 200 million people in size, meaning more than 50 million casual game players are “family gamers” who enjoy experiencing the games in the company of younger family members.

Leading survey firm Information Solutions Group contacted 7,487 consumers and identified 2,298 as “family gamers.” Of those identified as family gamers, 79% were female and 95% were age 30 or older, figures that closely reflect the overall casual gamer audience. As many as 44% of survey respondents identified themselves as mothers of children who play casual games, and 36% indicated they were grandmothers. On the male side of the equation, 16% and 6% of respondents identified themselves as fathers and grandfathers, respectively.

Time Well Spent – Bonding, Education and More: Among adult “family gamers,” 92% overall (and 95% of grandparents in particular) said that they felt the games provided an opportunity to “bond with, or better relate to” their children or grandchildren. And fully 70% of respondents said they see casual games as providing valuable educational benefits. On a related note, only 28% of adult family gamers indicated they allowed their children or grandchildren to play “hardcore” video games – with fathers and grandfathers being significantly more inclined to allow the playing of such games than mothers and grandmothers (37% vs. 25%).

“Casual games span generations and genders in ways that traditional ‘hardcore’ video games never have,” noted Dr. Carl Arinoldo, a Stony Brook, New York-based psychologist of 25 years, expert on parent-child relationships and author of the new book Essentials of Smart Parenting. “This universal appeal, and the ‘G-rated’ content of the games, makes them a great activity in which the whole family can participate, with each generation enjoying the games in different ways while also enjoying the interaction with other family members.”

The average age of the children referenced by parents or grandparents who took the survey was 10.2 years old, with 65% being age 9 or older and 94% age 5 or older. Among the children with whom adults said they play the games, more than half (53%) were boys – suggesting that games with aggressive, violent and/or explicit content are not the only ones that appeal to young males, despite long-standing perceptions to the contrary. Additional survey data pertaining to specific casual game play among children under 18 will be presented in a separate press release soon.

Cooperative Versus Competitive Play: Among adult purchasers of casual games who have one or more children or grandchildren who play the games in their home, 94% said that at least part of their game-play interaction with their children or grandchildren was cooperative in nature – working together to solve puzzles, complete levels and so forth. In addition, 52% said the game-play with their kids or grandkids was typically a combination of competitive and cooperative play. Almost half (48%) of respondents indicated they had multiple children or grandchildren who played the games in their home. Of those respondents, 88% described the game-play interaction between the children as at least partly cooperative, while 12% characterized that interaction as strictly competitive. “The casual games seem to promote more of a cooperative ‘let’s work on this together’ type of atmosphere, as opposed to an aggressive, interpersonal competitive environment,” observed Dr. Arinoldo.

Benefits of Play: Many of the adults surveyed attributed a wide spectrum of mental benefits to children playing casual games. Nearly half (47%) of respondents observed an increase in their child’s level of interest and/or understanding in spelling, reading, vocabulary, and/or history as a result of casual game play. Mothers and grandmothers (49% each) observed these benefits more often than fathers (41%) and grandfathers (38%). Further, these benefits were observed far more frequently in children between the ages of 5 and 12 (about 51.5% of the time) than in children age 13 to 17 (39% of the time). In keeping with these observations, 66% of parents and grandparents of children who play casual games said they would welcome the use of such games in their children’s or grandchildren’s schools.

Great-grandmother Cheryl Yetter of Paskenta, California plays PopCap’s word puzzle game Bookworm™ with her 12-year old granddaughter and finds that both bonding and educational opportunities are plentiful. “She loves the game, and when she spends the night, it’s great fun to play together,” says Yetter, 64. “Considering she doesn’t really like to read, Bookworm has been a valuable tool, as she’s learned a lot of new words and enjoys looking up some of the odd ones in the dictionary.”

Interestingly, while parents and grandparents alike saw benefits such as such as hand-eye coordination, learning and mental workouts for their children or grandchildren, parents were considerably more likely to perceive a reduction in stress levels among their children than grandparents were. 23% of parents vs. just 6% of grandparents noticed a correlation between children playing the games and becoming more relaxed. More than one in ten (11%) survey respondents also said that they purchase casual games for, and/or play casual games with, a child with a physical or cognitive disability. The most common benefits cited for children with disabilities were: skill-building, hand-eye coordination improvement, positive reinforcement, stronger concentration and increased confidence.

Frequency of Play: Nearly one quarter (24%) of those surveyed said their children or grandchildren play casual games daily, with 71% indicating child/grandchild game-play at least once a week. Nearly all (96%) of respondents said they limited children’s’ game-playing sessions to two hours or less. (Likewise, only 18% indicated that their children or grandchildren played the games more than 9 hours per week.) Weekends (55%) and “after school on weekdays” (43%) were cited as the most popular times for kids to play casual games, with 32% also enjoying the games at night before going to bed.

Survey Methodology This international research was conducted by Information Solutions Group (ISG; www.infosolutionsgroup.com). The results are based on online surveys completed by 2,298 respondents randomly selected between June 15 and June 29, 2007. The audience consisted of 1,645 United States and 653 international Website visitors; 483 were men and 1,815 were women. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, the results will differ by no more than 2.0 percentage points from what would have been obtained by seeking out and polling all PopCap.com users age 18 and over. Smaller subgroups reflect larger margins of sampling error. Other sources of error, such as variations in the order of questions or the wording within the questionnaire, may also contribute to different results.

Electronic Arts announced today that The Stress Institute are teaming up with online games sites to promote the positive impact playing games has on your health. Dr. Kathleen Hall, the founder of The Stress Institute, will interact with Pogo.com’s over 13 million users through January of 2008, offering stress-management advice and relaxation tips. “Play time is not a luxury, it is an essential element for your mental and physical health and well being and is an excellent stress reliever,” Dr. Hall said. “Stress is the driver for most diseases and the benefits of play and laughter in overcoming and preventing stress, aging and disease are too numerous to ignore.”

According to the Institute, some of these health benefits include:

Stress Reduction - Playing even five minutes of stress-busting games like Poppit! or Lottso! Deluxe, can lower blood pressure and stave off anxiety, depression and disease.

Brain Health - Games like Word Whomp, Tumble Bees or any one of the 40-plus puzzle games found on Pogo.com stimulate the brain and help to keep it sharp and healthy.

Social Community - By connecting with family, friends and new online buddies through unique chat features on Pogo.com, players can avoid feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression.

Build self-esteem - Everyone enjoys winning and the games on Pogo.com allow even the most novice player an opportunity to be a winner. The vibrant and supportive Pogo community offers encouragement further building a strong sense of individual empowerment.

Remember that this holiday season when your family is driving you crazy - you’re not sneaking off to grab time with your DS, you’re meditating.

This isn’t exactly news, of course, but the mainstream press is starting to twig to the fact that casual games are becoming a major market force in the computer and video game industry. It’s interesting that MSNBC author Kristin Kalning correctly points out the little-realized fact that coin-op arcade games were casual games.

Also discussed in the article is the difficulty in consistently coming up with varied casual games:

But on the smaller teams that characterize much of the casual games industry, Joe Generalist is more valuable than Mr. One Trick Pony. Some people love the opportunity to mix it up and flex different muscles. Other developers, used to spending a year creating a physics system for one game, have trouble adjusting to the bite-sized chunks that are casual games.

“It’s like hiring the president of McDonald’s to run your small front-porch organic café,” says Jessica Tams, managing director of the Casual Games Association. “Casual games have a completely different production cycle, so the developers need to have a different skill set.”

Not to mention a willingness to work differently. The average time-to-market for a core video game is two years — characterized by a “crunch” time at the very end as teams push to make retail deadlines. Sometimes, the crunches are a couple of months. Other times, these death marches can stretch to a year — or more.

“In casual games, the technical barrier is so much lower, so there are a lot fewer unknowns and a lot less crunching,” says Dan Chao, a designer at PlayFirst. “In core games, a lot of crunching happens because developers have to always be on the cutting edge.”

Easy-to-play titles that do not require too much time and that are playable online or downloadable to mobile devices will see real growth in the coming year.

The trend shows that gaming is not just about big-hitting, games console titles, which appeal more to “hardcore” gamers, said a panel of experts.

The panel also insisted that casual gamers were not just women, a common misconception which pervades current thinking about gamer demographics.

Casual games like pool, bridge, bingo and puzzle-based titles, which can be played online or downloaded onto mobile devices, were “gender neutral” and different genres attracted different players.

But hardcore gamers who are more attracted to blockbuster games which usually require hi-spec PCs, like Half-Life 2, or Halo 2 on Xbox, also liked to have a different type of gaming experience.

“When hardcore gamers are not playing Halo, they are playing poker and pool, based on our research,” said Geoff Graber, director of an online gaming firm, which attracts about 12 million gamers a month.

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