Gearing Up for Girl Play: THQ Adds Totally Angelica to Vid Game Format

Brandweek, March 27, 2000 by Todd Wasserman

Like Mattel Interactive and Acclaim Entertainment before it, software maker THQ is trying to get girls to play with computer games and will extend its licensing ties to Nickelodeon's Rugrats characters.

THQ, the Calabasas Hills, Calif., firm known mostly for its Wrestlemania and MTV Sports titles, plans in early May to roll out its first girls' game, Totally Angelica, a $29.95 Nintendo Game Boy Color title based on a Rugrats character skewed toward girls 6-12.

While Mattel's Barbie titles and Acclaim's Mary-Kate and Ashley games featuring Full House's Olsen twins have previously tried to win on girl-appeal, those titles are "basically boys' games with girls' artwork," said THQ associate product marketing manager Kevin Hooper.

In contrast, Totally Angelica, packed in a "Game Girl" box, doesn't require players to pass one level to continue the game. Instead, the title features several different activities set up in the framework of a "virtual mall," where contestants are awarded new clothes and accessories. Players can also share information via an infrared connection, because THQ found that girls are less interested in competing head-to-head with their friends.

Michael Goodman, senior analyst with The Yankee Group, Boston, said girls take a different approach to video games than boys because, "it goes to the psychology of females in general," who would "rather collaborate in a game than aim for destruction."

The market for girls' games is largely untapped, but there's evidence it may already have hit its peak. Only 19% of girls from 2-11 play console or PC games, versus 53% of boys, per Yankee Group data. But sales of girls' games measured in dollars fell 28% in 1999, compared to rises of 116% for 1997, and 38.5% in 1998, per PC Data, Reston, Va.

THQ, which has licensed Rugrats for console formats (Mattel has rights for PC games), will advertise the title in Rugrats books from Simon & Schuster and in a booklet that Paramount will distribute in showings of Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, due in November.