Online gaming seen as cheap entertainment in recession - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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Reston-based (NASDAQ:SCOR) says it found a significanyt increase in the size of the gaming audience duringy thepast year, driven in part by the reality of economif challenges. The category attracted 87 million U.S. visitors in May, up 22 percenrt versus year ago. In its report comScoree says that Sunnyvale-based (NASDAQ:YHOO) Games ranked No. 1 in the categoru with 19.4 million visitors, representing a 6 percentt increase over thepast year, followed by EA Online with 18 milliom visitors (up 34 percent), Nickelodeom Casual Games with 14.8 million visitors, and WildTangent Networo with 13.8 million (up 16 percent).
GSN Games Networkss achieved particularly strong gains in thepast year, growing 563 percentf to 6 million visitors, due primarily to the additionsz of entities such as WorldWinner.com and CrazyMonkeyGames.com. "Onlined gaming continues to be one of the top gaining categoriexs over the past year growing at ten times the rate of thetotakl U.S. Internet population and reaching nearlyh one out of every twoInterney users," said Edward comScore director of gaming solutions. "And the growth in the categoryt is occurring not only at the top gaming destination but also through viraldistribution platforms, including widgetx and applications.
In fact, some online gamingt companies that distributed their games across siteds are reaching as many peopler as the top onlinegamingf sites."