According to a new study released earlier this week by Nielsen Entertainment in their third annual Active Gamer Benchmark Study, women make up 64% of North America's 117 million online gamers - and we aren't lying. The study did not reveal any particular genre or game type that were being played by women, but it is expected that online browser games such as Zuma on various flash websites made up a large proportion of the female online gamers. Although many traditional online games such as Halo or CounterStrike were primarily aimed towards males, the rise of RPGs and large-scale online titles such as World of Warcraft appear to have attracted more female gamers to the online scene.

Another surprising result from the latest study is the amount of older gamers that are also interested in online gaming. As you'd expect, the teenage market dominates any other age group in numbers, but the study does say that more than 15 million gamers (about 8%) are actually at least 45 years old. The study involved 2,200 gamers described as "active" who were 13 years or older and owned a gaming device and played games at least once a week.

Nielsen Entertainment reports something that that most of us gamers already know. The third annual update to its Active Gamer Benchmark survey finds social elements are becoming more and more important when it comes to the overall game experience, with some 56 percent of roughly 117 million gamers in the U.S. playing online games, and some 64 percent of those being women (again another "doi!" but women being gamers and them not being recognized is a whole different topic so I won't go into that).

The study goes on to say that so-called Active Gamers spend more than 5 hours a week playing socially (that no doubt includes Xbox Live and WiFi gaming), with gaming teens being involved socially within the game by as much as seven hours a week. The survey by the way, defines "Active Gamers" as gamers being 13 years or older, and who own a gaming device and play at least 1 hour a week.

The survey also found that older women (your mother) comprise the largest part of causal gamers. Active Gamer teens and Active Gamer young adults still comprise a good bit of the casual market (stress release from school perhaps? hey thats what Zuma did for me...) with more than half of them playing an hour or more every week.

A particularly surprising bit here, MMORPGS - long thought to be bastion of oldie-hardcore gamers, you know, fat forty and still in the basement (I merely jest, really, sorry to all of you cool gamer dads, you rock!) - turn out to be the most popular genre among Active Gamer teens. Unsurprisingly, Active Gamers are also most likely to purchase the game or have the game pre-ordered before release.

Basically, when you kiddies in junior high are already in a suit in some office, online gaming and consoles with online stuff (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and their next-next-gen versions?) will be your version of MySpace. The image of the basement-dwelling, disconnected-from-the-world, hardcore gamer is dead. Perhaps not to all of us, but at least to the business people (hey who else listens to Nielsen?). They're starting to think that we gamers are socially connected individuals, and we're hoping the rest of the world follows suit.