The internet is seen as the fastest growing market EVER and it is interesting to note that the online games/social networking sector is growing four times faster! Online games are worth approximately $5.2 million USD and increasing daily (this works out to be about $164 every second and this amount is set to more than double)!

Millions of people of all ages from all over the world (one in ten people) are playing online games every single minute of every day and this will continue to rise. The online games sector is seen as the next step in the evolution of online entertainment and is a market growing at a phenomenal rate.

With people often having increased leisure time it seems that many choose to spend some of this time 'in cyberspace' often playing online games and/or being on social networking sites. You may ask what is social networking? It's true that many of us may not have heard about sites such as 'Myspace' until recently but these social networking sites are hugely popular. 'Myspace' has around 176 million users worldwide and according to
trafficestimate.com receives approximately 148 million visitors every month!

It would appear that the online game/entertainment market has affected TV viewing audiences meaning that people are often spending less time in front of the television and more time on the internet. One of the main reasons that people are spending more time on the internet is that more households have access to broadband now, with over 70% of US homes and more than 50% of homes within Europe having broadband connections. Even in countries where the amount of homes having their own internet access is small there appears to have been a growth in Internet Cafe's. In fact it seems that a third of the income made by Internet cafe's comes from customer's playing online games.

Out of all online games played the casual skill based games are proving to be some of the most popular, probably because people tend to be competitive by nature. Skill games such as backgammon, sport games like golf and word type games are played by millions. The games are played as online tournaments with players paying a cash fee to enter and then competing for a prize of either cash or merchandise. The skill games are exactly what they say they are and players are using their skills and abilities to win the tournament, with luck playing no part in the outcome (this is a vital factor for skill games not to fall under anti-gambling laws).

So online games, in particular skill games, are set to take the internet by storm and as this phenomena continues to grow, the day when fifty per cent of the adult population play online games may not be that far away!