More than 700m people playing games online

More than 700 million people are playing online games worldwide, a state of the industry report by a Dutch gaming company says. That amounts to 44 percent of the world's online population, Spil Games in the Netherlands reported. "Many people don't know how big gaming is," Oscar Diele, chief marketing officer at Spil Games, told Venture Beat. "Gaming is a huge part of people's online activities. It's really mainstream, crossing age and gender boundaries." Spil Games makes online and mobile games mostly targeted at girls, and says it reaches more than 50 million girls. Spil Games said the data it collected from a number of online sources shows 46 percent of gamers are women and 54 percent are men. The top categories for boys and men are racing, sports and action games, while the top categories for women are puzzle, quiz, word, matching and mahjong games. The top categories for girls are cooking, dress-up and pet-care games. Spil Games said.