Brits have decided to look but not touch when it comes to online gaming, a survey claims.

One in five UK Net users, or 2,400,000 people, visited a games site during December, but only 194,000 actually took part in one of the games (one in twelve).

Americans came out with a slightly better average - 28 per cent of them logged onto games sites in the same month (23,814,000 users) with more than 4,800,000 playing online (one in six).

The most popular US games site was uproar.com, with more than 4,500,000 unique visitors. Commissioner.com was the stickiest site - users spent an average of 129.7 minutes on the site each month. UK players favoured gamesdomain.com, with 234,230 visitors.

The survey, by research company NetValue, also found US gamers were less likely to fit the typical IT geek profile - in Europe the average gamer is a young male (in the UK 98 per cent are men, and 65 per cent are under 24). Things are different in the US though - nearly half the gamers there are women, while only one in five under 24. In Germany 59 per cent are students, compared to just 17 per cent in the US. ®

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