According to the analysis from comScore, online gaming usage in the U.S. has grown 27 percent during the past year to 86 million visitors in December 2008. Moreover, the total time spent playing online games has risen by 42 percent.

"It appears that online, ad-supported gaming is one of the activities that has benefited during this economic downturn," said Edward Hunter, comScore director of gaming solutions. "Not only have consumers turned to outlets such as gaming to take their minds off the economy, but as they curtail their discretionary gaming-related purchases they are turning to free alternatives."

Yahoo! Games was ranked as the most visited site in the category with 19.5 million visitors (up 20 percent), followed by EA Online with 15.4 million visitors (up 21 percent), and Disney Games with 13.4 million visitors (up 13 percent). It's worth noting that AOL Games (AOL owns GameDaily) was ranked sixth with 10.75 million visitors, and experienced more growth (28 percent) than all other competitors, except for WildTangent (ranked 4th), which soared 74 percent to 13.3 million visitors.

Although advertising has seen some tough times, the online gaming category has fared well with ads. From November 2007 to November 2008, the total number of display ad views in the online gaming category grew 29 percent to 8.6 billion, comScore said. This, of course, was attributable to the surge in visitors to the category (up 30 percent).

"The growth in display ads in the online gaming category not only underscores the assertion that gamers are increasingly accepting of ad-supported games, but also that the advertising community is recognizing the value of this highly engaged audience," added Hunter. "It is also likely that the advertising agency community will begin to demand more evaluations of campaign effectiveness in this space as spend and impressions continue to rise."