Product Placement: Creating Women Gamers

"Part of what we've done in our games is develop strong female heroines, but also games that are intelligent and appeal to a different variety of people," Baker says.

Meanwhile, PopCap games, which produced hits like Bejeweled, Peggle and Zuma before encouraging users to unleash their veggie beast in the ridiculously addictive Plants vs. Zombies, has a 65% female audience, three-quarters of whom are over age 30. The Electronic Arts(ERTS Quote)-held Pogo.com, Sierra Online and other game sites that draw huge audiences of female gamers all took away the same lesson: When you need to make a great game with very little money, you can't afford to discriminate.

"We don't target women gamers; we make games for everyone," says Garth Chouteau, senior director of public relations for PopCap games. "If you make great games that don't pander to women and don't offend women, women will play them."

That was the thinking that made games from Pong and Pac-Man to The Sims and Mario Kart so popular, and it's something that's still considered in game-testing sessions. At their company's inception, PopCap co-founders John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka used their mothers as beta testers for Bejeweled -- not to market it to women, but to see if it appealed to women. The same applies at Harmonix, where female testers and male testers judge games along the same criteria.

While the Wii has helped open up console gaming to a wider audience, new platforms including mobile phones have become legitimate gaming devices for casual gamers and have narrowed the gender gap among video-game consumers. If Tetris were released today, it would probably be an Apple(AAPL Quote) iPhone app instead of a Game Boy cartridge. Little sis played that one, too.