Girl gaming rulez

In the electronic age, girls still like to play with dolls, hairbrushes and ponies -- just not real ones.

Today, passions for dress-up, makeovers and hanging out with friends are now fulfilled in a virtual world made of digital 1s and 0s on a television set.

Casual video games for kids, especially tween girls, have become big business for developers, prompting nearly all publishers from Electronic Arts to Ubisoft and Nintendo to create casual game divisions to cash in on the burgeoning trend.

"There's been a social change, especially at the younger end of the market where gaming is no longer a taboo -- for boys or girls," said Chip Lange, general manager and senior vice president of EA's Hasbro division, which

makes casual video games based on Hasbro toys.

EA Salt Lake, based in Bountiful, is a game developer that used to make the Tiger Woods golf and Madden football games for the PC. The company is now producing strictly casual games for kids, and last month released its newest titles: "Littlest Pet Shop Friends" and "Nerf N-Strike Elite" for the Nintendo Wii and DS.

"Nerf" is a shooting game for boys based on a toy gun with the spongy ammunition, while "Pet Shop" is a social game for girls in which gamers play minigames with toy animals. Players can also style the game characters with accessories.

"When you're developing a product like 'Tiger Woods,' you're kind of a hero or rock star to a bunch of men 18 to 34," said

Vance Cook, executive producer for EA Salt Lake, a designer once known for making the "Links" golf game for now-defunct Access Software in Salt Lake City. "Then when you start building [casual games], you become the hero of your kids. It's an entirely different mindset."

So how do middle-aged, mostly male game developers tap into the psyche of a tween girl? They recruit their kids. That and, "you have to find your inner princess somehow," Cook said.

Cook has used all three of his children, now ages 11 to 18, in developing games. "We've got a lot of developers here who have girls in that 6-to-9 range," he said. "We bring them into the studio and set them up in a room with food and a fun environment."

After hours of watching kids play in focus groups, Cook and other developers learned that girls respond well to games in which they can nurture, not destroy, things. Girls also like to customize their characters and communicate with friends in the game world.

Another local company, Avalanche, develops games for Disney Interactive, based on films such as "Meet the Robinsons" and the upcoming "Toy Story 3." It also produced "Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour," in which players can live in the world of the famous teen singer.

The face of gaming has opened up to casual gamers in part due to the popularity of Nintendo Wii and the portable DS gaming systems, said Avalanche general manager John Blackburn.

"It's not just young girls -- the entire video-gaming demographic is changing," he said. "That's what the software industry is responding to."

According to the market researcher NPD Group, females make up 38 percent of those who play regularly, shattering the popular notion that games are strictly played by young males. Publisher Ubisoft, which produces the "Imagine" series of games for girls for the Nintendo DS, says 25 percent of its revenue comes from casual games, most of which are aimed at tween girls.

One criticism leveled at this trend is that games for young girls have focused on stereotypes of what men think girls like -- fashion, makeovers and cooking.

While there are girl gamers who like hardcore or violent titles, focus groups point out that most girls like concepts with gentler themes, Blackburn said.

"There's a lot of girls who play 'Halo,' " he said. "We are trying to offer a product to a girl that doesn't like 'Halo.' It fills in the market based partially on what teens tell us."

Twelve-year-old Shirley Zhou is a Midvale Middle School seventh-grader whose tastes are in line with gaming's newest trend. She doesn't have a single game in her DS library that involves killing because "shooting is not for me," she said.

Instead, she has titles ranging from "Nintendogs" to "Imagine Fashion Designer New York" and a game based on "High School Musical."

"I like those types of games where you can imagine things -- where you can create your own stuff," she said. "I just think it's fun. When you grow up and you want to be something, you can start by just playing the game."