• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, February 16, 2007 11:48 AM

Casual gaming on the Web is a phenomenon; it might even be considered "the next online video." Even traditional media companies in their crossover attempts are starting to add games to their sites to boost traffic and ad sales. Among them are print giant Hearst Corp., publisher of Cosmopolitan and Esquire, CBS Corp, NBC, and Disney. Hearst just struck a deal with game developer Arkadium, to add customized games to its magazines' Web properties.

The stereotype that gamers are teenage males is way out of date. Forrester Research says nearly half of all gamers are between 30 and 59, and they prefer simple games, like Sudoku and Hearts to the more involved titles typical of video game consoles. Forrester also says online games appeal equally to both men and women.

Just ask Yahoo, whose Yahoo Games site attracted 21 million unique users in January, according to comScore Media Metrix. For a little perspective, that's about as many users as YouTube. Recognizing this, Hearst started offering generic arcade and board games to its younger readers a few years ago. Since then, between 5% and 10% of the traffic to CosmoGIRL! and Seventeen comes from games.

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