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Wander into any videogame store and you could be forgiven for thinking that women do not play games at all but the statistics paint a different picture.

More than 40% of game players in Australia are female, yet most games on the store shelves are of little interest to them.

Despite this, the profile of the typical gamer has changed drastically over the past decade, with middle-aged housewives now as likely to play games as teenage boys.

The average gamer in Australia is now 28 years old, up from 24 just two years ago. And despite being largely ignored by the game industry, 41% are female.

Women and older Australians are the fastest-growing audience for computer and video games and if trends continue, by 2014 the average age of Australian gamers will be the same as non-players - 42 - with an equal number of male and female players.

Trends are similar in the US, where 38% of gamers are female, spending an average 7.4 hours a week playing, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

The popularity of video games has led to astonishing growth.

Australians spent a whopping $1.3 billion on video games and consoles last year - a rise of 43% from 2006.

Much of the recent growth in the Australian game market and the dramatic shift in gamer demographics is due to the success of a small number of non-traditional games such as the SingStar karaoke range (more than 520,000 sold), the Buzz trivia titles (more than 280,000 sold), Wii Sports (more than 350,000 sold) and the hugely popularly hand-held games such as Nintendogs and Brain Training.

The Sims, the world's most popular computer game, has also been hugely popular among women, as has the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft.

Both are largely about building relationships.

Even a cursory glance at some of the many internet forums and websites highlights the fact that many women enjoy games from all genres, some even forming female clans such as "Girlz", "Frag Dolls", "War Sisters" and "PMS" playing testosterone-fuelled shoot-'em-up titles such as Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament.

Women have no interest in the majority of commercial games that are released, particularly when they are being marketed almost exclusively to males. Instead, studies show most women gravitate to "casual" titles such as online puzzle and card games, trivia, word challenges and action arcade games.

The Casual Games Association reports that 74% of paying customers for these games are female.

And when it comes to mobile phones, women are just as likely to play games as men, with Forrester Research suggesting that 19% of Australian mobile phone users are playing games at least once a week on their phone, while another 24% play less regularly.

It's not surprising that women tend to shy away from most of the games on the store shelves when publishers routinely use semi-clad female characters to ply their wares, appealing squarely to adolescent male fantasies. And invariably the type of game that gets most media attention are violent and aimed at young men, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, which hit the streets last week amid the usual critical outcry.

The industry's response to luring women gamers has often been cynical and heavy-handed. Many of the games aimed at females are unimaginative, such as Ubisoft's new (paradoxically titled) Imagine range of hand-held games that feature stereotypical "pink" subjects such as dressing up, cooking and nurturing babies and pets.

Many industry insiders believe the key to creating more games that appeal to women is to get more women into the industry. By diversifying the workforce, developers hope to create products that appeal to a wider audience.

In Australia, female game developers make up only 5% of the industry while the International Game Developers Association puts the worldwide figure at about 12%.

To fix the imbalance in Australia, a "Women in Games" group was established to promote development as an exciting career choice.

Eve Penford-Dennis, an art tutor at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, has worked in game development for 15 years. She says that although most people in the industry assumed that gender inequity would eventually balance itself, "it never did".

"It became obvious that we needed to do something," she says.

Moran Paldi, a designer at local game studio Tantalus, says women tend to be better at communication and conflict management - crucial in the studio environment. Most games are built by teams of 30 to 100 people, including programmers, artists and designers.

One of the big problems with games often cited by women is the lack of characters with which they can identify.

While action heroines such as Lara Croft may inspire debate among girl gamers for having a bit each way - showing some hick-kicking girl power while at the same time displaying plenty of cheesecake sex appeal - many female game characters are merely ornamental and inevitably scantily clad.

Ms Paldi argues that "until we (women) start making games ourselves there is no way we will be able to see representations on screen that we can recognise and identify with. We need to start making a generation of games that women want to play and get them excited about creating their own content," she says.

But there is hope that change will come. More than 100 million games in the enormously successful Sims franchise have sold since its launch in 2000. Its astonishing success is due in no small part to the fact that it appeals strongly to both sexes.

Publisher Electronic Arts says more than 60% of Sims players are female.

Sims designer Will Wright says his team deliberately tried to make the game appeal to women. "I think the main reason we were able to do that successfully was that about 40% of our development team, and my two other designers, were women," he says.

One of the members of EA's Sims division, passionate game designer Robin Hunicke, recently completed work on MySims and is working on a game with Steven Spielberg for EA. She believes there are many ways the industry can attract more women into development.

"You can market more games to women," Ms Hunicke says. "You can have more women being shown in game commercials. You can have articles in women's magazines that talk about women who are successful in the field. You can showcase women in the advisory boards for conferences.

"You can feature recent work of prominent women developers, even when they're not in lead roles on projects, so that up-and-coming young women can be shown a little bit of attention and have a chance to (have a) dialogue with people about the process of evolving as developers themselves."

Although game development has never managed to shake its geeky boys-coding-in-the-garage image, many behind the scenes roles are highly creative - something the industry is keen to emphasise in its attempt to lure more young women.

Game developer Ms Paldi agrees: "It's not just jobs for code geeks any more. There are all sorts of jobs available, from production and design, to art and animation."

She says another major hurdle is stereotypes: "There is an awful lot of negative press surrounding the type of games being made. But not all games are about shooting people in the head."

Like many of her female colleagues, Ms Paldi believes the stereotypes are damaging because they affect the number of female game players, what publishers invest in and female interest in game development.

"Many women react to this tired old stereotype by thinking 'this game doesn't interest me' and so never explore the exciting opportunities the industry offers," she says.

"At Tantalus we make positive, kid-friendly games. I am excited by the work I do as a designer and feel I am making a positive impact on people's lives by encouraging them to engage in thought-provoking game play."

One strategy the game industry could learn from is a free book being distributed to high schools around the country by the IT industry called Tech Girls are Chic, not Just Geek. It features 16 of the IT industry's hottest young female professionals who are on a mission to change their industry's image in the minds of teenage girls.

The book follows an even more controversial approach in 2006 - the racy Screen Goddess IT Calendar - that featured young women from the IT industry in sexy poses based on popular Hollywood films. The calendar sold well but hit criticism for objectifying women.

A financial supporter of both projects, Sonja Bernhardt, says the technology industry's "nerd image" is a problem that must be tackled.

While the academy's Ms Penford-Dennis acknowledges that gender imbalance is not unique to the game industry, she's not sure her IT colleagues have the solution.

"This is a huge problem across IT in general - and IT has a way bigger budget to look at this problem - and still there isn't a magic answer that we've found," she says.

"It's also difficult for individual developers to put forward initiatives to solve the problem themselves. There needs to be that push from the industry as a whole to encourage more women into development."

Ms Paldi says awareness about the roles in the game industry should start in schools. "We need to let young girls know that they are not strange or alone, and that they don't have to emulate men to succeed," she says. "It is an awesome industry to work in and it's still small enough for people to be able to make global impacts with the work they do."

She says some benefits are high wages and work in cities such as Tokyo, London and San Francisco (instead of just the main Australian game development hubs of Melbourne and Brisbane).

One local developer having success in creating games just exclusively for females is the new Adelaide studio Champagne for the Ladies.

Its new mobile-phone game, Coolest Girl in School, was nominated for four awards in the recent Game Developers Association of Australia awards.

"Coolest Girl in School is the world's first mobile role-playing game made specifically for girls and the potential audience is huge," says Holly Owen, who co-produced, wrote and directed the game.

"Well over half (60%) of casual mobile gamers are women but very few games are made specifically for female audiences. Giving girls a different gaming option made specifically for them is what Coolest Girl in School is all about."