Women Drive Boom at LatAm Video Game Fair

The biggest video game fair in Latin America opened its doors Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro, with organizers expecting some 60,000 visitors and an ever-increasing number of women gamers.

The "Brazil Game Show," which began as the "Rio Game Show" in 2008 with just 3,000 attendees, has been booming each year since and organizer Marcelo Tavares said women were fast becoming a big part of that success.

"Their numbers soared from 10 percent of the public to nearly 25 percent in 2010," Tavares, 29, told the Folha de Sao Paulo daily.

For him, that growth is largely explained by their strong interest in top-selling games like FarmVille and The Sims Social in which players also interact with their Facebook friends.

The first three days of the Rio event are aimed at developers, with gaming professionals from around the world invited to discuss the exploding market in Latin America.

The general public will not descend on the show until Friday, when Sony, Microsoft, Warner Bros., and EA will be among some 70 exhibitors seeking to draw gamers to their new products.