The gaming industry promises to be a hot market for e-commerce. Forrester Research expects Internet commerce sales to increase from an estimated $170 billion in 1999 to $3.2 trillion in 2003, with niche markets ­ like game sites ­ pulling in most of the dough. By then, 38 million households are expected to shop online, and their purchases will account for more than 6 percent of consumer retail spending, the Boston research firm predicts.

Entrepreneurial desire struck "Circe" when she was working at Lockheed Martin as a team leader . She landed an independent contract to create a 60,000-page site with more than 1 million links for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and things began to snowball.

The EPA site was designed so that anyone from an environmental scientist to an elementary-school student could use it to learn about the country's watershed areas. She's also done work for Research Triangle Institute and IBM.

Since then, all of her business has come by word-of-mouth, she said. And she's not complaining about her frequent 15-hour workdays. "There is no better time to do this than now," she said, citing her lack of desire to ever work for anyone but herself.

Young, single, with no dependents, "Circe" exemplifies many of the start-up entrepreneurs attracted to the Triangle. Both of her parents emigrated from Greece and met at the University of Florida. She was born in Florida and is fluent in Greek and French and speaks "some" German and Italian.

Her current project has received e-mails of encouragement from women gamers around the world. These vocal consumers will have the opportunity to express their opinions on WomenGamers.com as well, by rating games. The site will also be a place to read what other people have to say about how women are portrayed in games or whether the violence in games such as "Quake" are appropriate for teenagers.

"The video game community has been traditionally very male," said Jeff Butterworth, head of Alien Skin Software, a Raleigh software development firm. "Games have been male-oriented ­ a lot of violence. And if women were in them, they were grossly out of proportion. But that is changing. More gaming companies are starting to target women as a market."

And change does seem to be on the rise. Games with female leads, like "Tomb Raider," are hot for retailers. Right now "Tomb Raider" has three versions on the market and CapCom is marketing three versions of "Resident Evil," which gives players a choice of gender.

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