The female-centric Lifetime network is serious about making video games an important part of their business strategy. They have many good reasons to do so.

Video games is an effective marketing tool for Lifetime since many women are now playing them, thanks to Nintendo’s huge success with the casual audience, the music games like Rock Band, and the many web-based browser games that appeals to that market. “We are not going after the 12-year-olds; we are going after the 18-34-year-olds who like to play games online, which is a huge number of people,” says Dan Suratt, executive VP of digital media and business development for Lifetime Networks.

Going into video games makes sense when the games industry has been resilient against the troubling economy, as third-quarter U.S. video game sales grew 8% over 2007, according to The NPD Group. “Most of the research groups call the games business recession-proof,” says Bob Picunko, VP of electronic games and interactive media for MTV Games. “I would say the thinking within the industry right now is that we are probably recession-resistant. The good news about the gaming business is that even though a game is $29 for [Nintendo] DS or $59 for a console, there are hours and hours of content out of them.”

With the games industry still standing strong and women now an important growing market, this could open doors for substantial revenue streams. The revenue opportunities go beyond retail and advertising these days, thanks to the success of downloadable content, micro-transactions, and subscriptions. Paying extra money to get new articles of clothes for a dress-up game is ideal for Lifetime’s business model in the industry.

The network has showed they are serious about the gaming business. Last month, they bought the Korean dress-up gaming site ROIWorld.com. Next year they plan to re-launch the website here in the U.S. “We continue to grow [the browser-based games] from the ROIWorld perspective; they already have 1,000 games built, so we are inheriting an incredible library. What they will do going forward is try to crank out games that are about what women want to do online,” says Suratt.

In their website, Mylifetime.com, they already have a section dedicated to a large library of games, flash based and downloadable. Some of them include JoJo’s Fashion Show, Golden Girls Trivia, Dress Up Challenge, and The Princess Tiara. Their television series about vampires, Blood Ties, has already been adapted to a PC game this year.

Thanks to MTV we have the Rock Band series. Hopefully other television networks will follow MTV’s path and be able to create similar hits that we can enjoy playing.