SANDLOT GAMES CORP.

Location: Bothell

Website: www.sandlotgames.com

Founded: 2002

Key Innovation: Sandlot develops and franchises its own intellectual property. "In that sense, we're like the media company of the 21st century," says founder and CEO Daniel Bernstein (left). "You see our games on as many platforms as possible." Its most popular, "Cake Mania," was released in March 2006 and last year sold more copies than any other casual game title.

Key People: Bernstein, 37, started the company in a spare bedroom in his Bothell home. A computer science and music composition major while at the University of Virginia, he still writes most of the sound effects for his company's games. He served as director of product strategy at WildTangent prior to starting Sandlot Games.

Measure of Success: "We have such a positive reputation with all the major game portals and distributors around the world," says Jared M. Nieuwenhuis, vice president of global marketing. "That success was the result of hard work and bootstrapping, not from getting millions of dollars in venture funding," adds Bernstein.

Employees: 60 ? half in Bothell, half in St. Petersburg, Russia.

What's Next: With over 50 million downloads of the original "Cake Mania," Sandlot was poised to deliver its sequel at the end of August. And fans are "chomping at the bit" for a promised multiplayer, Web-based version of "Tradewinds," says Bernstein.

WILDTANGENT INC.

Location: Redmond

Website: www.wildtangent.com

Founded: 1998

Key Innovation:CEO Alex St. John (right) views online gaming as the new TV, and has evolved his company accordingly. Consumers choose to buy "WildCoins" or watch advertisements that then "sponsor" their play. St. John says about 98 percent click the ads. But revenues from each option are split evenly. "The Internet is all about consumer choice and control," he says.

Key People: Before starting his own company, St. John, 40, was instrumental in creating Microsoft's DirectX technology, the basis for games on the Windows-based PC. "I realized I was born in an exciting time when Internet gaming was going to become dominant," he says.

Measure of Success: Though the company makes and distributes casual games, it does not limit itself to that realm. "Fate," its most popular offering, is a fantasy role-playing game. "We think our proudest achievement is how fast our audience has been growing," says St. John. According to a May 2006 report from the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, gaming is the most popular online activity after e-mail and chat. And it is the No. 1 consumer of time on personal computers both on and offline, according to Nielsen Entertainment's 2006 Active Gamer Benchmark Study.

Employees: 89, most in Redmond. The company recently opened an office in London.

What's Next: St. John claims the company's recent offering, "Sea Life Safari," has the highest production value of any downloadable game. The company also is expanding its lineup of massive multiplayer games.

POPCAP GAMES INC.

Location: Seattle

Website: www.popcap.com

Founded: 2000

Key Innovation: The company's founders helped pioneer the "try before you buy" download strategy and secured their first mobile deal in 2002, before the majority of gaming companies latched onto the idea, says CEO David Roberts (right). The games also are available on retail shelves.

Key People: PopCap was founded by Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka, 36; Chief Technical Officer Brian Fiete, 28; and John Vechey, 29, a board director. Roberts, 46, joined in 2005. "In some sense I'm the quintessential customer," he says. After selling his company, Definitive Stock, in 2000, Roberts started playing casual games in his free time. At that stage in life, he says, "I could not get excited about spending 40 hours learning how to play the latest shooter."