Game start-up says anthropology is its guide

What were the females in your family tree doing? Probably chewing on a mastodon hide together or helping each other sort acorns.

That, in part, is the theory behind Winster an online gaming start-up created by Jerry Kaplan. The site is developing games targeted at middle aged women. The games are based around the concept of reciprocal altruism. That is, rather than try to kill each other--the main purpose of several shoot-em-up games targeted at teen boys--the participants try to help each other solve puzzles or gain points. In a puzzle game, for instance, the players can swap pieces. Winster is also working on a cooperative form of poker.

He came up with the idea for Winster after reading up on evolutionary psychology, which tries to trace the evolutionary underpinnings of human behavior.

"There are historic roots of behavior for different demographics," he said.

At the time, he also noticed how casual online games were popular with women. His own wife, in fact, wore out a mouse.

Kaplan is sort of on the Silicon Valley CEO master circuit. He was behind Go, an early tablet computer company that came to a grisly end, and Onsale, an early online auction site that eventually got trounced by Ebay. Neither company survived. Onsale, however, did make money for its investors. That gives him lifetime membership in the secret club in these parts. It also means that the company has connections others may not. So even though the site is quite small and some of the games could be copied by larger sites, the company does have a few ways to get ahead.

Subscriptions cost between $4.99 to $9.99 a month. Yahoo and other sites let users play for free, but Winster is also giving away prizes like free movie tickets.

The company has raised $1.85 million so far from, among others U.S. Venture Partners. Reid Hoffman, he of LinkedIn fame, is an investor as well.