Have I Got a Game For You!

The NYTimes reports that, although women make up slightly over half of the science and engineering graduates (According to the National Science Foundation) they make up only 22% of the Computer Science graduates in 2006, down 6 points from 5 years before.

The article suggests that computer gaming, which sucks kids into computer use and subsequent interest in programming, needs to reach out to girls. In the "girls play with dolls and boys play with guns" rubric, the boys have certainly got their gun games. Yet, what of girls' games?

I reminisced a bit this weekend about a few old games that I not only loved, but got me interested in programming: text based games! Quite simply, there were no graphics, just text commands like "turn left, turn right, forward, inventory, and hit Ogre." Graphics require an additional level of complexity that make it harder for one person to program, but a text-based game could feasibly be imagined and programmed by a young person. I was too lazy, alas.

A simple solution: create some of these games (they are akin to a 'choose your own adventure book' which in my memory was beloved by boys and girls alike) and release them for free on the internet! Create facebook apps and other things to reach out to young girls. They will see, when looking at their brother's violent first person shooter games, that they are similar to the text based games in that they are based on figuring out puzzles and mazes (unlike in that you don't need finger dexterity).

Okay, these games are not perfect and they may need explanation, but they are intriguing and like solving a story. The article didn't specify the types of games girls would like to play, but I think these are at least worth a shot.