Women build games, seriously

Recruitment of students to Computer Science has been a major focus of effort for educators since the dot-com bust in 2001. Two largely disparate themes in these efforts are women and games. There have been numerous efforts to broaden participation in computer science by attracting women to the field. At the same time, games are increasingly used to attract new students. Our interest lies at the intersection of these methods. We began using game design/development projects in our software engineering course, CS121, in 2002. The game focus was extremely successful with many of our students. But a nagging minority of students objected to building games, and women tend to be overrepresented in that group.So while are awed by the power of games to engage and motivate many of our students, we need to ask: Do games in our curriculum reinforce gender stereotypes of Computer Science? Do they foster development of the so-called “Geek mythology?”[7] In short, must we choose: women or games?We argue the answer is no. While traditional game projects may disenfranchise women, our experience shows that serious game projects both attract and engage them. This paper describes our results.