Thanks for the heads up from MMORPG.com; I’d have missed this gem from CNN. It’s partly old news about SOE’s “G.I.R.L.” (Gonna Insult Roleplaying Ladies) program. I don’t know what it really stands for, but from what I understand, SOE feels women don’t play games or work on games, so they want to encourage more of them.

Well, before I get into THAT rant, here’s the first para of that CNN story:

On a Tuesday night in a San Francisco nightclub, Torrie Dorrell makes a very personal revelation to the gathered crowd: “I’m a full-on gamer, and my husband hates me.”

In fact, Dorrell spends so much time gaming, she has risen to the level of “officer” in a “guild” playing “EverQuest 2” online.

I wish I could love ANY punctuation mark as much as CNN loves double quotes.

Let’s break that down. Mrs. Dorrell gets up in front of a crowd, and she has a confession to make. The people are there for her. Not a dry eye in the place as she admits her problem – “I’m Torrie Dorrell.” (Hi, Torrie) “And I’m a GAMER,” she continues, flicking her fingers above her head in the universal double quote sign.

(The audience gasps. Aren’t gamers pasty-skinned, zit-faced teenage boys? How can this be? What madness is this!?)

“And I am an OFFICER in a GUILD playing EVERQUEST 2!” Her fingers flexing madly as double quotes chase her words around the room and out the door.

Oh yes, she is a gamer, and her husband hates her. She works in a game company, and her husband hates her. Why this hate? Because they are being shunted aside for electric boyfriends? His wife is not paying proper attention to him, that’s the undertext – he’s no longer king in his castle, his wife has interests he does not share and he is MAD AS HELL.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that programs to promote math and the sciences to high school students of ANY gender are fantastic. but really, I’m tired of people separating “gamers” from “normal people” by implication.

Fact is that game development is a technical field, and almost EVERY student is intimidated by math, at least, from very early on. If you really want to get more girls into game development, that time would be third grade. Make the teaching of math fun and relevant THEN, and you’ll get that hook in their mind and by the time they get to high school, math will just be another one of the tools, ready to use, and they will be far more likely to choose a technical career like programming or game design. Because these days, technology is moving SO fast that if you can’t control it, people will use it to control you.

Simple fact.

Unfortunately, third graders are generally not being taught that math is both interesting and fun. Thanks to mandatory standardized tests, children are being taught to pass tests and that math is nothing but drills and memorization. That sudden insight that math is how the WORLD WORKS – never happens, as they begrudge learning the rote answers they are given and the ironically named program No Child Left Behind ensures that creativity is channeled into conformity.

It’s no wonder kids – girls and boys – hate math.

Me? I hated math. I didn’t understand it AT ALL. I failed algebra. Then I got to high school and there were two math teachers who could actually explain math and make it fun – Curt Nichols and um, I can’t remember his name. He died before the Internet, which will give all of us alive today some sort of immortality, and isn’t that comforting? And a little scary to know that future generations will look back at 1996 as the year that the modern era began, the last year that anything could be forgotten… ANYWAY. Thanks to those teachers, I was able to make up the math I missed, stumble into computer programming, and get set up a life in tech – as well as being able to write games, of which I wrote many in college.

So yeah. If you want to “woo” women into “game careers”. “fund” teh “maths” for “children” and make a career in programming and game design “possible”.