On Gaming

I hope you know what TED is. For the good of all mankind, I hope everyone with internet access knows what TED is. If you don't know what TED is, I hope for the good of all mankind, you go to this webpage (http://www.ted.com/) immediately and find out.

For a quick synopsis, TED is a website devoted to three things: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The goal of TED is to promote the spread and growth of ideas through brief (usually 20 minutes or less) lectures on anything and everything related to technology, entertainment, and design.

Last year, one of my classes began to integrate TED lectures into the lesson plan, to help foster ideas and generate informed and empowered discussion. And, God, it works. Today, we began watching a talk by a female gamer (yes, they exist, as a matter of fact, according to a study by the Entertainment Software Association in 2004, they make up 34% of all gamers, and 43% of online gamers) who talked about the importance of playing video and online games in mental development in problem solving.

Jane McGonigal, PhD, the Gamer Girl to whom I am referring (smart, beautiful, AND a video game designer), said that she thinks the world's problems could be more easily solved if, worldwide, we spent 21 billion hours a week (that's approximately 1 half-hour per person) in search of gaming's fabled "epic win." This means, of course, that if all 6 billion people on the planet are expected to get their game on, we need...more Gamer Girls.

And this, my friends, is my point: if you know me at all, you know that I think girls can kick ass. From a young age, I was started on video games: Duck Hunt when I was very young, FPS's like Goldeneye 007 as I got older, Super Smash Brothers and its more developed counterpart, SSBB,... To this day, I frequently transport a device I call "The Brick"... a 1989 GameBoy, which, combined with Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, and Pokemon Yellow, served as my childhood.

There's some stigma against girls who play, especially in "guys games" like FPS's and, one of my favorites, Grand Theft Auto. It's almost like we've been relegated to games that need to have fairies or elves or princesses (though Link is pretty awesome and Peach kicks butt) in order to not be looked down on as inferior.

We don't need to be 34% of the gaming population, ladies. When women make up 51% of the WORLD population, we should be making up 51% of the gaming population...though maybe not WoW. I've seen too many people disappear down that path.

Girls...stop the mind games and pick up the video games. You'd be surprised what you can do. And if Jane McGonigal is right...maybe we can even save the world.

Stop reading and start playing,
Rachel Leigh