Student Demographics - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 209

there men who enjoy collaboration more? Yes (raising hand). Are there women
who enjoy competition? Of course! So another step in your learning about your
audience is to identify those elements that attract women as well as men and
include them in your design.

Finally, despite the number of women playing games, the number making them
remains disproportionately smaller by an embarrassing margin. One of the
things that has pleased me immensely about the Rensselaer game program is the
number of female students. Do their numbers match the percentage of women
players? No. Not yet. But their percentage is growing. And their contributions to
the multiplayer classroom, in fact the contributions based on the diversity of
students in my classes in general, cannot be overstated.

It should be noted that one does not need to be female to write engaging, true-
to-life female characters any more than one needs to be male to write male
characters. The human imagination, coupled with the talent to translate that
imagination for an audience, can handle both with aplomb. But we must find,
encourage, and support more women in the still male-dominated careers that
make up a game development team.

On the next level, I will suggest that, if you are uncertain whether you can design
your own games, you will want to seek out help. We see this reaching out in
action in a couple of the case histories in this topic. Reach out to women
wherever you can. Demand that their expertise be the equal of men, but when it
is equal, give them a shot. You won ' t regret it. Your game will be better for it,

and you ll be doing your part to help balance an inequity that has been standing

far too long.

'

Income Level
The last key audience factor we need to look at here is income level. If there was
nothing else to recommend the multiplayer classroom, here is still a reason to
take the plunge. As much as Americans would like to think we are the most
wired nation on the planet, it is not true. The United States ranked nineteenth in
the world in broadband (high speed) penetration. And broadband penetration is
now used as an economic indicator. Only 27.1% of households in the U.S. have
high-speed Internet. And many other countries are increasing their percentages
much faster than we are.