ETR Associates present Girls and Gaming at Google Headquarters
How does gender intersect with gaming? Can gaming lead to increased diversity in the technology workforce? On January 26, 2009, three ETR staff gave a talk at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, that addressed these questions. Jill Denner, PhD, senior research associate, described the book she co-edited, Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming (MIT Press, 2008), which explores how gender intersects with today's gaming culture, covering such issues as massively multiplayer online gaming, player-generated content, the male-dominated gaming industry and the rise of serious and casual games.
Steve Bean, senior program manager, and Jacob Martinez, project coordinator, discussed the Girl Game Company, which is part of the Girls Creating Games research and program development initiative run by ETR for the last 7 years. Girl Game Company is the current after-school program that aims to increase Latina girls' interest and capacity to pursue careers in computational fields by teaching them to design and program digital games.
