“Our analysis suggests that there are some game features that are more appealing to girls than others. These features are related to all aspects of games, including the thematic content and focus, as well the kinds of strategies and computer-playing skills demanded of the players; one particularly important feature appears to be whether the game interfaces with the reality of players’ lives” p65 Cassell J. Jenkins H (Eds) (1998) From Barbie to Mortal Combat: Gender and Computer Games The MIT Press Introduction While investigating the validity of the above statement, we discovered that the statement is true. However, it goes a bit deeper than this. It appears as Sheri Graner Ray (2002) put it, a bit of a chicken-egg problem. (Winegarner, Beth 2005) The industry is not creating gaming software that connects to the female players’ lives, so females do not buy games. Because females do not buy games, the industry is not making software that connects with their lives. Not only is there little to attract girls to computer and console games, but there are specific design features that will actively push them away. In addition to this, game publishers do not recognize the value of this market, because they do not see the need. As it turns out, there is even more reason to attract girls to gaming beyond the profit motive. There is now evidence that gaming changes the architecture of the brain and enhances visual-spatial ability. Educationally we are shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot by ignoring this. Sherry Turkle writes, “the computer culture has become linked to a characteristically masculine worldview, such that women too often feel they need to choose between the cultural associations of ‘femininity’ and those of ‘computers’” (AAUW, 2000, p. 7) When children are very young, boys seem to have an edge in manual dexterity and speed. However, girls edge them out in communications and reasoning skills. When it begins to even out in about sixth grade, the culture has already made its mark and this is emphasized. Girls are discouraged from pursuing math and science, if not overtly by the teacher, covertly by their interest in boys, who do not admire smart girls or girls that can beat them. So even girls who naturally gravitate to the computer will back off. Laurel argues that mastering a game is a “social plus” for boys, while for girls it is a “social taboo” (Bjork et al 2004). (Chu et al 2004)This attitude is reinforced in many schools by locating the computers in the math and science areas, and even when the computers are located in a gender-neutral area, the guys will crowd out the girls physically, violating their private space to dominate the machine. Males see the machines as something to conquer, while females prefer to interact cooperatively. community groups can develop a greater variety of programs in terms of content, delivery, and timeframe. Individual mentoring and coaching also provide teenage girls with positive role models of technology use (Hull & Schultz, 2002; O’Dell, 2002; Ramnanan, 2001). So they see the computer as different from the start, in addition, girls are given productive software, while their brothers get games, and they often have inferior machines passed on by the males in the family when they upgrade, so they never have the same capability as the