Why are so few women interested in gaming? The answer is simple: It’s the binary, stupid.

Every six months or so there's a little flare up in the media about how the videogame industry has failed women. The usual argument is that 99.9% of games are designed for and marketed exclusively for young males, and women (as well as gay players) are ignored. Game developers and publishers don’t care about women because women don’t care about videogames. And so it goes. While this argument is ill-informed (it totally ignores the amazing success of Her Interactive's Nancy Drew series, which has been a hit among pre-teens as well as adult women of all ages), I’m the first to admit that there is a problem when the few games that do feature women use them primarily as sex objects. However, rather than blame the game industry and give the same old tired statistics and claims, I think it's time someone pointed out that the true problem is the hardware: or, more specifically, the architecture of the computer itself. It is my belief that the computer's architecture was itself designed with and for a particular mindset, one most comfortable in the world of "binary," or simple either/or decisions--in short, the masculine mind. This fact has made it especially difficult for women to become proficient in programming and, by extension, the computer industry as a whole, since all programs (applications as well as games) have been built on this masculine framework.

Now, before anyone gets riled up at this polite observation, let me point out that I don't subscribe to any totalizing views of men or women. You can't start talking about EVERY man or EVERY woman without making yourself look like a jerk, idiot, or both. Yet it's true enough that women are socialized much differently than men, both institutionally and through more traditional means (friends, family, and so on). I don’t claim to be as well acquainted with feminist theory as many of my colleagues, but I’ve noticed that much of it is concerned with communication (or the lack thereof) between the sexes. To make a long story short, what we read about is the famous dialog about problems: Women experience emotions differently than men. Men try to identify and "fix" the problem. However, this "Mr. Fixit" attitude only aggravates the woman further, who is probably looking more for solace than a "solution." There are few men who enjoy crying. There are plenty of women who love it almost as much as chocolate.

The Soaps:: That's sex AND suffering, not OR, chump.Time and time again, we men try to approach women with a one-size-fits-all approach, even though, time and time again, women try to tell us (rather patiently, when you think about it) that that's just not how it works. Women don't want clear-cut, easy solutions any more than men delight in "drama." Yet, deep down any male who's spent enough time around women will realize just how confusing and, indeed, bewildering they can be--and it's on purpose. "What's wrong?" we ask, but the answer is never forthcoming. Indeed, the very act of insisting that a woman give us a clear answer about what's bothering her could very well itself be part of the problem. Some friendly advice: Just put your arm around her and shut up.

Now, when we take a peek under the hood of a computer, we instantly recognize it for what it is: a model of a man's brain—or, more specifically, a model of his more "rational" part. For every question, there is one of two possible answers: Yes or No (one or zero). Programs, no matter how complex, can ultimately be boiled down to a series of questions that must be answered yes or no. Does the player wish to start a new game? Yes or no. Has the player entered the command that breaks the game loop? Yes or no. At each interval, and on something of the order of millions of smaller intervals, the program must ask and ascertain all these questions and somehow emerge with the "correct" response.

Needless to say, this binary thinking that lies at the heart of every computer can never hope to offer women what it offers men: A friendly, familiar simulation of their own minds, whirring and purring in perfect synchrony, goose-stepping with all the power of a Pentium. For women, a computer is the man who keeps asking, "Will you please tell me what's wrong with you?" in louder and louder tones, even though it's clear that asking that question again is a really bad idea—almost, but not quite as bad as asking a woman if she would like to "abort."

At this point, you're probably asking, if binary is the problem, what's the solution? Well, isn't that rather male of you. But, in all seriousness, there have been suggested alternatives for binary. One example is "ternary computing," which involves a -1, 0, and 1 rather than just a 0 and 1. No less an authority on computers than Donald Knuth has predicted that ternary computers will eventually replace binary, though it is uncertain how long this might take. My guess is it will take about as long as it takes for more women to get those engineering jobs and make their male counterparts look like the nitwits they are.

However, a more immediate and feasible solution would be to try to work with existing binary computers to offer women more appropriate ways to interact with a program. What developers have to focus on is avoiding the "yes" and "no" and understanding that "hopeless" ambiguity and complexity have their place. The goal or task-oriented game must give way to the goal or task disoriented game. The "fun" of these games will exist primarily in seeing just how far you can push a system before it breaks down completely. Likewise, the system must constantly adapt in unpredictable (and hopefully entertaining ways), and allow players to push and pull without ever achieving the same effect twice. "Knowing" the rules and "understanding" the game become secondary to the joys of wreaking chaos.

Imagine, for instance, a game that focused on a series of characters engaged in various dramatic conflicts (i.e., something like Façade or the Sims). Whereas a male player would probably expect the game to always respond the same way (i.e., if you try to kiss the female character, she slaps you), a female player would enjoy the game much better if such things were left virtually random (or, to be more accurate, inexplicable). Furthermore, the fun of the game would be not in "clearing things up," but rather digging deeper and deeper, drawing out the complexities of the relationships to mind-boggling proportions (see typical Romance novel for examples). Finally, the game play would avoid the simple emphasis on decision-making that dominates almost every game on the market today. Instead, rather than make decisions, the player would be engaged primarily in complicating decisions made by other players (or perhaps by computer-controlled characters). The joy in these games would be in seeing simply what happens now that the pieces have been arranged so intricately.

Another tendency to be avoided is giving the player too much control over a game. In a game designed for women, the player should have only partial control, and mostly indirect control at that. Again, rather than controlling a character or avatar directly, the better approach would be to stand by the sidelines, offering various incentives (or the opposite) to independent characters or pieces. The player is not so much the center of the action as she is the center of attention. The "fun" of these games is not so much in dictating the "action," but rather in paying crucial attention to the particulars. Sometimes it's more important to select what a character should wear than the weapon he should wield.

Now, at this point, someone might point out that it's not violence par se that women object to in many games. The real objection it seems, at least to me, is not so much the fact that a game is violent, but rather that the violence is so damn uninteresting. Kaboom. Pow pow. There's no dramatic interest to it. It's the violence of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film compared to a murderous intrigue in a soap opera. And, please, if you don't think women enjoy violence, just watch the soaps. What you'll discover is that women are just as "violent" as men, but the devil is literally in the details. Women aren't interested in shooting total strangers or faceless "soldiers" and the like. They want to kill their ex-best friend who has been secretly sleeping with their fiancé. How DARE she. And, of course, dealing with the aftermath will be even more fun.

Halo: Games try so hard to strip the character of the very aspects that women desire most...The advice I have about making better games for women isn't academic stuff. It's just simple observations that anybody could make who was willing to spend just a few minutes thinking outside the check box. If a man's game begins with complexity and ends with a simple resolution, a good woman's game begins with simplicity and ends with sprawling, delightful complexity. It's the story of the big city girl who shows up in the country village, driving all those yokels to the brink of insanity (but in a good way, of course). It's the game that offers rewards not for fixing problems, but for making them.

Of course, we could wait for men to get wise enough to start making better games for women, but I have a better idea. Stand aside, Mister.