Girls Do(n’t) Play Games?: Re-visiting H.G. Wells Little Wars 106 Years Later

A long time ago, as a shy 12-year-old, I mustered up the courage to ask a boy if I could join his Dungeons and Dragons club. Games were too rough. Too tough. There was fighting. There were dragons. The dungeon master, who shall remain nameless here, told me by way of an intermediary, ‘No. Girls don’t play games.”

For years, I learned not to ask to join a games club again. Today, doing research on gender representation in tabletop gaming, I find the response, in some corners, is unchanged: “Girls…