Games for Women

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Games for Women GirlsViolence in Games

• Foundations of Interactive Game DesignProf. Jim
  WhiteheadFebruary 29, 2008

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Help Sessions

• Game Maker
• Wednesdays, 6-8pm, Engineering 2, room 180
  (Simularium)
• Enter on the plaza level between E2 and JBE
• RPG Maker
• Wednesdays, 7 715pm, Engineering 2, room 280
• NEW Thursdays, 5-715pm, Engineering 2, room 215
• CS 20/C and XNA Game Studio Express
• Thursdays, 430 7pm
• Engineering 2, room 399 (third floor, by
  elevators)

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Course Reminders

• No class Monday, March 3
• Jim is attending a workshop
• On a cruise
• Final gamelog assignment
• Due next week on Wednesday, March 5
• Game of your choice
• Final game projects due in class Monday, March 10

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Gender Issues in Games
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WARNING
Generalizations Ahead!
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Saturday Night Live Chess Skit (1997)

• Chess for Girls!
• Example from
• Chess for Girls? Feminism and Computer
  GamesJustine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, in From
  Barbie to Mortal Kombat
• Boys do play more chess than girls
• Chess teaches important cognitive skills
• Should we be worried that girls dont play as
  often?
• US Chess Federation hosts an All-Girls National
  competition yearly, since 2003
• How can we make girls play chess?
• Point out the benefits?
• Bring it closer to something girls are familiar
  with, such as video?
• Change the context by setting up girls-only chess
  clubs?
• Approaches similar to those taken by game
  designers making games for girls and women

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E-GEMS Project

• Multi-year project in 1990s
• Run at the University of British Columbia
• Explicit goal to create educational math games
  for middle-school children (ages 9-14)

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E-GEMS Project

• Girls liked
• Puzzles
• Characters and story lines
• Games with worthwhile goals
• Challenge
• Creative activities
• Games with positive social interactions

• Boys liked
• Entertainment
• Fast action adventure games
• Violence
• Challenge

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Gender Use of Computers

• Boys tended to use computer game more than girls
• Girls give up their slots to the boys, even when
  slots are assigned
• Boys much more engaged in playing educational
  games
• Much more sharing of game knowledge, focus on
  getting through levels, progressing through game
• Girls enjoyed games, tended to savor experience
• Needed to have girls-only dedicated times to get
  their participation rates up, however
• Maria M. Klawe, Computer Games, Education, and
  Interfaces The E-GEMS Project in Graphics
  Interface 1999, p 36-39.

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Gender Game Technology

• E-GEMS project and research by Brenda Laurel
  agree
• Computer game consoles are viewed as a male
  technology
• Wii may break this stereotype, is first console
  to be marketed to women
• Computers are fairly gender neutral, with some
  bias towards being a male device

Military-style modding of XBox 360
Gender of PSN Users, Sony 2008
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Cell Phones

• Since their research, cell phones have emerged
• Clearly gender neutral
• If any bias, its probably towards women
• Cell phone as game platform unclear gendering
• Most people dont think about playing games on
  their phones, although this is changing
• Different genres of games
• An FPS on a cell phone vs. a casual game on a
  cell phone
• Can explore communication as a game mechanic

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Creating Games for Girls/Women

• Need to perform studies of your audience
• Do not assume you already know this audience
• Brenda Laurel discusses this in the assigned
  reading
• Created Rocketts New School and other Rockett
  games
• Has PhD in interactive drama, is world-class
  researcher in this space
• Extensive scientific literature survey
• Interviewed people in academia and industry
• Ran focus groups with adults who spend time with
  kids in play situations
• Biggest and most intensive part talking to kids
  and parents
• In-depth interviews with over a thousand children
• Correct skill set for this work is a sociology or
  anthropology background
• Test final game with target audience
• Must build time into your schedule for this

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Laurel Findings

• What girls hate about computer games (circa
  mid-90s)
• Hate to die and start over
• That is, like, way stupid and intolerable.
• Not interested in climbing steep learning curve
  just claim mastery of something
• Mastery for its own sake is not very good social
  currency for a girl,
• Demand an experiential path, and something has to
  happen right away
• Hate being stuck behind an obstacle or a puzzle
  that you must solve in order to move forward
• However, Klawe notes that girls do like puzzles
  and challenges
• Take home lesson is not to dumb down games for
  girls. Rather, ensure that players dont get
  stuck
• Not interested in beating the clock.
• Its just sort of orthogonal for them to the
  enjoyment of a puzzle or a game

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Need to Understand Play Patterns

• The industry has believed that girls dont like
  computer games, and when theyve tried on those
  few occasions to build computer games for girls,
  theyve assumed that the games are too hard, so
  their solution is to make the projectiles move
  more slowly. Its the computer game equivalent of
  pink legos. But theyre not understanding the
  play pattern here, so they havent asked the
  right question.
• The one huge thing that the game industry has
  missed is the tremendous attraction for girls
  ofcomplex characters and narratives and
  materials for narrative construction.
• Brenda Laurel, in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

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Examples of Successful Games for Girls

• Rocketts World
• Secret Paths in the Forest
• Barbie Fashion Designer
• Barbies Ocean Discovery

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Examples of Successful Games for Women

• Games today
• Sims series
• Lumines
• Tetris
• Dance Dance Revolution
• Second Life
• Cooking Mama
• Casual games

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Gender-Inclusive Games

• Instead of games for girls and games for
  boys, can we make games for people?
• Do not alienate your audience
• Hyper-sexualization of women
• Design with the expanded audience in mind
• Multiple ways of solving a problem
• Engaging story to make play worthwhile
• Options for both direct and indirect conflict

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Violence in Computer Games

• Issue with a long history
• Death Race (1976)
• Player drives over running gremlins. Rest of
  the world interpreted as running over real
  people.
• Stick figuregraphics not veryrealistic
• Only 1000 machinesever sold
• Stirred up protest
• We were really unhappy withthat game Death
  Race. WeAtari had an internal rulethat we
  wouldnt allow violenceagainst people. You could
  blowup a tank or you could blow upa flyer
  saucer, but you couldntblow up people. We felt
  that thatwas not good form- Nolan Bushnell

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Mortal Kombat
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Mortal Kombat

• Versus fighting game
• Arcade version, 1992
• Key innovation Fatalities
• A violent finishing move
• Pulling heart out of body, pulling out spine and
  skull
• Difficult to execute, signifier of game mastery
• Home versions made for SNES and Genesis
• SNES version sanitized to meet Nintendo standards
• Genesis version was true to arcade
• Genesis version outsold SNES version 3 to 1
• What lesson did this teach the industry?

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Congressional Hearings (1993)

• I was startled. It was very violent and, as you
  know, rewarded violence. And at the end, if you
  did really well, youd get to decide whether to
  decapitate ... how to kill the other guy, how to
  pull his head off. And there was all sorts of
  blood flying around.
• Then we started to look into it, and I forget how
  I heard about Night Trap. And I looked into that
  game, too, and there was a classic. It ends with
  this attack scene on this woman in lingerie, in
  her bathroom. I know that the creator of the game
  said it was all meant to be a satire of Dracula
  but nonetheless I thought it sent the wrong
  message.
• - Joseph Lieberman, United States Senate
• Lieberman researched issue
• Pre-Genesis data showed market was 7-12 year olds
• Actual data Average Sega user 22 yrs, only 5 lt
  13yrs
• Concerned about R rated content being sold to
  children
• Organized hearings

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Congressional Hearings (1993)

• Led directly to creation of first computer game
  rating system
• Announced immediately before hearings to diffuse
  situation
• Tone of testimony was overwhelmingly negative
• Main lesson to industry
• Avoid Congressional hearings at all costs
• Outcomes
• Industry wide computer game rating system adopted
• Night Trap sold out across the nation
• Sales of Mortal Kombat surged

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Counterpoint

• In general, children understand that its
  make-believe. Theres tons and tons of evidence
  that boys and girls get that this is make-believe
  violence. And theres also tons of evidence that
  says that boys and girls get equally upset as the
  violence becomes more realistic. If they see a
  character in a game get their head lopped off,
  well, its not real. Its two-dimensional. Its
  not gory. It doesnt smell. You cant touch it,
  you know? Kids in general think its funny.
  Parents dont get that distinction a lot of the
  times.
• - Lee McEnany Caraher (Sega) in From Barbie to
  Mortal Kombat
• As games have more realistic graphics, is this
  still true?

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Violence The Easy Conflict

• Why is there so much violence in computer games?
• Its an easy way to add engaging conflict
• Ties back to fight or flight instinct, very basic
• The original use for computers was to compute
  ballistics tables
• Determining where projectiles fly is the
  essential core of computing
• Hence, very easy to add this capability into
  games
• Our society likes violent entertainment
• Our favorite sport, Football, is a ritualized
  combat
• Violence on TV is broadly accepted
• That is, many people enjoy it