Games for Women & Girls Violence in Games

Foundations of Interactive Game Design Prof. Jim Whitehead March 2, 2007

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

Game Maker/RPG Maker Help Sessions •

Friday, March 2: ‣ 5-7pm, Engineering 2, room 280, Game Maker



Monday, March 5: ‣ 5:30-8pm, Engineering 2, room 215, Game Maker ‣ 5-8pm, Engineering 2, room 280, RPG Maker



Tuesday, March 6: ‣ 5-8pm, Engineering 2, room 215, Game Maker ‣ 5-8pm, Engineering 2, room 280, RPG Maker



Details on the web



Final game projects due in class Wednesday, March 7

Computer Game Design Degree •

UC Santa Cruz has a four year degree program on computer game design ‣ Bachelor of Science in Computer Science: Computer Game Design ‣ A technically focused degree ‣ Year-long game design project in senior year



Informational session this Friday ‣ Learn about the content of the degree ‣ We are actively seeking students for this major ‣ Job opportunities in the field ‣ How to sign up ‣ Friday, March 2, 2-4pm ❖

Location: “Simularium”, Engineering 2, room 180

Saturday Night Live Chess Skit (1997) • •

http://www.vimeo.com/clip:29520 Brother and sister playing chess ‣ Boy soon moves to checkmate sister. ‣ Girl shouts, “This is stupid! Chess is a boy’s game!” and wrecks the board



Announcer: “Now there’s Chess for Girls!” ‣ Images of new chessboard: ❖

Chessboard filled with dolls with long hair



Girls brushing the hair of the queen



Girls prancing around with the knights, which are beautiful ponies



Pieces driving around in a minivan

‣ Brother is annoyed: “Hey, you can’t move like that!”



Example from: ‣ “Chess for Girls? Feminism and Computer Games” Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

Issues Raised by Skit • •

Boys do play more chess than girls Chess does teach useful skills ‣ Logical thinking, strategic planning, memory ‣ Girls aren’t enjoying the cognitive benefits of chess ❖



Should we be worried about this?

So, do we need a “chess for girls” movement? ‣ Actually, there is increasing focus on this ❖



US Chess Federation hosts an “All-Girls National” competition yearly, since 2003

How? ‣ Encourage girls by pointing out benefits? ‣ Modify chess to bring it closer to existing pursuits of girls (like video?) ‣ Change social context, setting up girls-only clubs that had the purpose of beating boys at their own game?



Approaches for bringing chess to girls are similar to those for creating computer games for girls and women

E-GEMS Project •

Multi-year project in 1990’s ‣ Explicit goal to create educational math games for middle-school children (ages 9-14)



Findings ‣ Boys liked: entertainment, fast action & adventure games, challenge, violence ‣ Girls liked: puzzles, characters and story lines, games with worthwhile goals, creative activities, challege, games with positive social interactions ‣ Boys tended to use computer game more than girls ❖

Even with assigned slots, girls often gave up their slots to the boys



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.

Gendering of 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 gendered device



Since their research, cell phones have emerged ‣ Clearly gender neutral ‣ Cell phone as game platform: unclear gendering ❖

Most people don’t think about games on their cell phone, though this is changing

Military-style modding of XBox 360

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 Rockett’s 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

Laurel: Findings •

What girls hate about computer games (circa mid-90’s) ‣ 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 don’t get stuck

‣ Not interested in beating the clock. ❖

“It’s just sort of orthogonal for them to the enjoyment of a puzzle or a game”

Need to Understand Play Patterns The industry has believed that girls don’t like computer games, and when they’ve tried on those few occasions to build computer games for girls, they’ve assumed that the games are too hard, so their solution is to make the projectiles move more slowly. It’s the computer game equivalent of pink legos. But they’re not understanding the play pattern here, so they haven’t asked the right question. The one huge thing that the game industry has missed in the tremendous attraction for girls of complex characters and narratives and materials for narrative construction. Brenda Laurel, in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

Examples of Successful Games for Girls •

Show color plates in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat ‣ Rockett’s World ‣ Secret Paths in the Forest ‣ Barbie Fashion Designer ‣ Barbie’s Ocean Discovery



Games today: ‣ Sims series ‣ Lumines ‣ Tetris ‣ Dance Dance Revolution ‣ Second Life ‣ “Casual games” sites ‣ others?

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 figure graphics not very realistic



Only ~1000 machines ever sold



Stirred up protest

“We were really unhappy with that game [Death Race]. We [Atari] had an internal rule that we wouldn’t allow violence against people. You could blow up a tank or you could blow up a flyer saucer, but you couldn’t blow up people. We felt that that was not good form” - Nolan Bushnell

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?

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, you’d 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% < 13yrs

‣ Concerned about R rated content being sold to children ‣ Organized hearings

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

Counterpoint In general, children understand that it’s make-believe. There’s tons and tons of evidence that boys and girls get that this is make-believe violence. And there’s 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, it’s not real. It’s two-dimensional. It’s not gory. It doesn’t smell. You can’t touch it, you know? Kids in general think it’s funny. Parents don’t get that distinction a lot of the times. - Lee McEnany Caraher (Sega) in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat



As games has more realistic graphics, is this still true?

Violence: The Easy Conflict • Why is there so much violence in computer games? • It’s 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