Sesame Street Gang

This year will mark the 40th anniversary of everyone's favourite kids' TV show, Sesame Street. In lead up, Mark Medley of the National Post is doing a series of stories on all things Sesame (which is also where the above image comes from), including an interview with the author of a new book exploring the history of the series, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis. The interview (and likely the book as well), is full of gems such as:

National Post: Why is the death of Jim Henson still a cultural watershed moment?

Michael Davis: I think it was the shock factor. It came on a day when it was just so unexpected. Here was a man who was in the prime of his life, the peak of his creative powers, and he had this wonderful pied piper aspect to him. He seemed so wizardly and so approachable. People really felt like they knew him. Which is kind of funny because the man, when you look at him in total, was sort of enigmatic. But his persona was so vivid that people thought they knew him, and they felt close to him. They felt like he was in a way an extension of Kermit and vice-versa. I’ve spoken to people over the last five years..who break down in tears talking about him, and how much they miss him, and what the effect has been from his absence....When you look at the videotape of the memorial service, I think what’s most striking, beyond the star-watching, which is kind of fun, but just the folks who showed up with their children and plopped down on the floor of the cathedral and filled its every corner. That is what’s most moving about watching that tape, and I’ve watched it many, many, many times, and everytime I saw something different.

Medley has also written a wonderful article about the anniversary itself, Look who's 40!, which includes some great stories and recollections from longtime Sesame puppeteer Stephanie D'Abruzzo. You can also link back to the paper's previous post listing The Top 8 Most Underrated Muppets, part of an ongoing series called "Puppet Watch" that Medley also contributes to.

In other Muppet (related) news....(courtesy of Gamasutra)

Last month, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and EA's Spore were each recognized with Jim Henson Honors, a program "founded to recognize people and products that represent the values of the acclaimed Muppets creator." The highest honor, the Jim Henson Celebration Honor, was awarded to Miyamoto, for both his previous creations and his more recent innovations such as Wii Fit. As the Jim Henson Company press release describes:

As the creator of some of the world’s best-known video games such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and the Zelda series (which have collectively sold more than 350 million copies), and the person who ultimately oversees every Nintendo game, Shigeru Miyamoto has reignited America’s love for gaming with the creation of Nintendo’s hugely popular Wii console. Taking the application of video games a giant step forward, Miyamoto recently developed the Wii Fit, dedicated to improving people’s physical health and well being. The game not only serves to entertain and give players a workout, it is also being used as a rehabilitation tool – known as “Wii-hab” - by physical and occupational therapists to help patients with balance, endurance and core strengthening.

The other big winner was EA's Spore, which was awarded The Jim Henson Technology Honor for demonstrating ground-breaking technology in a creative way. Here's the description from the press release:

Spore, the popular video game created in 2008 by celebrated game designer Will Wright and EA gives gamers their own personal universe in a box where players build their own galaxy from scratch. The game is meticulously conceived and executed with infinite detail, allowing a gamer to design and create his own character – a digital alter ego - providing for an unprecedented level of user creativity as his being evolves from a single-cell organism to a galactic god over hundreds of millions of years.

Awards were also given to The Center for Puppetry Arts Distance Learning Center, and guerilla street artist Shepard Fairey (the guy who did that famous portrait of Barack Obama). Included in the press release (and in most of the surrounding news coverage) are statements from Jim Henson's children -- and co-CEOs of the newly reconstituted Jim Henson Company, Brian and Lisa Henson -- who had this to say about this year's recipients.

“The recipients of this year’s Jim Henson Honors demonstrate true creativity and commitment to innovation. They have raised the bar in their respective fields, from Shigeru Miyamoto’s ground-breaking work fusing entertainment and technology at Nintendo, to the Center for Puppetry Arts’ dedication to enriching lives through arts education, this year’s honorees, who so strongly reflect the traditions of The Jim Henson Company.” - Brian Henson

“Each of this year’s recipients inspired us in different ways. In addition to Shigeru Miyamoto and the Center for Puppetry Arts, we also honor the visual brilliance and topicality of street artist Shepard Fairey, who tapped into a generation’s profound desire for change, and the incredibly imaginative and provocative world of Spore. Varied and vast in terms of their impact, this year’s four honorees are true models of originality, innovation and ingenuity. It is a privilege to honor their outstanding work.” - Lisa Henson

Talk about building a lasting legacy!! I just love seeing all my favourite things/people/media forms come together like this :)

Did Family-Friendly Games "Dominate" in 2008?

Coverage of the newest NPD press release on 2008 videogame sales has been circulating this week, in which the market research firm makes the claim that family-friendly games dominated the market in 2008. For example, Kidscreen's Emily Claire Afan writes:

With computer and video game industry hardware, software and peripheral sales hitting a whopping US$22 billion in 2008 - and entertainment software sales responsible for US$11.7 billion of that - the Entertainment Software Association and researcher The NPD Group has also found family-friendly titles topping the market.

Games with an E10+ and lower rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board accounted for more than half of all sales, according to NPD data, with 45.3% of games rated E and 12.1% rated E10+. The family entertainment category rang in as the most popular game genre with more than 19% of all sales.

The US$22 billion figure is a 22.9% increase over the previous year and the NPD found that December 2008 sales set a new record, with industry revenue broke the US$5 billion mark (US$5.3) for the first time in any single month. Industry analyst Anita Frazier says that there's been an increase of sales by a select group of titles - the top 20 games account for 15% of total unit sales, whereas in 2006, it accounted for only 9%.

On the console software side in 2008, total US reached US$8.9 billion (189 million units), PC game sales broke US$701.4 million (29.1 million units) and portable software beat last year's record sales with US$2.1 billion (79.5 million units) in revenue. Overall, approximately 297.6 million computer and video games were sold at retail last year.

The press release doesn't appear to provide a listing of the games themselves, so I did a bit of digging to find out if "family-friendly" simply meant rated "E" (e.g. most sports games are rated "E", but aren't necessarily targeted to kids and families). I found the following list at Nintendo World Report, which certainly does reflect NPD's claim, particularly if you count the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games...which I would definitely include in the "family-friendly" category despite their "T" rating (a rating earned primarily because of the song lyrics, of all things):

Nintendo World's 2008 Top Ten U.S. Software Sales (by Revenue)

1. Wii Fit (Wii) Rated "E"
2. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii) Rated "T"
3. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) Rated "E"
4. Call of Duty: World at War (X360) Rated "M"
5. Mario Kart (Wii) Rated "E"
6. Gears of War 2 (X360) Rated "M"
7. Rock Band 2 (X360) Rated "T"
8. Left 4 Dead (X360) Rated "M"
9. Call of Duty: World at War (PS3) Rated "M"
10. Rock Band 2 (Wii) Rated "T"

The figures change somewhat when total software sales (not just revenue earned) are taken into consideration, and when titles are counted across systems (as opposed to broken up as in the list above). According to GamesIndustry, the US sales for game software in 2008 looked more like this (below), but as you can see, although "family-friendly" Wii titles still make up the top 3 best selling, the list is now predominated by "M"-rated blockbuster hits like GTA as well:

1. Wii Play (Nintendo, Wii), Rated "E" = $5.28 million
2. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo, Wii), Rated "E" = $5.00 million
3. Wii Fit (Nintendo, Wii), Rated "E" = $4.53 million
4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Nintendo, Wii), Rated "T" = $4.17 million
5. Grand Theft Auto IV (Take-Two, Xbox 360), Rated "M" = $3.29 million
6. Call of Duty: World at War (Activision, Xbox 360), Rated "M" = $2.75 million
7. Gears of War 2 (Microsoft, Xbox 360), Rated "M" = $2.31 million
8. Grand Theft Auto IV (Take-Two, PS3), Rated "M" = $1.89 million
9. Madden NFL 09 (EA, Xbox 360), Rated "E" = $1.87 million [**though I'm not convinced that this game is really for kids or families, I'll count it anyway]
10. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo, NDS), Rated "E" = $1.65 million

Both sources have the same list for the top software sales in December 2008, which leads me to believe that their initial figures were probably the same as well, before they were reinterpreted to reflect "revenue earned" by each individual (and platform-specific) title. Here's the December list, FYI:

December 2008 U.S. Top 20 Software Sales
1. Wii Play (Wii) (1.46m units): Rated "E"
2. Call of Duty: World at War (X360) (1.33m): Rated "M"
3. Wii Fit (Wii) (999k): Rated "E"
4. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) (878k): Rated "E"
5. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii) (859k): Rated "T"
6. Gears of War 2 (X360) (745k): Rated "M"
7. Left 4 Dead (X360) (629k): Rated "M"
8. Mario Kart DS (DS) (540k): Rated "E"
9. Call of Duty: World at War (PS3) (533k): Rated "M"
10. Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii) (497k): Rated "E"
11. Wii Music (Wii) (487k): Rated "E"
12. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) (255k-487k): Rated "E"
13. Personal Trainer: Cooking (DS) (255k-487k): Rated "E"
14. Fallout 3 (X360) (255k-487k): Rated "M"
15. Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force (DS) (255k-487k): Rated "E"
16. Link's Crossbow Training (Wii) (255k-487k): Rated "T"
17. Guitar Hero: World Tour (PS2) (255k-487k): Rated "T"
18. Madden NFL 09 (X360) (255k-487k): Rated "E" [**Is football really less violent than Crossbow Training?]
19. Call of Duty: World at War (Wii) (255k-487k): Rated "M"
20. Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip (Wii) (255k-487k): Rated "E10+"

So what does this all mean? While NPD is certainly correct in its claim that a lot of the top-selling titles in 2008 were games targeted to/designed for children and families -- thanks in no small part to Nintendo! -- I would hesitate to say that these titles "dominated" the market - which is still surprisingly evenly split between family-friendly games like Wii Play and Mario Kart on one side, and very mature titles like Call of Duty: World at War and Gears of War 2 on the other. It seems that as long as the videogames market (and culture!) is maligned by the media and politicians by its more violent, adult-themed offerings, the industry will continue to put all the emphasis on its E-rated successes to prove its cultural worthiness. But what I see here is an extremely diversified market, hitting all age groups and genres, with a noticeable tendency to cluster around its own extremes. Just try putting that in a headline or sound bite, though.

Guest Post on IP Osgoode

Check out my guest post over at IP Osgoode (the Osgoode Hall Law School blog), where I argue that UGC games such as Little Big Planet are opening up virtual IP issues and debates to the mainstream gamer market. Here's an excerpt:

Digital games have evolved considerably in recent years, but from an IP perspective, one of the most interesting and significant shifts has been the introduction of user-generated content (UGC) into corporately-owned digital games and virtual worlds. Early evidence of the legal implications of UGC (also referred to as “user created” and “user contributed” content) first emerged in the form of a debate about ongoing (and as yet unresolved) conflicts between game operators and game players over who could legally (and ethically) claim ownership over virtual items and characters (avatars) produced by players within massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). While this debate and the questions it raised attracted a lot of interest from legal scholars and academics (see, for example, Terra Nova’s “Virtual Law Bibliography”), the conflicts themselves really only directly impacted the small proportion of gamers who both played MMOGs and engaged in virtual item exchange.

Today, however, tools for social networking and collaborative cultural production are being integrated into a much wider diversity of titles and game genres, and UGC is quickly spreading from niche markets made up of MMOG players and hobbyist programmers into “mainstream” markets as well. In some cases, even “casual players” can now produce and distribute their own game content. Accordingly, questions and concerns about IP rights and the legal status of UGC, as well as how players‘ rights will be articulated and protected within predominantly corporately-defined virtual game environments, are attaining a much broader relevance - both within the entertainment software industry and among the increasingly large segment of the population that plays digital games.

You can read the whole post here. Thanks again to Rex Shoyama for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this excellent new resource on all things IP and technology.

Crayon Physics, Dangerous High School Girls, and the World of Goo

Those of you interested in awesome, innovative, independent and kid-friendly games will want to check out Jordan Deam's (of The Escapist) recent review of Petri Purho's Crayon Physics. The game was the grand prize winner of last year's (2008) Independent Games Festival and is a mind-blowingly cool puzzle game that lets you draw in your own solutions...crayon-style. Here's an excerpt from Deam's review:

Crayon Physics is part physics engine, part MS Paint: Every object you draw behaves (more or less) according to Newton's laws of motion. Like so many of the best indie game designers of the last few years, Purho takes this simple concept and develops it into a thought-provoking, charming and completely unique experience.

Crayon Physics' "story mode," consisting of 76 individual puzzles created by Purho, introduces you to the game's core mechanics. The objective is always the same: Guide a red ball into a yellow star through whatever means you can dream up. The game slowly ramps up the difficulty by introducing new construction elements to the equation - you start out drawing basic ramps and platforms, but it won't be long before you're building horrendously complex networks of levers and pulleys to carry your payload across the field.

You can also design your own levels, using the same tools that Purho used to construct the original 76 puzzles, and upload your creations to an online UGC community, the Crayon Physics Playground. The game sounds a lot like the next (though smaller) Little Big Planet - Deam makes the comparison in his review, and the game's description seems to follow the LBP formula of sandbox + UGC + puzzles + cuteness.

The independent games market is really heating up, and producing some absolutely wonderful and unbelievably sophisticated new titles. From DigiPen's Narbacular Drop (the inspiration of last year's dark horse Portal), to Jenova Chen's deeply influential fl0w, to the PixelJunk titles and the plethora of new independent titles coming available via WiiWare, Xbox Live Community Games, Steam and other channels, a growing number of the most highly revered and innovative games out there have been independently designed and/or produced (or inspired by an indy game).

For instance, I just finished playing yet another big indy hit that came out in 2008 (also an Independent Game Festival winner) World of Goo (downloaded via WiiWare) -- a unique, challenging yet intuitive game that allows for casual play, creative problem-solving and fun with physics, all within the very stretchy confines of an appealing game environment populated by tiny adorable gobs of Goo. The game has been getting rave reviews since it first previewed at last year's Nintendo Media Summit, and ends with a not-so-subtle hint of a sequel.

Another example is Mousechief's Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, a PC game/digital board game/interactive "choose-your-own-adventure" style story that was initially launched last year. Since then, the game has been revamped, and its creator Keith Nemitz has been nominated in the second annual Writers Guild of America awards for games. You can find out more about the game over at Leigh Alexander's SexyVideogameLand, which has been following Dangerous High School Girls... since it first came out (it's also where I first found out about it). The game skews a bit older than Crayon Physics or World of Goo (it's rated Teen by the TIGRS, but in a very tongue-in-cheek, funny, cute and subversive way.

Yay for indy game developers, and yay for enabling emerging designers to share their creations with the rest of the world. And yay for free demos, which you can download following these links:
World of Goo (Available for PC and Mac)
Crayon Physics Deluxe (Available on PC only, unfortunately)
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble (Available for PC and Mac)

CN's Fusion Fall Launches

The kid's media blogosphere is all abuzz this week with news and previews of the newly (finally) launched Fusion Fall -- a big, branded MMOG for kids (and cartoon fans) centered around popular Cartoon Network media brands/characters. For example, as Izzy Neis writes,

Well, ladies & gents, the time has finally come for CN briiiiziiiiliant minds to release their much anticipated MMO of ginormity. And ya know what? Gorgeous.

I was lucky enough to sneak several peeks in the past, but didn’t feel right spilling any beans.

I do have a lot to say about this monster of a project (and it’s good), but I encourage you to go check it out for yourself first. Carve out a bit of time, because the tutorial & the registration take more than the average 2 minutes, and I would recommend spending the time watching the videos that promo along the way.

The game itself will retail at around $20, with a $5.94/month subscription fee. A free version is also (currently) available through the Fusion Fall website, where players can create an avatar and at least start completing quests and collecting items. Players create their own custom avatar - a manga-style human child, in keeping with the design of the Fusion Fall MMOG environment. Through gameplay and cut scenes, players encounter various characters from popular CN television shows - Ben 10 Alien Force, Dexter's Laboratory, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, The Powerpuff Girls, Kids Next Door and Samurai Jack (with more to come later on). While some of the characters are voiced by the original TV show talent, all the characters have been redesigned to fit the game's manga/anime aesthetic. The overall objective is to help the CN characters save the world from "Fuse", an evil alien force that invades through appropriation, fusing itself to planets and living things, transforming landscapes into toxic landfills, and producing evil doppelgangers of their inhabitants. Players team up with both other players and NPC characters to complete missions, which includes building a personal army of "Nanos" - miniature versions of CN characters that are "rescued" by defeating the evil doppelgangers.

One of the first things I noticed about the game was the interesting, intertextual and subtly reflexive way it plays with the idea of different versions of the same character. For example, in the first level of the game, Buttercup (of the Powerpuff Girls) sends you on a mission to save Dexter from "Fusion Buttercup" (the evil, Fuse doppelganger) who you then transform into Nano Buttercup (by defeating her), who then becomes your ally. This fluidity and intertextuality both refers to the way that children experience media branded characters in their own lives -- as television characters, as many different incarnations of toys, as videogame avatars, and as the endless variations thereof the children themselves produce during imaginative play.

But the originality of the characters is soon overshadowed by the clunky game design. My first hour of play was plagued by server overcrowding, a bug that made it impossible to finish a specific quest, and full on browser crashes that repeatedly wiped out all of my progress in a particular level. This is likely more prevalent in the online free version than in the full-fledged software + subscription version that the free site promotes, but if CN wants to attract long-term subscribers, the trial version is going to have to run a lot smoother than it does right now. On the other hand, kids have been waiting so long for this game that it might not matter so much in the short term. Not to mention the fact that since so many of the other MMOGs for kids already on the market are similarly full of bugs and clunky-ness (I'm still looking at YOU Pirates of the Caribbean Online), the standards (and player expectations) among this demographic might not be all that high. According to Emily Claire Afan over at Kidscreen, more than 2.5 million accounts were created during the beta stage -- so at least we'll have a yardstick to measure its popularity against now that the game is live and running.

The (software + subscription version) game is being heavily promoted as a safe haven, family friendly space. I'll have to find out more about the safety features, but the game does incorporate a pretty limited pre-selected chat system. It also offers a family plan of four connected accounts for US$9.95 per month, through which I imagine players in the same household can chat more freely.

More to come once I have a chance to play the full version and compare, or at least find some good coverage and/or more detailed reviews. Unfortunately, I'm too far along in the dissertation writing to include this in my PhD research, but it might be an interesting example of the next generation of MMOGs for kids...if not an example of "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Lost Leisure Time

A new study by Harris Interactive has revealed that the average amount of leisure time enjoyed in the US took a dive in 2008, plummeting by 20% to hit a low of 16 hours per week. This contrasts to 20 hours/week in 2007, and to the whopping 26 hours/week Americans claimed back in 1973 when tracking first began. Here's the excerpt:

In a seemingly paradoxical situation, the research shows that Americans increased their work week one hour, yet claim to have lost four hours of leisure time. Harris conjectures that this “grey area” can be explained because the extra time is time spent “just checking in” via computer or wireless devices.

“While our respondents didn’t consider this as time spent working, they also didn’t count it as leisure time,” Harris said.

Also, as leisure time shrinks, Americans appear to be indulging more in solo activities, Harris found. Four of this year’s top five choices are typically done alone: reading, watching TV, exercising, and computer activities. Reading [up 1 point], watching TV [up 6 points] and exercising [up 3 points] all increased this year, while computer activities dropped 2 points. Though this may again seem counterintuitive, Harris said this can possibly be explained by the theory that Americans are spending just as much or more time on computer activities, yet are considering this time as neither work nor leisure.

Some additional findings of interest include:

* Spending time with family and kids is up 3 points from last year, and 5 points since 1995.

* There are some interesting changes in people's exercise patterns since 1995, including spending more leisure time exercising ( which is up 6 points since 1996) but less time swimming (which is down 5 points).

* In terms of "favorite" leisure activities, 30% list reading (up from 29% in 2007), 24% say it is TV watching and 17% say it is spending time with family and kids (up from 14% in 2007). 8% list exercise (8%) as their favorite leisure activity, while 7% list computer activities and 7% list fishing.

* The median amount of time spent working is now at 46 hours per week, a figure that includes non-traditional labour such as housekeeping and studying. This is up from 45 hours in 2007 and 41 hours a week back in 1973. However, because it's a median and because it includes Americans of all ages (including retirees, and I would assume children) 46 hours is actually an underestimate for most working adults. Americans in all three "worker" demographics on average clock in more than 50 hours a week:
- Generation Xers (those aged 32-43) currently work 55 hours each week.
- "Echo Boomers" (or Gen Y or Millenials, aged 18-31) put in 50 hours each week.
- Baby Boomers (aged 44-62) continue to work an average 50 hours a week.

I'm very happy to see that exercise and spending time with family and kids is on the rise, but the overall trend of less and less time for leisure (compounded with the average 50+ hour work week), while surely at least in part a reflection of the recent economic downturn, is also really too bad. I'm also intrigued by this concept of "just checking in", which I know takes up a huge amount of my time...but I have no problem whatsoever identifying it as labour. The idea that Americans are expressing a need for a third category between work and leisure is also fascinating. More evidence of the slippage between work and play?

Pink Aisle Politics

Interesting story out of the UK this past weekend, about the pervasiveness of colour-coding within children's - and particularly girls' - culture. As reported by Sarah Harris in the Mail Online, Sue Palmer - educator and author of Toxic Childhood, is trying to raise awareness about the massive gender segregation that continues to occur within toy aisles and children's product design. Calling it a "pink plague", Palmer and other child experts question the hyper-feminine ideals that underlie girls' toys and consumer goods...from lip-glosses to princess dresses, to pencil cases emblazoned with the Playboy logo (yikes!). Looks like a much-needed attempt to revive an old, but still extremely pertinent, issue. Here's an excerpt:

Stores have been accused of pandering to stereotypes by making girls' products almost exclusively pink. Experts claim a 'pink plague' on the High Street is deliberately widening the gap between the sexes by putting undue pressure on youngsters to conform to traditional roles. Many are becoming 'hooked on the girl colour' from a young age and are being duped into buying products that encourage them to grow up too quickly, such as lip-glosses and Playboy pencil cases.

As a result, young girls are discouraged from thinking for themselves or rebelling against the 'princess role', according to Sue Palmer, a literacy consultant and author of Toxic Childhood. She said the marketing drive to force the colour on girls has been so successful that speech therapists in Durham report that children can easily identify the colour blue, but say 'Barbie' when shown something pink.

'I'm worried about the "pink plague",' she said. 'You can't find girls past the age of three who aren't obsessed with the colour.

'It's just so insidious and it shows how commercial forces can get under their skin even by that age. You can't seem to get anything that's not pink for girls, whether it's clothes, books or toys.

'To me, the real danger is the extent to which marketers influence and infiltrate young children's minds. They have managed to infiltrate playground culture where peer pressure is so strong.'

Harris also describes that a "fierce debate" about the role of "pink" within girls' culture is currently unfolding on parenting websites such as Mumsnet (see here for example).

The article goes on to describe that the association of pink with girls is a fairly new (post-WWII) phenomenon - as a shade of red, pink was historically considered to be a "masculine" colour. On the other hand, a recent study conducted out of Newcastle University found that girls and women from various cultures around the world demonstrate a shared preference for reds, which extends to pink and reddish blues. Meanwhile, the universal favourite colour is apparently blue. Not that I promote biological determinism, but even if girls do have some sort of natural affinity for pink (I know I always have), that hardly excuses the children's industries' decision to consistently limit girls' culture to a pink monotone. The lack of variation (lack of alternatives, lack of diversity, lack of colour!!!) alone is a valid reason for concern about the state of girls' commercial culture.

The story also reminds me of The Pink & Blue Project by JeongMee Yoon. Her pictures are pretty consistent with Palmer's argument that the pervasiveness of pink within girls' culture extends far beyond the toy aisle, becoming such an ingrained part of children's lives that it becomes impossible to believe that this isn't a commercially-induced phenomenon.

CFP: Youth Studies Conference in Ireland

Happy New Year! Looking forward to all the exciting events and opportunities coming up in 2009, I thought that some of you might be interested in the following CFP for an upcoming conference on young people and media markets, which will be held in Maynooth, Ireland this summer. Here are the details:

"All Change for Young People"? Mobility, Markets, Media, Models of Practice

An international youth studies conference at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM)

Thursday 25th - Sunday 28th June, 2009

hosted by the Department of Applied Social Studies, NUIM

in association with the Research Committee on Youth of the International Sociological Association ( RC34 )

and

Youth Studies Ireland

Contributions are invited on all of the conference’s sub-themes (mobility, markets, media, models of practice) as they relate to young people. Diversity of cultural, disciplinary and professional perspectives is welcome, as are approaches which interrogate the key terms and concepts. Contributions which make links between theory, research, policy and practice are particularly welcome.

Deadline for submission of abstracts (no more than 200 words): 27th February, 2009

A conference website will be available shortly.

In the meantime for further information contact: maurice.devlin@nuim.ie

Gamine Expedition on Holiday

As some of you have likely already noticed, I'm taking a short break from blogging over the Christmas holidays.

Gamine Expedition will return at the end of the month!

Merry Christmas!!

Sara

Sprout Promotes TV as Sleep Aid

Hoping to fuel their own new Christmas tradition, PBS Kids Sprout -- the much debated 24 hr television network for toddlers and preschoolers -- will be airing an 11 hour long "Snooze-A-Thon" this Christmas Eve, aimed at building brand loyalty among toddlers, though the network is calling it "helping kids fall asleep" on that most exciting of nights. Here's the description from the press release:

From 6:00 p.m. ET on December 24 straight through to 5:00 a.m. ET Christmas morning, Sprout will air the "Snooze-A-Thon," an 11-hour, uninterrupted block showcasing popular nighttime host Nina and her puppet sidekick Star from The Good Night Show snoozing comfortably on the set, along with clips of beloved characters from preschool favorites like Sesame Street, Dragon Tales, The Hoobs, Pingu and Berenstain Bears catching some zzz's. So, no matter what time of night the kids are up checking for the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof, parents can tune into Sprout to show them that even their favorite television friends are fast asleep waiting for Santa to arrive.

Sure it sounds cute and all, but the idea of actually encouraging parents and kids to use television as a sleep aid (one that also just so happens to prolong kids' exposure to some of the most heavily commercialized brands in their cultural environment) seems irresponsible. Especially considering all the research that's come out showing that kids with TVs in their bedroom aren't getting a sufficient amount of sleep at night.

I'm thinking in particular of research conducted over the past few years for the Kaiser Family Foundation. For example, in 2003, Rideout et al. found that 26% of toddlers (under 2 years) and 43% of 4-to-6 year olds had a television in their bedroom. This study was followed up more recently by a review conducted by Frederick J. Zimmerman, who looked at studies linking heavy media use to sleep deprivation among children and teens. As Zimmerman writes:

Concern about media use and sleep in children dates at least to the 1970’s, and probably much before. A 1981 study of middle-class children in Indiana found a significant association between TV viewing and both shorter daytime naps and shorter nighttime sleep among toddlers. Such results have been replicated subsequently and seem to have grown stronger with time. Three recent studies of elementary-school children found that the amount of television viewed per day is significantly associated with lower total sleep time and with a general measure of sleep disturbance.

An equally strong predictor in one study was bedtime viewing, but the strongest predictor was having a television in the child’s room. The fact that a TV in the bedroom was significantly associated with sleep problems, even controlling for parentally reported total viewing time, raises the possibility that having a TV in the bedroom makes it possible for children to watch before bedtime without the parents’ knowledge. Sleep quality has also been related to media viewing. A recent study of infants and toddlers found that the amount of television viewing is associated with both irregular naptimes and irregular bedtimes.

These findings have been supported by a variety of sleep experts and pediatrician studies, including this one and this one.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that children in general are not getting as much sleep as they used to. As Zimmerman describes:

Recent research in the United States suggests that most children do not regularly get an amount or quality of sleep that would ensure optimal development and health. A 1981 study of children ages 1–5 in the U.S. identified average total sleep times of 11.5–13.5 hours. Twentyfive years later, a 2005 study of a similar sample of 1–5-year-old children identified average total sleep times of 9.5-11 hours. [...] Yet another recent study found that children ages 1–5 sleep an average of 8.7 hours per night. While the amount of sleep that would be judged adequate for this age range is unclear, it is almost certain to be more than the reported amount in this study.

In addition, it's estimated that between 20 and 30% of young children have some type of "sleep problem". This has lead some analysts to wonder if the relationship between media use and lack of sleep is really all that causal, or if it is perhaps correlational...i.e. kids who can't sleep end up using more media. But even with this added wrinkle (which reproduces the same argument that is eventually launched against any media effects research), there is absolutely nothing to suggest that media use in any way helps kids fall asleep.

Of course, empirical research doesn't always (or usually) have all that much influence on cultural practice when it comes to families and media use, and it seems to be no different here. According to Rideout et al.'s 2006 Media in the Family report, 30% of parents who put a television in their child's bedroom did so because they believe it "helped them sleep". Rideout et al. write:

Most parents don’t put their children to sleep to the TV (67% don’t have a TV in their child’s bedroom, and of those who do, 40% say they "never" put their child to bed with the TV on). However, as noted above, sleep crops up several times in the survey as among the reasons that many parents decide to put a TV in a small child’s room. Among parents with a TV in their child’s bedroom, three in ten (30%) say one reason they put a TV there is that it helps their child fall asleep, and about two in ten (19%) say they did it to try to get the child to sleep in his or her own room (instead of in the parent’s room). Among children with a TV in their bedroom, 37% (or 12% of all children) go to bed with the TV on half the time or more.

Parents also tend to see TV as having a generally calming influence on their children. In the same 2006 report, Rideout et al. describe:

Just over half (53%) of parents say that TV tends to calm their child down, while only about one in six (17%) say that TV gets their child excited. The rest of parents either say: TV calms and excites their child equally (9%); it depends on what the child is watching (8%) or on the child’s mood or time of day (3%); or they don’t know (10%). Television’s effect on children does not vary reliably with the child’s age or gender. Children who watch mostly entertainment shows are more likely to be calmed by TV than are those who watch mostly educational shows (72% vs. 50%).

This is likely part of what supports the idea that some parents have about TV helping their kids fall asleep. On the other hand, is "calming" the same as sleepy? Research would suggest not.

Another big issue here is the question of whether or not these findings are consistent across age groups. There are various and quite significant differences between children depending on age, maturity level, habitus, etc., both in terms of how media impacts them, how well they understand the content, and how media consumption makes them feel. And Zimmerman has found that although TV can be relaxing for "children of preschool age and older," it is quite possible that this is not the case for toddlers. Differences in cognitive processes between age groups, as well as the lack of research into toddlers' responses, are both good reasons to use caution when making generalizations on this issue.

This is also true of "television programs that have been specifically created to calm children down and help them fall asleep, and are promoted to parents as such." Just like the Baby Einstein scandal, where it was eventually uncovered that there was NO research or evidence to support the company's claim that their products assisted children's development...a fact made all the more troubling when contrasted with the growing amount of research demonstrating that media exposure can actually have various harmful effects on toddlers and babies...there is no research to suggest that "calming" shows are more or less effective than other shows among this particular age group. I agree with Zimmerman's conclusion that "More research is required to assess the effects of different types of content on children’s relaxation and alertness at different ages."

Job Posting at the University of Sheffield

I've fallen upon an extremely enticing job posting for a research associate at the University of Sheffield's School of Education. Not only will the successful candidate get to work on a project called "Children's Playground Games and Songs in the Age of New Media" (how awesome is that!?!), but they'll get to work with Jackie Marsh (!)...an amazing (and very friendly) kids' media scholar who researches kids' virtual worlds, games, new media and other forms of pop culture (find out more about her work via her blog Digital Beginnings). Here's the job posting description in full:

Job Title: Research Associate (Part-time, Fixed-term)
Department: School of Education: "Children's Playground Games and Songs in the Age of New Media"

Ref No: R06924

Closing Date: 5th January, 2009

Summary: The postholder will conduct ethnographic research to study how the oral traditions of playground games relate to children's media cultures. Applicants should have a higher degree, preferably a doctorate, in a relevant field (e.g. Media/Cultural Studies, Education, Sociology), with a research-training component. Experience of social research in the field of childhood, fieldwork with young people, and the qualitative analysis of data is also essential. The post is funded by the AHRC as part of the 'Beyond Text' programme and is tenable from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2011, working on a part-time basis of 17.5 hours per week.

Kids Gaming for Good

A number of studies have come out over the past couple of years supporting the idea that children are not only highly empathetic, but also capable of incredible altruism and environmental consciousness as well. For example, as Afan wrote in a Kidscreen article back in September:

Altruistic impulses seem to be on the rise with kids, according to a recent study from Stamford, Connecticut's Just Kid Inc. The company's research team found that a full 90% of US kids believe helping others is important, and 21% of the sample group said they would purchase products that donate a portion of profits to a good cause.

Thinking about how much of kids' everyday lives are filled with discussions and lessons about sharing and cooperation, it's hard to reconcile how it is that kids' culture (in the post Sesame Street/Yo Gabba Gabba years anyway) can be so utterly devoid of these very traits. For the most part, the emphasis is on individualism and accumulation...qualities conducive to consumer socialization, rather than community service or charity. When empathy and affect are included, it's usually mobilized to create stronger links between kids and branded characters/toys, and used to nurture brand loyalty and stimulate repeat purchases rather than make any real connections between kids' capacity for caring and the people and things that might really need/deserve it.

Within virtual worlds, however, this trend appears to be shifting in a significant way. Although the vast majority still contain a heavy emphasis on market exchange, accumulation, and producing "subjectivities of consumption" (Pybus, 2007), this emphasis is offset and possibly even contradicted by an influx of features that allow kids to transform their participation in online gaming communities into real-world philanthropy. I don't know what it is about virtual worlds...perhaps it's the built-in "community" dimension, or perhaps it's the unprecedented access to kids' thoughts and opinions that's spurring it on...but more and more kids' virtual worlds and MMOGs are incorporating opportunities to do good, give back and help others. And kids appear to be responding in a big way.

Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:

Club Penguin
For the second year in a row, Club Penguin is donating $1 million to three different charities, and letting its players decide how the money is allocated by donating their own virtual coins to their cause of choice (well, their favourite of the three). The Coins for Change campaign was a massive success last year - according to the Club Penguin website: "More than 2.5 million children donated in excess of 2 billion virtual coins they earned playing games on Club Penguin to support the environment, children's health or children in developing countries." This year the program will run from December 12-22, and given the amount of hype around it, should draw in even higher levels of participation.

Shining Stars
Following the Webkinz model, Russ Berrie's Shining Stars is a line of plush toys that comes with the access code to a tie-in virtual world. Buying a toy gets you naming rights to an actual star, and the company donates part of its proceeds to The Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, a charitable organization that "helps kids with serious illnesses and their families cope with their conditions." The site drew in more than 1.5 million registrations in its first year, and its early success inspired Russ to develop two more charity-associated toylines - Seapals and Treetures. The company estimates that "15% to 20% of the company's net sales in 2007 were driven by environmentally-friendly or charity-related products. Consolidated net sales for 2007 increased by 12.4%, to US$331.2 million from US$294.8 million the previous year" (Afran, 2008).

Dizzywood
As Amy Jussel described back in April: "Dizzywood is ‘planting’ the concept of collaboration, as kids nourish and tend a garden that grows faster with teamwork…By rewarding kids with seeds instead of the usual ‘coinage and consumption’ cues, they’re enabling more meaningful content to take root, a prize in itself." The site also teamed up with The Arbour Day Foundation to create an in-game Earth Day event last spring, during which "for every virtual tree planted in Dizzywood, a real one was planted on Earth."

SecretBuilders
This newly launched virtual world, which incorporates themes and characters drawn from classic literature, includes a charitable donation program called "One for All", a multiple choice quiz activity through which the company will donate real money to real charitable organizations as players answer questions correctly. For now, the charity seems to be limited to "planting a tree", but the site describes that "We are continuously seeking to establish partnerships with non-profit organizations to provide children with opportunities to contribute to important causes such as tree planting, clean water, hunger, endangered species, book donations, health and the environment."

Pixie Hollow
Although not tied to a real-world charity, Disney's Pixie Hollow features a virtual economy based (at least in part) on community service. Fairies must make and donate clothes (and other items) to the Pixie Hollow community at large before they are able to make things solely for themselves. The notion of giving to the community before taking for oneself is really surprisingly socialist (I won't say Marxist, because I know the negative connotations this word has in the US, so I'll just stick with "communal" and "community" and push the ideological baggage aside for now), especially for Disney. But then again, their other MMOG Toontown is centered around taking down the corporate cogs...hmmmmmm...it looks like someone at WDIG has a really well developed sense of irony.

Various other sites have featured one-off events of this nature as well. I haven't heard of any examples of kids organizing themselves to transform their virtual play in this way (it would be really hard to do without a big corporation behind them), but I wouldn't be too surprised if there were some out there (particularly within "educational" virtual worlds and MMOGs, or as in-game initiatives like the Pixie Hollow example). But then again, I can't think of any comparable examples from the realm of teen/adult virtual worlds either...a lot of real world exchange and business transactions unfold in Second Life, but I don't recall any stories about World of Warcraft players donating gold to charity.

Little Big Planet: UGC vs. IP

I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time, but thought I'd wait to see if the story would initiate a more widespread discussion first. The quirky-cute and much anticipated UGC-focused PS3 game Little Big Planet has now been on the market for about a month (it's currently #13 on VGChartz, which is awesome for a PS3 game), and by all accounts players are busying themselves making their own levels with the game's innovative player-generated-level design feature (you can check out a demo here, or a more detailed walkthrough of the design process here). Of course, it was only a matter of time before questions and conflicts began to arise around the ever sticky issue of IP...What happens when players integrate images and themes taken from other cultural texts into their UGC levels? And, perhaps more importantly, who owns the IP rights over the levels that players create?

In terms of who owns the copyright over players' original UGC creations, the issue was discussed within various forums when the game first came out in October. Although Sony originally indicated that players would be able to sell their creations - implying that players would retain IP ownership over the levels they create - more recent changes in the TOS seem to contradict this. For example, as I Have the Princess points out:

Sony have recently made changes to their PSN terms of use, notably adding terms and conditions for user generated content. No doubt, this is a legal precaution leading up to the release of LittleBigPlanet, obviously there needs to be guidelines to allow Sony to define and take action again inappropriate content.

But what really got my attention were some of the rights Sony have concerning your generated content…

You also authorise us [Sony] and our affiliated companies, without payment to you, to license, sell and otherwise commercially exploit your User Material
The document continues on outlining that Sony may sell subscription services or gain advertising revenue related to your content. Certainly sounds a far cry from what we’ve heard earlier about selected users being able to set a price and sell their levels, but I guess we’ll know soon enough how this will effect entrepreneurial users.

Similar concerns were voiced over at GameCulture blog, which argued:

...in three weeks, we could all be working for Sony, crafting and sharing levels that Sony owns outright. Perhaps some of those levels will end up being packaged as downloadable content, much the same way that fruit of some of LittleBigPlanet's best beta players is being packaged with the official release. [...] The revenue we generate for Sony by building their content for them is just part of the genius of their business model.

But how does the equation change as user-generated content becomes less a matter of remixing existing intellectual property by 'modding' a game and starts to look more like the creation of original work? What happens when the systems game developers build for us are less games than platforms for the creation of new games?

Since these earlier posts, the only real development has been in relation to copyright infringement within player-designed levels, some of which have been deleted/removed by Sony without warning, much to the chagrin of the players (read this post over at Joystiq for some good background and legal discussion). A bit of a controversy (and some hints of resistance) has erupted among players, but it also looks like Sony is still trying to decide how it will approach these issues. For example, as GameIndustry reported:

While one of the biggest draws for the PlayStation 3 game is the ability for users to create their own content, such freedom is providing a headache for the developer faced with moderating submissions for download.

Simply removing the offending content has sparked some complaints from the fan community, but Media Molecule has said that it is working on a solution to better communicate with users as to why levels have been deleted.

"We're reviewing the moderating system currently to provide better feedback on why levels are moderated," said a spokesperson for publisher Sony on the official forums.

"Primarily, any level that is reported using the grief tool will be checked over by a moderator, at which point they'll examine it in line with the EULA (End User Licence Agreement). If a level is found to be in violation of the EULA it will be moderated and you'll receive a message to that effect," explains the post.

"We're moving towards a system where additional information is given, however for the time being if you don't want your level moderating avoid anything unsuitable for users of all ages and copyright content."

Levels featuring content from games and other media including Metal Gear Solid, The Legend of Zelda, Batman and Scrubs have all been removed from the servers – with users complaining that they have spent hours creating content and have no back-up of their work.

Sony has said it hopes to inform users how they can tweak their creations to make them suitable, rather than be forced to delete the entire level.

For a good description of the delicate balancing act that Sony is facing with this, check out Izzy Neis' post from a couple of weeks ago. It would be more than awesome to see Sony adopt a user-centered approach to its TOS and copyright policies, one which better reflects the user participation and importance of UGC in the game's design...Not to mention its business model (see GameIndustry excerpt above). In the meantime, however, the vague threat of corporate copyright appears to be taking precedence, trampling over fair use and players' ability to engage creatively and critically with their culture.

Not that this is surprising, of course - as we've seen in various other games and digital cultural practices (mash-ups, machinima, etc.), a big part of UGC is the appropriation, integration and subversion of popular commercial cultural texts. And the industry as a whole is much more easily swayed by concerns about protecting corporate copyright than it has by individuals/players' potential IP and fair use rights. Then again, although Sony has taken some levels down for fear of copyright infringement, they also seem to be trying to figure out a way to moderate and manage UGC in a way that still fosters user feedback and player creativity. It's a fascinating case study in the problematic position of user-centered design within an impossibly stringent corporate copyright regime. It's also a great example of the social construction of technology, as the company attempts to respond to legal pressures and player demands/criticisms (despite an adequately developed policy on either copyright or player rights) in its shaping and management of a new technological/cultural form.

Alice in Promoland

Just a little "head's up" today on a new Disney marketing initiative that's slowly starting to gain momentum. You've probably heard all about the upcoming Disney/Tim Burton live action/CGI adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (which you can read more about here and here). The film won't hit theaters until 2010, but Disney is already slowly building buzz around the property's rebranding. While the original animated Alice in Wonderland is definitely a beloved Disney classic, it isn't exactly associated with the kind of cross-promotional hoopla that the company has perfected with properties like Monsters Inc. and the Disney Princesses. So it's not surprising to see that the company is using Burton's re-imagining of Lewis Carrol's original tale as an opportunity to give the property a promo-focused face lift.

Preliminary evidence of this campaign emerged this past September, with the (re?-)release of a new hardcover Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland book, illustrated by Mary Blair (*****Update: After just a tiny bit more hunting online, I found out that Blair was actually a longtime illustrator and animator at Disney, and was the one who produced the original concept artwork for Alice in Wonderland in 1951!!! Which explains the dark undertones of the Disney classic animated film, while also supplying a great historical/nostalgic anchor for the new adaptation. Thank you Wikipedia******). Blair's illustrations also happen to do a fantastic job of bridging the original Disney animated film's characters and style (which were of course ultimately much more cartoon-y and bright than Blair's concept art) with the darker and more gothic Tim Burton aesthetic. While it's too early to start identifying consistencies between the book and upcoming movie, I couldn't help but notice that the Mad Hatter in both versions now has wild red hair. I'm not sure how the stories themselves will compare (Burton seems to be staying truer to the Lewis Carroll story), but my interest is definitely piqued. I'm also wondering at the unlikely coincidence of Sesame Street's newest direct-to-DVD project Abby in Wonderland, which was also released in September.

Club Penguin and Social Sites for Kids

As I write up my thesis chapter on kids' virtual bedroom culture, I've gone back to dedicating large portions of my days to inhabiting and revisiting my case study worlds - BarbieGirls, Club Penguin, et al. I've found myself spending a particularly significant amount of time in Club Penguin - not only is the site in the midst of launching a new tie-in toy line and Nintendo DS crossover - but a number of very interesting events and new developments have taken place there of late, which I've found important to make note of. The snow-in at the dojo...the amazing community celebrations that occured around the site's 3rd anniversary and then around Halloween. The ongoing obsession with ninja sightings. All great stuff when it comes to studying emergent play vs. viral marketing in kids' virtual worlds. Anyhow, perhaps it's because I've been spending so much time there lately (in addition to the hours and hours and hours I've logged in this and my other case study sites over the past two years) that I was particularly disturbed by this new piece of alarmist nay-saying that featured in the Vancouver Sun over the weekend. It seems that a newly launched kids' online safety watchdog group in the US called CyberSafeNation has found some evidence that some kids' sites aren't doing enough when it comes to chat moderation and player monitoring. Unfortunately, instead of revealing their evidence and naming some specific examples of risky sites, they've decided to go after kids' virtual worlds in general...with Club Penguin positioned right at the centre of their campaign to have kids' access to online communication shut down altogether.

The folks over at Club Penguin have already responded to the accusation, pointing to the fact that their moderation system does effectively block out the types of inappropriate talk that CyberSafeNation has found in other sites. They also point out that they offer a SafeChat system that does already limit players to a selection of pre-approved and extremely G-rated chat sentences. And I have to say, that even after all this time, my position on Club Penguin's above-average safety and highly effective moderation system hasn't changed. Having now logged well over 80 hours in the site, observing kids' interactions and making note of any type of deviance, the vast vast majority of which is innocuous, I've never seen or heard anything that remotely resembles CyberSafeNation's description of "kiddie porn". That said, the same is certainly NOT the case for some of the other sites I've examined...Nicktropolis has basically turned into a cruising bar, and a segment of the BarbieGirls community is as obsessed with "dates" as it is with clothes. Although both sites have arbitrarily restricted players' ability to engage in critical discussion with one another, they have been amazingly lax when it comes to monitoring chat for inappropriate themes and conversations (which often take place in full view of other players) or at identifying potentially risky workarounds (the article mentions spelling out phone numbers to get around bans on putting in the numbers directly...the sites I'm studying haven't missed anything THAT obvious, but there are plenty of other, more subtle examples). CyberSafeNation's findings are reflective of a number of sites geared to kids that currently attract enormous population bases and expose/enable players to various degrees of inappropriate talk, propositions and behaviours (of course, I also advocate taking a much more nuanced and less alarmist approach to kids' "inappropriate" behaviours - but that's a topic for another day).

So why pick on Club Penguin? Well, the goal here is obviously to create a whole lot of widespread worry and panic about kids' virtual worlds, and since Club Penguin is so massively popular among kids (not to mention the high visibility and media-panic-responsiveness of parent company Disney) it's an easy target. What frustrates me most about all this is that I wholeheartedly support the need for a more concerted and widespread public debate around kids' VW's. We SHOULD be talking about the ways in which they're regulated (or not), designed, manipulated for commercial gain, but we also need to consider the ways in which these sites are used to construct meaningful communities of interest, provide a much needed space for social and peer group play, allow for player creativity and innovation, and give kids an opportunity to express themselves in a public forum. If previous digital games/media/culture debates have taught us anything, it's that polarized, essentializing and misinformed dichotomies do little more than kill legitimate debate about these issues and developments. An "all or nothing approach" that claims banning kids from online communication as the only acceptable solution not only accentuates (and very likely exaggerates) the risk while completely ignoring the benefits of virtual worlds and other types of CMC, but it also dismisses the importance and legitimacy of children's rights to free expression and to create their own cultural spaces and discourses. Let's not punish kids for our systemmatic failure to protect and promote their rights, interests and safety online. We've got a lot of options here beyond banning kids outright from a significant new form of culture and human communication...better (or even just 'some') regulation, corporate accountability and transparency, and the establishment of support systems that facilitate parental involvement are all viable possibilities that have never been given serious consideration.

It's also far time that advocacy groups, politicians and the press stop making sweeping and potentially dangerous generalizations about various forms of media and technology. Groups like CyberSafeNation can provide an absolutely invaluable (public) service by acting as watchdog and holding corporations accountable, but only if their findings are reported fairly and accurately. If certain games are more dangerous than others, isn't it important to report on precisely WHICH games are high risk and have poor moderation systems? Rather than stir up some potentially unrelated panic about a more popular site? I'm deeply disturbed by the lack of responsibility shown in the Vancouver Sun article...obviously the examples they cite aren't ones that were actually found in Club Penguin, but they were found somewhere. Why did feeding panic about Club Penguin take priority over protecting the kids who actually use the sites where the risky behaviours were recorded by CyberSafeNation? And how are parents supposed to be able to make informed choices without specific, timely and accurate information?

Maya Götz on Gender in/and Kids TV

Update (Oct.31, 2008): Part III of Kidscreen's coverage of Götz's report is now available and focuses on boys' TV character preferences.


Kidscreen magazine is currently doing a three-part profile on recent research by Dr. Maya Götz of the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television in Germany, which was presented at last week's Cinekid Festival. Götz's findings appear to be drawn from two studies she is currently (or recently) working on, entitled "What makes a TV character the favourite character“ (2004-2008) and "Children’s Television Worldwide: Gender Representation" (2007-2008). The Kidscreen/Cinekid report not only provides updated statistics on gender (representation and depictions) in children's television, but also some pretty detailed statistics on girls' and boys' own preferences when it comes to television content, protagonists and body ideals. The first two parts are already available on the Kidscreen website (Part 1 here, and Part 2 here), with the third installment coming up on Friday.

The first part of Götz's study tracked gender representations in 19,664 kids' shows from 24 different countries. Key findings include:

* Only 32% of human protagonists in kids' shows are female, compared to 68% male.

* When non-human leads (monsters, animals, robots, etc.) are considered, this ratio is even more disproportionate: 13% female vs. 87% male.

* Gender stereotypes are still extremely prevalent within kids' television. Female characters are most often depicted as:

- conventionally beautiful, underweight and sexualized
- motivated by a romantic interest
- shown as dependent on boys
- stereotyped according to hair colour: blondes are either the "nice girl next door" or proverbial "blonde bitches" and redheads are headstrong, cheeky tomboys.

* Concurrently, male characters are most often depicted as:

-loners or leaders
- more frequently antagonists
- more frequently overweight
- even more frequently Caucasian
- stereotyped in four ways: the "lonesome cowboy," the "emotional soft-boy," the "clever small guy" and the "dumb blockhead"

Götz's research also reveals that these stereotypes are far from what kids' actually want and prefer out of their television characters. For example, they found that girls identify most with female leads who "take control of their own lives, find their own solutions to problems, and make things happen for themselves." Children of both genders prefer "natural, less sexualized body shapes when it comes to female characters," as well as kid characters who look "more like kids and less like caricatured women." Götz's study asked over 1000 children aged 3 to 12 years to look at three different images of a popular cartoon girl character, each one with a different waist size, and select their preferred version. More than 70% of girls and boys chose the character with a healthy-sized waist (as opposed to the thin one or the "chubby" one).

In terms of narrative, kids of both genders prefer stories and characters that reflect their interests, are suspenseful and/or funny. There's lots more great data available, so be sure to check out the Kidscreen reports for now, and keep an eye out for upcoming publications by Götz et al. in the very near future.

Tinkerbell is Indeed Pure (Marketing) Magic

I believe that today is the day Disney's newest direct-to-DVD project, and Fairies/Pixie Hollow tie-in, Tinkerbell is finally being released, just in time for Halloween, but more importantly just in time to market all the upcoming tie-in toys that Disney has lined up for the holidays. With the Pixie Hollow MMOG now up and running (and awesome, but more on that in just a sec), and the rest of the cross-promotional pieces falling firmly into place, Disney's Fairies...a branding initiative three years in the making...is officially on its way to becoming the next big thing in girls' (digital) culture. According to this Canadian Press article:

"The goal is to grow revenue in the franchise year over year. The model is its Disney Princess business, a group that joins Sleeping Beauty and Snow White with more recent heroines like Pocahontas and Mulan, and reaps $4 billion a year.

Disney's been pretty tight-lipped about the population sizes and profits made from its various virtual worlds, but comScore recently released new stats about Disney's MMOG empire, which now includes Toontown, Club Penguin, Pirates of the Caribbean Online and the new Pixie Hollow:

Among the 65 million avatars so far created in Disney's four worlds, there were 9.2 unique visitors in September, up 37 per cent from last year, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Steve Parkis, the senior vice president of Disney Online Studios, said makers of virtual worlds generally convert 5 to 20 per cent of visitors into paying customers with monthly subscriptions - which enable users to buy better gags or weapons, pursue more interesting quests or, in Pixie Hollow, make and buy outfits.

"Ten to 12 per cent is where you want to be, 20 per cent is very successful," Parkis said of the conversion rate. "We would be in the more successful range across the majority of our products."

The Canadian Press estimates that Disney's online worlds make about $7 million a month and $85 million a year, which they describe as "on par with one low-budget hit movie." Not to mention all the promotional activity that goes on in the sites, even just in terms of transmedia intertextuality, keeping kids "inside" the narrative of a particular Disney media-brand.

I've now played several hours of Pixie Hollow and I've got to say...they've done a really great job with this game. The flying mechanics are really fun (though sadly in 2D), the different areas are very pretty and create a real sense of a surrounding environment (though a bit fragmented). And there's an underlying theme of community service which includes a coop-style market system. Contributing to the community is encouraged (and at least early on it's required in order to progress through the character's skill levels), and players get to "make" virtual items such as clothes and shoes...a process that is incorporated into a series of mini-games through which you dye the fabric, cut it into shapes and sew the pieces together. The other mini-games interspersed throughout the world are also pretty fun...no coop mini-games that I could find (at least not yet), but players are able to play tag and race each other in the regular multiplayer areas. Tie-in products are advertised on the site, but don't seem to appear inside the game environment...though I'll have to do more searching until I find out for sure.

My initial assessment - Disney continues to set the standard when it comes to commercial kids' MMOGs. It's not an extraordinarily high standard, unfortunately, but they're definitely playing by a different set of rules and expectations than the BarbieGirls and Webkinzes of the online world.

The Many Modes of Role-Play

Check out this week's issue of The Escapist, which explores various forms of role-play both in and outside of games. Here's the list of featured articles:

Russ Pitts: The Dice They Carried
Russ Pitts remembers the last time his d20s came out of the bag, and it involves a grown man acting like a kitten.

Sara Grimes: Hit'em Hard and Make'em Bleed
Roller derby: the first full-contact roleplaying game?

Alice Bonasio: Cosplay and Effect
Playing as a videogame character and dressing up like one might not be as different as you think.

Jay Barnson: Weekend Warrior
Jay Barnson loses his LARP virginity.

George Page: Aggro Management
When does World of Warcraft stop being "just a game"?

Enjoy!

Club Penguin Gets All Dolled Up

Via today's edition of Cynopsis! Kids (not to mention last week's "head's up" courtesy of Izzy Neis), news about Club Penguin's recent (and upcoming) forays into the land of "tie-in products". Here's the excerpt:

Club Penguin celebrates its third anniversary with the launch of new toy line of internet-connected products, including plush, mini-figures and play sets. A new limited edition plush figure will be released every eight weeks, each of which comes with a coin featuring a code that kids can use to redeem unique virtual items online. The Club Penguin toys will be available at Toys "R" Us...Disney Stores, Disney Theme Parks, and the Club Penguin shop online. Additionally, Disney will release the new Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force game for Nintendo DS next month.

Look out Webkinz! Here comes the Disney promomachine!

Read more about the Club Penguin DS game here. Also, be sure to check out this Club Penguin toyline/So You Think You Can Dance Canada? cross-over promo event and photo opp planned for this Saturday at the Toys "R" Us Vaughan Mills, Ontario. It looks like Disney is finally ready to start cashing in on their $700 million investment. And it looks like I'm going to have to get serious about plotting how this new emphasis on tie-in products might translate into new features, changes, and/or embedded marketing in the game's contents and design.

Resource Alert: IPOsgoode Launches

This week, Osgoode Hall Law School at York University launched a new program for research on issues relating to intellectual property and technology. Under the direction of Giuseppina D’Agostino, Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, IP Osgoode seeks to provide an independent and authoritative voice on IP governance issues, cultivate interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational research, as well as foster collaboration and policy development. Here's an excerpt from the project's site description:

The program’s researchers and collaborators from the academy, government, business and other networks actively engage in a vibrant Canadian and border-crossing, transnational debate. Our advisors are leading experts in the legal community and provide the bedrock of support and leadership to the program. Drawing from the best Canadian forces and the program’s global partners, IP Osgoode is involved in some of the most important and cutting-edge IP law and technology related research and policy discussions of today. Among the program’s current target areas are all facets of intellectual property protection and access, privacy, ethics and intersecting areas of the law, from contract, health, labour, aboriginal, environmental, constitutional, corporate and international all within a variety of disciplines, from business, sciences, and the arts.

Other members of the IPOsgoode team include Rosemary Coombe, a number of distinguished professors and adjunct faculty with the Osgoode Law School, as well as a number of graduate students from both York and other universities (myself included). Keep an eye out for their Speaker Series, visiting scholar program, as well as a number of upcoming workshops and symposia. The program's online initiative includes a student-run blog covering intellectual property law and related current events and issues.

Protecting Virtual Playgrounds Symposium

A couple of weeks ago the Washington and Lee School of Law hosted a symposium on the social and legal implications of the recent emergence of virtual worlds for kids, entitled Protecting Virtual Playgrounds: Children, Law, and Play Online. The organizers have now posted video (and audio) streams of all of the symposium presentations, including a panel on play featuring Dorothy Singer and Greg Lastowka, and a keynote address by Edward Castronova. Very awesome of them to make this publicly available, as it sounds like it was quite a fruitful event for those involved. It's not often that economists, law scholars, designers and psychologists get together to talk shop.

I've got to say though I'm pretty disturbed that I didn't find a single media/communications scholar on the speakers list. Hopefully there were at least a few in attendance, but even so, it's quite an oversight considering how much of the work (past and present) on kids' mediated play, digital games, etc. has come out of this discipline.

Parents for Ethical Marketing Donation Drive

The wonderful people over at Parents for Ethical Marketing are in the midst of a donation drive, trying to raise funds to keep their blog going and expand their project into new areas. Parents for Ethical Marketing is a grassroots non-profit based in the US (they also run the Corporate Babysitter blog), where they work to raise parental awareness, public pressure and legislative action around marketing to children. Founder Lisa Ray is also an active public commentator, providing a nuanced parent's perspective on a variety of marketing-related issues in news articles and online forums. A worthy cause indeed. Here's the info:

A modest goal: $10,000 before Thanksgiving

This is fundraising week here at Parents for Ethical Marketing. I’m trying to raise 10,000 dollars by Thanksgiving to continue this blog and expand PEM’s scope. It’s a modest goal, considering:

– a marketer will drop 4,000 dollars for access to data of children’s financial profiles and spending patterns; and

– marketers spend 1.4 billion dollars — per month — marketing to children.

By donating to Parents for Ethical Marketing, you will help fulfill our mission: to encourage corporations to adopt responsible marketing standards and practices that sustain the health of children and families.

More info on the org and how the money is allocated is available here.

Good luck PEM!

Job Posting: Civic-Minded Gamer Wanted

I just received this job advert from the GamesNetwork mailing list. It's for a research assistant position with Games for Change, an industry / academic / non-profit collaboration aimed at "increasing real-world impact of digital games as an agent for social change." Sounds like a pretty excellent opportunity for some lucky gamer. Here are the details:

Research Assistant - Games for Change-focused project

Research assistant needed to help on a writing project. It's a great opportunity for the right person, short term at first, with longer term potential. Starting immediately, for 5 - 10 hours a week, for 1 - 2 months.

You should be:
1. A gamer. You need to know, play and think about games - mainstream, independent, serious.

2. Civic-minded or have an activist-bent. You probably think and care about current events and/or civic issues - and may even be interested in the power of mainstream media to change the way people think about and act on issues. Media like An Inconvenient Truth, Nickel and Dimed, MASH.


Responsibilities:
1. Research on digital games - in mainstream, independent, and educational sectors

2. Research on scholarship - review of current scholarship on games and learning, civic engagement, new media, social justice


Helpful if you are:
1. A good writer - the work is predominantly research, though clear thinking and writing skills are a big plus.

2. Familiar with/ involved in the DML field and the emerging research around games and learning.


Perks:
1. FUN job
2. Work from anywhere
3. Competitive pay
4. Opportunity to be involved in Games For Change (G4C) - a non-profit and community of people interested in using games to address pressing social issues (www.gamesforchange.org.)

Please send a cover letter and CV to Suzanne Seggerman (President and Co-founder of Games for Change) at suzanne@gamesforchange.org.

"A Game for Change is a digital game which engages a contemporary social issue in a meaningful way to foster a more just, equitable and/or tolerant society."

Gamasutra on How to Regulate UGC

I highly recommend that everyone check out this absolutely fascinating piece included in today's edition of Gamasutra, all about emerging regulatory questions and challenges raised by the inclusion of increasingly sophisticated UGC (user-generated content) tools within digital games. Using LittleBigPlanet as a case study (or rather a jumping off point), the article asks the looming and important question: "How can the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) evaluate a console title that hinges primarily on content created and distributed by users?"

The ESRB doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to the unique challenges presented by multiplayer, online gaming. In the face of MMOGs and now the spread of online capable console titles, the games industry's self-regulatory body has adopted a "no contest" response -- declining to evaluate titles beyond providing the vague warning that "Game experience may change during online play" and the now standard disclaimer "Online Interactions Not Rated By the ESRB." According to the Gamasutra article, the ESRB is taking a similar position on UGC. As ESRB spokesperson Eliot Mizrachi describes, "player-created content [is] not accounted for in the rating and is outside the jurisdiction of the ESRB." Outside the jurisdiction? Really? That sounds wrong, doesn't it?

As the article goes on to explain, however:

But recognizing that entire games rooted in UGC go a bit beyond "online interaction," Mizrachi says that the ESRB can't -- and shouldn't bear the moderation burden alone.

"Game publishers have a key part to play, and many are quite active in addressing consumer complaints and doing what they can to moderate and regulate online gameplay," he says.

"The gaming community also plays a vital role, and it, too, actively self-regulates inappropriate behavior of other players by reporting such cases to publishers. It's a collective effort."

Still, Mizrachi notes the critical role that continuing consumer education campaigns can play, and says the ESRB is strengthening its focus on such efforts, according to the official spokesperson.

The first groups that the ESRB is hitting up with its "consumer education campaigns" strategy is, of course, families and children...PTA groups, teachers, media literacy programs. Now, although I am a big supporter of media literacy, I also think that the ESRB can do a lot better than simply offloading these kinds of massive responsibilities onto parents, children and the public school system (not to mention game developers!)...yet again. The whole concept of self-regulation sort of hinges on the premise that the industry is going to take on the burden of self regulating...not passing the buck onto individual families and publicly (ahem, government) funded institutions, attempting to teach them how to do what the ESRB itself (with all its resources and funding) has refused to do because of the level difficulty and complexity involved in rating "player-created content." If that's the case, I can't think of a better or clearer argument in support of government regulation or at the very least co-regulation. For some time now, the ESRB has been faced with serious and increasing challenges in fulfilling its mandate -- from earlier rumors that the organization wasn't playing games through to the end before rating them, to the massive inconsistencies and biases in how it doles out M ratings, to its more recent impotence towards online gaming. At this point it has pretty much admitted that it doesn't have the infrastructure or resources to keep up with industry trends, developer needs or player interests.

It's clear that the ESRB will need to undergo a serious overhaul if it is to remain relevant in this new age of collaborative gaming - a review of its mandate, an influx of better informed and much more adaptable decision makers, and much much greater transparency. And while I completely agree that the organization needs to be more responsive to developer and player interests, the position described above is a far cry from adopting an inclusive approach to regulation...Instead of sharing resources and information, all the ESRB seems to be doing is delegating the task of monitoring content to the market. Above all, the ESRB needs to build a closer (institutionalized) relationship with the regulatory bodies whose jurisdiction does include player-generated content...i.e. government regulators. If governments and civil servants can go after people who infringe on corporate copyright and post unlawful content (online, inside game environments, etc.), the argument could certainly be made that player-generated content falls within its scope as well. Not that I think real world laws should simply be transposed onto UGC and collaborative games, as that would almost certainly ruin the games for everyone involved. But rather that it's definitely time for the FCC to start monitoring the ESRB's role and function as a "self"-regulator, maybe make sure that someone is actually taking on the burden that is otherwise so aggressively guarded and consistently wrestled away from government intervention.

Pixie Hollow: From Virtual Space to Real Space and Back Again

Yesterday, I received an email from "The Never Council" (a.k.a. the folks at Disney's Pixie Hollow), which read:

We hope you've enjoyed creating and customizing your Fairy on DisneyFairies.com. If you've visited your Fairy's page recently, you've probably noticed things have changed quite a bit. That's because we've launched Pixie Hollow, a brand-new Fairies online world!

While you can still visit your "Pixie Pages" on PixieHollow.com, here are some things that have changed:

FLY - Now you can flit around your Fairy home and explore beautiful meadows filled with lots of other Fairies just like you!

MAKE FRIENDS - The friends on your Pixie Page have disappeared. This is to allow room for all of the new Fairy friends you'll meet and chat with while flying around the Hollow.

DRESS UP - To change your outfit, you will need to enter Pixie Hollow and go to the "Wardrobe" tab in your Leaf Journal.

REDECORATE - The furniture in your home has been put away. To redecorate, just enter Pixie Hollow, fly to your home, and click on the Storage button.

PLAY GAMES - Customizing your Fairy is just the beginning! Now you can play fun games and earn rewards in the meadows.

This is just the beginning of all the fun, new stuff you can now find at PixieHollow.com. Next time you log in, click on the PLAY button to begin exploring Pixie Hollow.

So now you know what I'll be doing for the rest of the day. After tracking this project for many many months now, I'm so glad that this site has finally launched. More to come once I've had a chance to explore and see what all the fuss is about.

In highly related news, Disney has also announced the opening of its newest DisneyWorld feature (on October 24th) called...you guessed it...Pixie Hollow. According to this article on Fox Orlando, the feature consists of a Tinkerbell and her Fairy Friends themed "meet and greet experience" aimed at younger children (particularly girls, I have no doubt). From what I gather, this means costumed actors who will be available to meet and take pictures ("complete with pixie dust") with young fans of the new Disney product line, within the Toontown section of Disney World. It's pretty fitting that Pixie Hollow is aligned with Toontown, considering the development trajectory of their virtual equivalents. Disney's first MMOG for kids was Toontown, followed by Pirates of the Caribbean Online, and now Pixie Hollow.

Part of the Pixie Hollow strategy involves some sort of play with secret language (also very appropriate for targeting young girls). Here's the description from the Fox article:

"When you're in their world, you're able to understand what they speak, which is different, and you remember the movie Peter Pan? Well only Peter Pan could understand what they said, well when you're in Pixie Hollow, you're like Peter Pan, and you can understand when they talk," said Francois Leroux from Walt Disney World Entertainment.

I wish I could understand that quote!

And, of course, the Pixie Hollow tie-in movie, Tinker Bell hits DVD stores on the 28th. Should be a Pixtastic month for Disney - with the Fairies brand already raking in millions in merchandising, this added support of media and theme park tie-ins could finally make this the next "Disney Princesses".