How Indie Games Have Helped Me Appreciate Games for Kids

At the DMLC last week, during the discussion period that followed our panel presentation, a delegate humorously thanked me for doing the work that I do so that others don't have to. It was a comment full of good intentions and was certainly received as such (both by myself and by the audience), but it is also a comment that I in fact receive quite often. For while studying kids' games certainly sounds like (and is) a lot of fun, the clunky, promotion-laden contents of many of the commercial games that I research can definitely make in-depth analysis and concerted exploration a bit of a challenge. It's actually a dimension of my research that I've thought a lot about, both in terms of a methodological issue as well as a potential source of researcher bias. After all, adult assessments of children's culture are always going to be problematized by issues of perspective, varying (often biased) "standards," ideological notions of children/childhood, and the necessarily "outsider" status of the adult academic.

For the seasoned gamer (as well as many non-gamer adults for that matter), playing a game designed specifically for kids is often quite a different experience from playing a game designed for teens and adults. This is particularly true of games that are designed for kids specifically rather than for a general audience of "Everyone", and even truer when looking at MMOGs. Rather than the usual themes of violence, exploration and epic adventure that shape so many fantasy MMOGs, kids' MMOGs tend to be characterized by an emphasis on lightness, casual gameplay, positive feelings (such as happiness and kindness) and commercial/popular culture. Playing these games can also be oddly underwhelming. Like many digital games designed for children, technical features and aesthetic qualities are usually much more basic (not just more accessible, but more barebones) than those found in successful mainstream games. The customizable options available in kids' MMOGs are quite limited when compared to those available in T-rated MMOGs. The different areas and activities are fragmented and unintegrated. The “mise-en-scenes” (for example, the visual background and soundscape) are static and minimalistic. And the game mechanics are crude and oftentimes “clunky” -- delayed by time lags and program glitches.

So, in order to be able to immerse myself in these worlds and begin to appreciate their unique attributes and hidden complexities, it has been essential that I first cast aside any pre-existing biases about game design and aesthetic "standards" (as best I can anyway). Many of these biases are likely the result of many years of keeping pace with the perpetual race for technological and artistic innovation that has driven the growth of the commercial games industry since the early 1990s. While comparison to mainstream games and MMOGs is at times useful, particularly when comparing children’s game design across platforms and industry sectors, it is important that I avoid letting these comparisons dictate or obscure analysis of children's games on their own terms.

In fact, some of the strongest criticisms of mainstream game development in recent years are aimed at the perceived state of creative stagnancy produced by the industry’s narrow emphasis on “technological advancement.” As Fullerton, Chen, Santiago et al. describe, “Design advancement in the industry is generally limited to feature advancement within the existing domains of market genres. […] The exploration of new genres of games is considered risky in all regards: gameplay, technology, design and market viability." Like film before it, an important source of resistance and challenge to the status quo is found among the independents, who lack the big budgets required to compete in the industry’s endless race toward technological advancement, but as a result also have more freedom and impetus to attempt different types of innovation.

Accordingly, some of the most critically acclaimed games of the past few years have come out of independent game design studios, such as flOw, Flower and Cloud (created by Chen and produced by Santiago, who now run That Game Company), World of Goo (by 2D Boy), The Path (by Tale of Tales) and Okami (by the now defunct Japanese independent Clover Studios) (AND Braid, Submachine, Scarygirl, And Yet It Moves, Today I Die, etc., etc., etc.). Each of these “indie games” won multiple awards for originality and design innovation, and was widely celebrated by both the industry and the gaming culture (of players, fans, and critics). Yet none of them feature the type of "realistic" three-dimensional graphics, expansive level structures and expensive production qualities found within the mainstream games that usually set the hegemonic standard.

Instead, the emphasis within the indie games mentioned above is on the uniqueness of the graphics, on unusual innovations and manipulations of the gameplay mechanics, and on contributing to the advancement of something other than a Moore’s Law vision of technological advancement. Okami features a Japanese scroll-inspired game environment upon which the player can “paint” new objects and actions using the game controller to manipulate a giant virtual paintbrush. In World of Goo, the individual levels are spatially limited and contain simple, cartoonish graphics. However, the game is remarkable in the innovation of its physics, with which players must interact in increasingly complex ways in order to create structurally sound bridges and towers out of living gobs of goo. The main goal of gameplay within both flOw and Cloud is to attain a particular emotional state. There are no points or missions other than exploration, immersion and emotional investment in the gameplay process itself. Because these games are attempting to push and even break open existing standards and expectations of what a digital game should look and feel like, they defy established modes of comparison and evaluation.

Even within the established digital game industry, increasing attention is now placed on innovation, with the various console systems that now (or soon will) enable kinetic gameplay, multi-modal games that players can access across a variety of platforms, and a reconsideration of game design fundamentals. This is in fact particularly the case within child-inclusive games, most notably found in numerous titles released by Nintendo over the past couple of years, including Wii Sport, Super Mario Galaxy, Cooking Mama and Super Princess Peach. What this growing movement in game design demonstrates is that simple can be sophisticated, and that innovation cannot always be measured by size, scope and the number of pixels alone.

In terms of how this relates to the current discussion, there are many potential overlaps between indie games and children’s MMOGs. After all, children’s virtual worlds are a new phenomenon, and represent a clear break from the norms that have developed over the course of the past decade within MMOG design, including the tendency to develop games that specifically (and oftentimes exclusively) target a core gamer demographic consisting of young men between the ages of 14 to 32 years. Not to mention the fact that the games’ developers tend be outsiders themselves in relation to the established digital games industry. Perhaps some design limitations and a different set of emerging standards should be expected as new voices break into game development, and as new player communities are introduced into the existing MMOG culture.

Anyway - just some thoughts I've had about my process and about how to further contextualize my research &/or findings. I've never actually taken on or addressed this comment head on, and thought it might be time to hash out what my position actually is. My own growing love and appreciation for indie games, casual games and puzzle games has developed concurrent to (and possibly intertwined with) my ongoing study of kids' games, so there's also a definite "chicken or egg" phenomenon going on here. But the key theme that I take away from all this is that a shift in perspective has allowed me to find joy, meaning and value in a much broader spectrum of digital games (and game designs), which has not only helped my research but has also enriched my leisure experience immensely.

Our DML2010 Prezi Presentation

For those of you who weren't able to make it to the Digital Media Learning Conference (see below), you can view our presentation here (made - collaboratively - using Prezi).

Digital Media Learning Conference, 2010

Later on this week, I'll be heading down to sunny San Diego to participate in the First Annual Digital Media and Learning Conference, supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California, Irvine. The theme for this inaugural event is "Diversifying Participation," the conference is chaired by none other than Henry Jenkins, and will be keynoted by the wonderful S. Craig Watkins and the amazing Sonia Livingstone. Needless to say, I am very excited and grateful that I get the chance to be a part of the conference, and can't wait to meet (or at least see) so many of the names that I've been reading, citing and writing about for years now. I also can't wait to hear about all the cutting edge research that's being done on kid's digital media, informal learning, digital games and everything else that will be covered over what is promising to be quite a jam-packed 2 days.

Here's an excerpt from the original call for proposals, which provides a nice description of the aims and scope of the DMLC:

A growing body of research has identified how young people's digital media use is tied to basic social and cultural competencies needed for full participation in contemporary society. We continue to develop an understanding of the impact of these experiences on learning, civic engagement, professional development, and ethical comprehension of the digital world.
 Yet research has also suggested that young people's forms of participation with new media are incredibly diverse, and that risks, opportunities, and competencies are spread unevenly across the social and cultural landscape. Young people have differential access to online experiences, practices, and tools and this has a consequence in their developing sense of their own identities and their place in the world. In some cases, different forms of participation and access correspond with familiar cultural and social divides. In other cases, however, new media have introduced novel and unexpected kinds of social differences, subcultures, and identities.

It is far too simple to talk about this in terms of binaries such as "information haves and have nots" or "digital divides". There are many different kinds of obstacles to full participation, many different degrees of access to information, technologies, and online communities, and many different ways of processing those experiences. Participatory cultures surrounding digital media are characterized by a diversity that does not track automatically to high and low access or more or less sophisticated use. Rather, multiple forms of expertise, connoisseurship, identity, and practice are proliferating in online worlds, with complicated relationships to pre-existing categories such as socioeconomic status, gender, nationality, race, or ethnicity

My contribution will consist of participating in a panel on "The Mangle of Play" (in reference to Constance Steinkuehler's article of the same name), which will look at how players use workarounds, cheats, social capital and other informal knowledge systems to confront (and sometimes overcome) design challenges within a number of different MMOGs (and the specific contexts/case studies of each's presenter's research and focus). The panel was co-organized by a number of grad students I met at this summer's State of Play Grad Symposium, and is shaping up to be a pretty compelling (and hopefully engaging!) combo of papers/research and dialogue.

If you're going to be at DMLC and would like to meet up, be sure to drop me a line!

Girl Museum

Martha Hastie’s self-portraits and first diary entry for 1881,

courtesy of the Archives of Ontario

Via the Girl Studies network, news about the (somewhat) recent launch of the first official exhibit of the Girl Museum. The Girl Museum describes itself as the "first and ONLY museum in the world dedicated to the celebration of girlhood." An online initiative, the museum is virtual but comprehensive, focusing on research and exhibitions exploring various aspects, issues and experiences of girlhood...both historic and contemporary, as well as across a variety of different cultures. The project's first exhibit, Defining Our Terms, is actually an introduction to the Girl Museum and its upcoming exhibitions (including Girlhood in Art, Art of Girlhood, Girls in the World and GirlSpeak...an interactive community outreach series). In addition to the exhibit, there's a lot of information on the site about the museum's aims and mission, including the following statement of terms:

Why Girl Museum?

History can be broken down into endless material and esoteric categories that when labeled and displayed can yield both vital and useless information. As a result, there are thousands of museums in the world dedicated to themes from torture to lunchboxes. Out of this vast range of objects and data, Girl Museum dedicates its purpose to the valuable and overlooked topic of ‘girlhood’. There are many children’s museums, yet few look at childhood itself as the subject.

Women’s museums are also becoming more prevalent. While they often include girls, Girl Museum specifically focuses on them. Taxonomically, girlhood is a subset of both child and womanhood. However, we want to examine this universally experienced yet highly individualized state of being as a freestanding idea worthy of its own platform.

Also worth a gander is the all-star line up of girlhood scholars that the Museum has on its Advisory Board:

Rachel Devlin, Associate Professor of History, Tulane Univeristy
Catherine Driscoll, Associate Professor, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Miriam Forman-Brunell, Professor of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Mary Celeste Kearney, Associate Professor of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin
Claudia Mitchell, Professor, Faculty of Education, McGill University
Ilana Nash, Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies, Western Michigan University
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Associate Professor of Education, Penn State University
Kelly Schrum, Associate Professor, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University
Lynne Vallone, Professor of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University
Valerie Walkerdine, Research Professor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

Check out the site to find out more about some of their fascinating, ongoing projects. For instance, the virtual HEROINE QUILT, which is taking initial submissions until Feb.12th (this Friday!), sounds like a great new iteration of Open Source Embroidery and the parallels that Sadie Plant draws between women, computers and weaving. Looking forward to seeing how it manifests.

In addition to needing some help spreading the word, the Girl Museum is also looking for suggestions about exhibit themes, partnership opportunities, educational materials, curricula, advice about funding, volunteers, contributors, etc. If interested, drop them a line!

CFP Alert: Paying Attention: Digital Media Cultures and Generational Responsibility

Via the P2P Foundation and Patrick Crogan, of the Digital Cultures Research Centre, a call for papers for an upcoming conference (Sept. 2010) that will likely be of interest to many of you. Here are the details, reproduced in full form the original CFP.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Paying Attention: Digital Media Cultures and Generational Responsibility

A European Science Foundation Research Conference, Linkoping, Sweden 7 – 10th Sept 2010. Organised by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England.

Chairs:
1. Professor Jonathan Dovey, Director, Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England
2. Dr Patrick Crogan, Department of Culture, Media and Drama, University of the West of England.


Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
1. Michel Bauwens, Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives
2. Bernard Stiegler, Director, Institut de recherche et d’innovation, Centre Georges Pompidou
3. Tiziana Terranova, Associate Professor in the Sociology of Communications, Universita di Napoli



‘Paying Attention’ concerns the politics, ethics and aesthetics of the attention economy. This is the social and technical milieu in which web native generations live much of their lives. It will address key questions like: What architectures of power are at work in the attention economy ? How is it building new structures of experience? What kinds of value does this architecture produce? ‘Paying Attention’ encourages dialogue between researchers from the fields of Cultural and New Media Studies, Education, Communications, Economics, Internet studies, Human Computer Interface Studies, Art and Design. It also seeks the input and insights of creative practitioners exploring critical and alternative uses of new media forms and technologies.

Through an ever-burgeoning technical apparatus of surveying, data mining and internet search-tailoring the attention of individual minds is estimated, costed, marketed, bought and sold. The ‘attention economy’ is enabled by technologies like Google’s web-crawler and search algorithms and agents and all kinds of metadata production. The dominance of this mode of conceiving and calculating attention, above all that of the young, can be seen to be bearing fruit in many national, regional and global phenomena. The traditional values of the public sphere are unmistakably reshaped though these processes.

‘Paying Attention’ is also interested in how practices such as videogaming, P2P Filesharing, pervasive media experimentation, and mobile phone activism also create detours, reinventions and reimaginings of the cultural program to which younger generations are recruited. While there is a concerted effort to commercialise and exploit these spaces according to the demands of the global media industries, web 2.0’s reorientation of social communication practices remains charged with an indeterminate techno-cultural potential which the conference seeks to explore.


Applications
Applications are invited for research paper contributions on any subject relevant to the conference’s aims. These may include the areas listed below to indicate the broad scope of relevant topics or subjects. The conference also seeks through its ‘Poster’ section contributions of an experimental kind from digital media and computer-based practitioners that engage with the conference theme of attention and experiential design in critical and/or creative ways. These may take the form of demos, animatics, ethical or critical design projects, installation treatments or concepts in progress. These will form a major part of the program as key elements in the articulation of viable technocultural futures.


Key Themes
1. Education, Technique & Responsibility
2. The Political Economy of Digital Experience
3. Emerging forms of knowledge and value transmission
4. Ethical design, trust and security
5. Experiments with mediated attention and experience
6. Value in the new social spaces of digital culture
7. Records, archives and digital memories
8. Metadata, search algorithms and politics
9. Entertainment, marketing and attention technologies
10. Web 2.0 : Playbour and Grammatisation
11. Profiling Data Mining and Control
12. Pervasive media and remediated living spaces


Applications Due Date: by March 30th, 2010

Notice the emphasis on youth/young people, as well as the inclusion of both interdisciplinary academic research and works by creative types/media practitioners. Sounds like this will be an amazing conference, bringing together a number of my core interests - yay!

Canada's Privacy Commissioner Launching Public Consultations Aimed at Understanding Online Tracking, Profiling and Targeting

A quick post today to relay an announcement from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart, on a series of public consultations that her Office is hosting on issues of online tracking, data mining, data profiling and the targeting of consumers by businesses. A great opportunity to share some of the emerging info on kids' online games and websites, as well as data mining and tracking in general. Here's the description from the department website:

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is hosting consultations with Canadians on issues that we feel pose a serious challenge to the privacy of consumers, now and in the near future.

The topics to be explored include the online tracking, profiling and targeting of consumers by businesses, and the growing trend towards cloud computing.

The aim of this consumer consultation is to learn more about such industry practices, explore their privacy implications, and find out what privacy protections Canadians expect with respect to these practices. The consultation is also intended to promote debate about the impact of these technological developments on privacy, and to inform the next review process for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

The centerpiece of the consultations will be a series of single-day panel discussions involving a range of participants, including representatives of industry, government, consumer associations and civil society. In order to canvass the broadest possible range of views in preparation for these events, we are also welcoming written submissions.

For more info, you can check out:
Today's news release;
The Call for Submissions;
and, in the interests of preserving people's privacy while they participate in the consultations, a Preliminary Privacy Impact Assessment Analysis of the consultation process. Note that they've assessed that the consultations will have an "overall low impact on privacy" - Cute ;)

Haitian Youth Document the Earthquake & Aftermath

Photo by Andrew Bigosinski, for AOL News.

Via Unicef's MAGIC Network, news today about an amazing and humbling initiative being undertaken by students of Haiti's only film school, the Ciné Institute, who are tirelessly documenting and producing an eye witness account of this week's devastating earthquake and its aftermath. Located in Jacmel, a small town south of Port-au-Prince, the film school's classrooms and most of its equipment were reduced to rubble during the earthquake. But that hasn't stopped its students -- all but one of which is currently accounted for, but all of whom have lost their homes and/or loved ones -- from banding together to produce on the ground news footage, which they have been uploading to the internet since Thursday. So far, they've been able to salvage six cameras, a few editing stations and an uploading station from the site of their former school. Working with a team in New York, they've been able to generate an impressive multi-media news stream, complete with (in some cases) english subtitles and growing attention from mainstream media outlets (some of whom are using their footage, e.g. CNN).

You can watch the videos on the school's Vimeo channel, through the school website, and on Facebook. You can also follow them on Twitter, and view some of the first images taken in Jacmal through Flickr. Their work not only provides a crucial firsthand account of the disaster's impact and aftermath in Jacmel, but also raises awareness about smaller communities and towns that are also in need of global aid, but that might not be getting as much attention as Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. As Dana Chivvis, who did a feature on the students' efforts in a recent article for Aol News, writes:

With their lives in chaos and their buildings in ruins, the students set up a makeshift base at a radio station. With the equipment they salvaged, they have four editing stations and one uploading station. Working with a team at the school's office in New York, they uploaded Keziah's video to their Web site only two days after the earthquake.

At noon on Friday, a second video was up, and six more are waiting for volunteers to edit and produce. Fritzner Simeus's footage shows buildings stacked like pancakes on top of themselves, people freeing a man pinned under the rubble, and thousands at night lying in the grass at the airport with nothing but blankets to cover themselves.

"The idea really now is that we make the world know that Jacmel has been equally hit as Port-au-Prince and need as much support," Bigosinski said. The students have had food and fresh water, but supplies are running low. Already fuel for generators and medical supplies in the town are nearly spent.

Clearly, along with the need for support in these vital areas, the students will also need support to continue their work of covering the aftermath. They are already encountering problems with internet access, which could seriously delay their efforts to provide a key public and humanitarian service of keeping the rest of the world informed of what's going on in Jacmel. They're currently in search of a temporary donation of an Inmarsat BGAN, a lightweight, easily transportable broadband global area network (BGAN) that would enable them to upload large video files without having to rely on the limited local services currently available to them. Just one of many things that we can do to help, but one that media professionals might be in a particularly unique position to make happen.

My heart goes out to the students and teachers of the Ciné Institute, to Jacmel and to Haiti, to all those impacted or whose loved ones have been impacted by the earthquake, and to all those involved in the relief efforts.

Get Ready Sports Fans!!!

This semester, I will once again be teaching cmns324, Media, Sports and Popular Culture at Simon Fraser University (School of Communication). This time around, however, I get to co-teach the course with a colleague, Danielle Deveaux, which means lecturing half as often, running half of the tutorials and actually getting a chance to get to know many of the students! This course is pretty popular, which means extra big lecture halls and strategic time management, so the opportunity to lead small group discussions in tutorial will be a great way to get a real sense of what everyone is thinking, where the problem areas are, etc. We've divided up the lectures, divided up the labour, divided up the worrying - this should be an interesting experiment in job sharing and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the course unfolds as a thoroughly collaborative project. Since this semester Vancouver is (finally) hosting the Winter Olympics, this should be a particularly timely and compelling series of discussions/lectures/etc.

You can check out the details (syllabus in the final stages of revision) on the course website. As always, I'll be providing links and updates to the course website throughout the semester, and will tweet any links/items that overlap into kids' media using a #cmns324 hash tag (e.g. Mattel's new WWE toyline). Here's the official course description:

The objective of this course is to critically examine the changing relationship between sports and the media within western popular cultures. We will begin with an historical overview of the sport and media industries, and an introduction to some of the key themes and concepts that will be explored over the course of the semester.

During the second section, strong emphasis will be placed on the political economic dimensions of sports media, including production, marketing and commodity flows; the commodification of youth sports and "lifestyle" sports; labour issues and athletes’ rights.

In section three, we will examine media, sport and the politics of “identities”, including national identities and globalization; sports subcultures; the representation of gender, race and ethnicity within sports media; and popular depictions of sports and athletes.

The final section will explore the social, cultural and political meanings of the sporting “spectacle”, as well as the impact of media technologies (both old and new) on sports performance and spectatorship. Discussions will touch upon a wide range of issues and theoretical approaches, with examples drawn from a variety of sports and sporting practices.

I'm pretty sure the course is over full by now, but if you're an SFU student who's interested, you can always check in with the Communication department undergrad advisor to get on the wait list. The course is taught pretty frequently as well, so there's always next time.

Brief Hiatus - the Christmas edition

Just wanted to let readers and friends know that I won't be posting again until after the holidays. Christmas vacation started early this year (yay!), but I'll be back with a new post before the New Year. Merry Christmas and/or happy holidays to you and your loved ones...hope it's a good one!!!
Sara

(via Geeksugar)

Habbo Reveals the Depth of Corporate Surveillance in VWs

Via Emily Claire Afan at Kidscreen online, news this week that Sulake is expanding its already impressive data mining services to advertisers and third-party data collectors, by enabling companies to "track" how, when and why certain topics come up in the everyday "in-world" conversations of players of teen-targeted virtual world Habbo Hotel. The company calls the service "Habble," and describes it as a new "brand measurement tool". What it really does is allow companies to buy access to players' thoughts and peer interactions, through an ongoing and highly context-sensitive tracking of "brand names, slogans or key phrases" in player-to-player chat. The data is then mapped out to enable identification of peaks and drops in the rate at which the word/brand/phrase features as a topic of conversation. The client companies can also contrast these fluctuations with other events, promotional initiatives (either in-game or IRL), measurement variables, players' plans for the coming weekend, etc., etc. As Afan writes:

More than 155 million registered avatars controlled by users 19 and younger are part of the global Habbo community and Habble will enable marketers to measure brand names, slogans or key phrases used over a defined period. Data is updated daily, displayed and analyzed in a chart that maps activity peaks. The tool does not grant access to personal info of Habbo users, but monitors the level of brand mentions and then cross-references them with other measurement data.

As Afan -- and the Sulake press release -- points out, the tool doesn't grant access to the players' personal info...but then again, it doesn't have to to be effective. The fact that the company already knows so much about its players, along with the very flexible ability client companies are given to cross-reference with other measurement data, makes a lack of "personally identifiable info" almost irrelevant. You don't need to know someone's name or address when what you're aiming to find out is whether a particular brand strategy is more or less likely to work on girls aged 12-14 living in the suburbs who spend time in Habbo talking about how much they like both Vampire Weekend and Red Bull. And isn't most market research "anonymous" in this respect anyway? Tracking trends among demographics - groups of people with similar characteristics and/or interests - isn't exactly dependent on individual names and phone numbers.

The tool has already gone through a trial run, back in September, in partnership with MTV International - wherein it was used to track a campaign promoting the MTV European Music Awards. According to the Sulake press release, "After the campaign commenced in September, Habble showed that conversations around the awards were up by 371% in the UK and 762% in the Netherlands." As the press release makes quite clear, however, ad effectiveness is not the only thing companies will be able to measure:

Brands not directly engaging within the virtual world can also use Habble to analyse teen perceptions amongst product categories. This allows brands to see conversation levels related to messages targeted at young people, which could help shape future marketing plans.

Sulake describes Habble as "fly on the wall marketing insight into the hard to reach under-18’s demographic." This is a somewhat innocuous way of portraying what actually amounts to 24-7 corporate surveillance -- spying on players and recording their conversations, all in the aim of finding out more about their preferences, daily habits, and how to more effectively exploit their deepest desires.

Of course, the language used in the corporate materials is much more flippant, calling kids "media savvy" and highlighting their presumably vast ability to identify online marketing. At one point, they describe:

Teens today expect to engage with brands online and are aware of online marketing and advertising campaigns. Habbo research shows that 75% of users accept advertising promotions in Habbo and 56% tell their friends about promotions they have seen; 17% say they do this often.

Note that there is absolutely nothing in there about teens being aware or okay with having their conversations recorded and analyzed to "help shape future marketing plans." And note that the generalization about "teen awareness" ignores much of the research on kids' and teens' online literacy, which can be awesome in some areas, but poor in others -- especially about things like data mining and copyright, which they mostly "learn about" from companies rather than objective third parties. The Sulake argument ignores well circulated studies, such as Turow's research showing that both kids and adults often assume that the mere presence of a privacy policy means that their info will be protected.

Not to mention the clear evidence that the depth and breadth of current data mining practices are misunderstood by even the most digitally literate adults. Which leads me to wonder if we'll hear even half as much about Habbo's new initiative as we do about Facebook selling their (adult) users' information.

The Possibility to Clean and Buy Stuff Shop

Via the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and Advertising Age magazine, news (well, Thanksgiving-leftover news) of the recent online launch of Disney's newest kids' program The Possibility Shop. Described by AdAge as Disney's "First Branded-Entertainment Program," The Possibility Shop is a DIY Craft show for kids and "moms" (according to the official "About" description) staring Courtney Watkins, an author/TV personality who specializes in crafts and "Creative Adventures" (i.e. crafts and games). More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that the program is also:

[A] web video series at Disney.com/PossibilityShop produced with the Jim Henson Co. and exclusively sponsored by Clorox. The series was customized in part to promote Clorox brands, including Clorox disinfecting wipes, toilet-bowl cleaners and the new Clorox 2 laundry pre-treater, but the episodes will not feature any use of the products themselves. Instead, each episode will be accompanied by a Clorox-branded vignette showcasing how each brand can help clean up the home, a common task among the characters in "The Possibility Shop."

Yikes, yikes, yikes, on so many levels. First, there's the blatant and clearly over-reaching commercialization, which surely pushes (I would say exceeds) the limits of existing regulations around advertising to kids. But second, and no less disturbing, are the archaic gender discourses that arise from a craft show, most likely targeted to girls and already explicitly targeted to women ("moms"), that is not only sponsored by cleaning products but "commonly" features cleaning as a key theme of the show itself. I'll delve a little deeper into the gender implications after addressing the commercial/regulatory issues. But first, a brief synopsis of The Possibility Shop pilot webisode.

Episode One: Thanksgiving
The first webisode is quite brief. The first segment lasts 3min 26sec, and starts with an introduction of the show and its mission statement by Courtney Watkins, focusing on the current holiday episode and the surrounding web features, which include plenty of ads and links for Clorox products. Following the intro (which just features Courtney talking directly to the audience from a white sound stage) and a short title sequence, is a short episode about finding something to do at the kids' table during Thanksgiving dinner. The activity is presented as a solution to a problem a "girl guide"-like child friend of The Possibility Shop, Ivy, presents to Courtney. The idea is that she'll get a new Thanksgiving-themed badge for creating table "the best Thanksgiving Kids' Table ever." Courtney suggests a game that facilitates turn-based storytelling, which she calls "Fascinating Factoids". A third character, Mix, is involved throughout the exchange, contributing funny quips and some physical comedy. His job at the shop is undefined, but for now he appears to be Courtney's assistant. After demonstrating how the game works, Courtney and Ivy get to work on preparing the game at the crafts table. The camera pans to a "hand puppet" housed in a picture frame on the wall, who gives further instructions and advises the viewer to visit the Family Fun website.

This is followed by a 90 second ad for Clorox, featuring Courtney and Mix, and set within a back room of The Possibility Shop with a large bookcase full of Clorox bleach/laundry detergent and other cleaning products. Mix has some spaghetti sauce on his shirt, which Courtney sees and suggests that he recycle the shirt as fabric for a quilt. As soon as she walks away to do some "Possibility Shopping", Mix hears a disembodied voice from above - "Mother Knowsbest" - who advises him that with the power of Clorox he can save the shirt. She then talks him through a step-by-step spot cleaning session using Clorox, which she describes using the same ever glowing terms featured in Clorox ads and slogans.

The ad segment is followed by another, shorter segment of original content that lasts 1 min 14 sec. This includes a 40 second follow up with Ivy (who tells us the game was a big success), and then a separate segment set in the white sound stage from the introduction, where Courtney suggests using the extra pieces from incomplete puzzles as the basis for a drawing. Just look at it until you're inspired.

The webisode ends with a straight up 30 second ad for the same Clorox laundry detergent featured in the earlier ad segment, featuring a group of young moms touring a Clorox "test lab". The screen then resets back to the first segment.

Neither of the ad segments can be fast forwarded, paused or skipped. If you click on the ad segment while it's playing, a new browser window opens up to a Clorox website. Both ads carry a subtitle-style text warning that the content in question is an advertisement and that the program will resume in x number of seconds (counting down as the ad runs its course). Significantly, when I watched through the entire program a second time, the ad warning was gone. The ability to skip the ad was not.

Possibility Shopping
AdAge hints that while the show may not meet television ad standards, "slightly different rules apply on the web." However, while it's true that slightly different rules apply to the web, I'm doubtful that the show as is meets the FTC- FCC's web standards either, especially in regards to "Host Selling". According to the FCC definition, Host Selling includes "any character endorsement that has the effect of confusing a child viewer from distinguishing between program and non-program material." And as far as web content goes:

The FCC’s rules permit the sale of merchandise featuring a program-related character in parts of a related Web site that are sufficiently separated from the program to mitigate the impact of host selling.

There is certainly very little in terms of "look and feel" to distinguish the Clorox ads from the rest of the content. The setting simply looks like another room in the Possibility Shop, a conclusion supported by Courtney's movements through the scene. The characters are the same ones that appear in the program content, playing the same roles, referring to the same themes (quilting, Possibility Shop, etc.). Even the editing fails to provide a definitive cue that the segments are ads, seeing as the regular content is also broken up into sections, for e.g. switching between the white sound stage and the Possibility Shop. Although there is a text warning that the ads are "advertisements," the warning disappears with repeat viewings. I highly doubt that the show meets the criteria outlined above, even if it is online instead of televised.

Not that this is all that surprising, but the webisode also fails to provide any meaningful content in between its promotions of Clorox. Is it just me, or is there a shocking lack of crafting & creativity? The "Fascinating Factoids" game sounds fun and all, but it doesn't exactly scream craft skills or DIY. Even here, there is little time dedicated to showing kids how to prepare their own versions of the game. The note-sized construction paper cut-outs are already prepared in advance, neatly contained in a fish bowl before Ivy even steps into the room. And just as they're about the show Courtney and Ivy writing out their personal factoids on the paper cut-outs, the camera pans over to a "hand puppet" who gives some brief instruction about asking a parent to write your factoid for you if you can't write clearly enough (which seems wrong somehow, bypassing an opportunity for young writers to practice their craft), and then just promotes the Disney Family Fun website. The game is so simple that it might not need much detailed instruction (although you can download these from another page on the Possibility Shop website), but the lack of any substantial guidance or instruction - both for the factoid game and for the "puzzle piece" idea - just makes the enormous emphasis placed on spot cleaning all the more noticeable.

It also looks as though The Possibility Shop is not the only branded property Disney is trying to build these days. The AdAge article goes on to interview Brad Davis, Disney Online's VP-advertising sales, who describes that:

Disney sites have gotten more flexible in partnering with advertisers in recent months. A partnership with Walmart called "Rock Out Your Zone" made its debut in June on Disney.com and promoted Walmart's teen-targeted furniture line, Your Zone.

"Everything we've created before that has been Disney-driven. Now we've flipped that model where in our case we're creating the product with the advertiser's needs in mind and with the [online] guest's benefit," Mr. Davis said.

As for Clorox, they maintain in the article that the "intended audience is moms, but Ms. Liu [a representative from Clorox's digital media arm] said she expects they will view the webisodes with their kids." Clearly, the tone and mode of address taken in the Thanksgiving webisode is aimed at children - you don't tell a mom to ask her parents to help her write out a factoid. But this does highlight a pretty strange facet of the show - the nature of the sponsor product itself. Laundry detergent with bleach isn't exactly something you want kids getting into, and since there's very little in the program to either indicate that the product placement/host selling is aimed at selling a product OR that it is intended only for adult viewers, this particular nuance seems more like a PR attempt to hide the glaring contradictions of a very iffy marketing strategy.

The AdAge article doesn't comment too much on this, but they do admit that "Products such as toilet-bowl cleaners may seem like a stretch for integration with Muppets." And a bit of a stretch for a kids' show, no?

Craft and Clean
A deeper consideration of the product itself brings me back to my second point, which is the gender politics of a show that tries to integrate play & crafts with cleaning at all, but particularly in a show that seems to be so clearly targeted to girls. In follow up to my post a couple of weeks ago, there is a long history of problematic links between girls' "craft" toys and domesticity, the implications of which seem to be epitomized in a craft show that so heavily emphasizes cleaning and laundry. This includes implications in terms of the continued instrumentalization of girls' play -- play that emphasizes productive outcomes rather than fun and enjoyment -- along with the ongoing emphasis found within girls' culture on activities that work to reproduce and reinforce traditional ideals of "femininity" and "domesticity".

Despite the fact that the cleaning scene depicted in this particular webisode features a man as the one actually doing the cleaning, the associations are much clearer here than in most of what I've seen so far in the commercial construction of "kids craft culture" (by which I mean media and products aimed at commercializing arts & craft....not to be confused with the cultural practice itself). First, Mix cleans under the instructions of the disembodied female voice of "Mother Knowsbest" (a strategy often used in television ads for cleaning products as well, wherein the man doesn't know how to clean and a woman or voiceover shows him how). Second, in positioning itself toward a predominantly female audience (though we'll have to wait and see the ads, etc., to draw any final conclusions about the demographics of the child component of the target audience), its underlying message of play and cleaning as a) intertwined and b) appropriate activities must also be seen as necessarily aimed at female viewers.

Of course, many would say that learning to clean up after oneself is a key lesson that all kids should learn, one that stands in stark contrast to the larger commercial culture's promotion of hedonism, waste and ephemera. But the messages being communicated in Possibility Shop must be seen within the larger historical & social contexts specific to girls' culture, wherein cleaning, care taking and home making are not only prevalent but often hegemonic - squeezing out alternatives until you're left with a bright pink girls' toy aisle that could serve as a diorama of western gender stereotypes. For example:



This is hardly the only Disney initiative that contributes to this regressive approach found throughout girls' culture. But it is a particularly sad missed opportunity to make some of those links between crafting and empowerment discussed in my previous post on this topic.

Important note - there are a couple of other things I noticed that are perhaps worth mentioning. Not only is Mix the one depicted cleaning the shirt, but Courtney actually proposes turning the stained shirt into a quilt rather than try to clean it. She also doesn't hear the voice of "Mother Knowsbest," and although she moves in and out of the ad segment compiling a "Possibility Shopping List," she doesn't engage with the Clorox products in any way. She doesn't even look at them. I'm not sure what this distancing is supposed to imply, but reading through Courtney Watkins' very non-commercial website, there may be a hint of tension here in terms of the different interests going into the show's production, or evidence of some underlying awareness of traditional gender roles/representation and the need to avoid going too far with the associations. I admit that this is perhaps wishful thinking on my part, and perhaps even part of the advertising strategy to avoid sullying Courtney's image with product shilling, but nonetheless worth keeping an eye on in the episodes to come. [**Note: I was waiting for today to post about this because the Possibility Shop site said there would be a new episode today, but there seems to be some sort of delay. I'll try to update this post once the next show becomes available]

The companies involved are treading on pretty tenuous ground with this one, so this particular show may not be around for much longer. Then again, it could also just as likely evolve into a full blown television series. Seeing as the FCC recently held a public consultation on product placement in kids media (check out Shaping Youth's filing here), the time seems pretty ripe for a crack down on these kinds of initiatives. But, of course, the precedence isn't all that good when it comes to extending media regulation these days. Either way, however, I'm dismayed to see Disney barreling down this particular trajectory.

Reimagining Learning Puts LittleBigPlanet in the (MacArthur) Spotlight

Earlier today, the MacArthur Foundation and the HASTAC Initiative announced the upcoming launch of the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition, on the theme "Reimagining Learning." The $2 million open competition officially starts on December 14, and seeks proposals that outline "creative ideas to transform learning using digital media." In particular, the competition description emphasizes project that link STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curricula and other experiences to digital games. As per the competition description, this means "any game, especially but not limited to LittleBigPlanet™ on PlayStation®3." Proposals are furthermore sought in two different but deeply interrelated categories, one of which revolves almost entirely around LittleBigPlanet. The DMLC invites proposals from designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and others engaged in building digital media experiences (what the organization is calling "the learning labs of the 21st Century") that aim specifically to "help young people interact, share, build, tinker, and explore in new and innovative ways." In addition to the obvious sponsorship of Sony and LittleBigPlanet, the competition is further supported by a grant to the University of California at Irvine. There are also some important political links to US President Obama's call for new efforts to reimagine and improve education in STEM subjects, and the competition was coordinated in partnership with National Lab Day.

A key focus of the competition, and of the MacArthur Foundation generally, is to identify and promote new ways of fostering participatory learning experiences for kids and teens. The organization defines participatory learning as "a form of learning connected to individual interests and passions, inherently social in nature, and occurring during hands-on, creative activities." As such, the competition will function as part of MacArthur’s ongoing "digital media and learning" initiative, which explores existing and potential ways in which digital technologies can be used to change how young people play, learn, socialize and engage in traditional and emerging forms of citizenship. For an example of some of the previous work done under this rubric, you might want to check out the "Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" project that wrapped up last year (a joint project carried out at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, that drew on the expertise of a number of key children's scholars, including Mimi Ito and Barrie Thorne, among equally notable others).

Anyway, here are the competition category descriptions as posted on the DMLC official competition website:

21st Century Learning Lab Designers
The 21st Century Learning Lab Designers category is aligned with National Lab Day. Winners will receive awards for learning environments and digital media-based experiences that allow young people to grapple with social challenges through activities based on the social nature, contexts, and ideas of science, technology, engineering and math. Digital media of any type (social networks, games, virtual worlds, mobile devices or others) may be used. Proposals are also encouraged for curricula or other experiences that link or connect to any game, especially but not limited to LittleBigPlanet™ on PlayStation®3 (PS3™).

Game Changers
Winners in the Game Changers category will receive awards for creative new games or for additions to Sony's LittleBigPlanet™. These games and game expansions should offer young people highly engaging game play experiences that incorporate principles of science, technology, engineering and math. One aim of the Game Changers category is to create new game play experiences using the existing popular video game, LittleBigPlanet™, winner of numerous "game of the year" awards in 2008. Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), in cooperation with ESA and ITIC, will team with MacArthur to support this component of the Competition. Sony Computer Entertainment of America will donate a significant number of PlayStation®3 (PS3™) consoles and copies of LittleBigPlanet™ to community-based organizations and libraries in low-income communities. They will also make the winning levels available to the game playing community at no cost. [****SMG: As described in the press release, Sony will also donate 1000 PlayStation 3 consoles and copies of LittleBigPlanet to libraries and community-based organizations in low-income communities across the US.]

Proposals submitted to either category will then be posted for public comment at three different stages of the selection process. According to the competition website, multiple awards will be given in each category (including People's Choice Awards for proposals that receive the most votes from the public at large), the winners of which will be announced this coming Spring 2010.

Seeing as I was planning on making LittleBigPlanet a key case study in my planned future investigation of UGC games and player-creator communities, this is a pretty exciting announcement. The profile raising, well-funded, wide-reaching nature of the competition will mean some pretty interesting things in terms of the evolution of the LBP community, the types of people involved, as well as some likely opportunities for investigations into the demographics of the competition entrants, and the thematic and formal features of the levels they submit (thinking specifically about the Game Changer category here, but of course the broader competition holds even more potential for new and exciting forms of content). On the one hand, of course, I can't ignore the underlying sponsorship and corporate branding dimensions of the competition. This is definitely a great PR move on Sony's part, coinciding as it does with the launch of the newest installment of what is fast becoming an LBP franchise. The question remains, how will the presence of "TM" (trademarks) limit & appropriate the creativity of the submissions?

That said, there are very few programs quite like LBP, both in terms of accessibility (by which I mean usability, affordability and access to the hardware requirements/platform) and in terms of playability. The game and its ever-growing community are fantastic examples of user-centred design. The game and level-builder are also highly accessible to children and novice users, and seem to be used by users of both genders (using anecdotal evidence and observations - some real examination of the demographics involved in these games would be immensely useful at this point), which only enhances the appeal and potential that the game carries for opening up these types of competitions to new voices, youth voices, etc.

My primary research questions will necessarily include a focus on the proprietary implications that arise whenever creativity is invited and facilitated under a system of corporate governance (which are almost always driven by profit and copyright concerns). However, in the case of the DMLC competition, it seems that the goal is to create and promote the submissions under some form of Creative Commons, as indicated by the stipulation that the game levels be offered to the player community free of charge. Admittedly, this might be wishful thinking on my part, but it's definitely one of the possibilities I'll be examining as I follow the developments and outcome of the competition over the next few months. I wish now that I had stuck with my original proposal for the upcoming DMLC conference, which was to talk about my research plans for LBP, Spore, Metaplace and Kodu (and now Playcrafter). *sigh* Oh well, there's always next time!

**Update: Though this wasn't mentioned in either of the press releases I read last week, it seems that the Joan Ganz Cooney Centre (the research arm of The Sesame Workshop) is also involved in this initiative. Here's an excerpt from their press release:

"ESA and ITI are also working with leading education stakeholders on the competition, including The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Games for Change, and E-Line Ventures. ESA, ITI and their partners will challenge America’s best and brightest, including children, to enter the competition with ideas that can be designed into web-executable, browser-based, STEM-related computer and video games in three age-based categories: 4 to 8 year olds, 8 to 12 year olds and 12 to 16 year olds. In addition to funding, ESA, ITI and their member companies will provide judges, mentorship, and technical expertise to the winning teams to maximize their utility, outreach and effectiveness."

Great to see the Cooney Center is involved with this - they do excellent work and have all the required expertise when it comes to merging high quality educational content with fun, as well as a great mandate when it comes to involving & addressing the needs of marginalized groups.

How to Prepare a Teaching Dossier

For those of you who are, like me, currently attempting to navigate the bewildering, intimidating and - unfortunately - often disheartening process of applying for a faculty position, this article by Adam Chapnick is definitely worth a read (and a bookmark!). It appeared in a Canadian online resource called University Affairs a couple of weeks ago, and provides a step-by-step guide to putting together a teaching dossier - which many applications ask for, without really explaining what the expectations are in terms of length, contents, etc. Chapnick goes into quite a bit of detail, and provides some great guidelines on things that may seem like small details, but end up being precisely the kind of issues that stump us the most as we scramble to tailor application packages, meet deadlines, and juggle reference letter requests. Here's a brief excerpt of Chapnick's article - be sure to check out the original for further elaboration about what each category of "evidence" actually entails.

What is a dossier?
A teaching dossier is a professional document that provides evidence of your teaching beliefs, experiences and abilities. It is generally six to 12 pages long, plus appendices. It includes three types of evidence:

Personal materials
* a statement of your philosophy of teaching and learning [he adds that this usually consists of a 250- to 750-word statement that defines you as a teacher, and if you haven’t taught yet, you can replace this temporarily with a statement of teaching goals and ideas.]

* an account of your teaching experiences and related responsibilities [title of the course + one line description of its content + size of class + specific teaching responsibilities – lecturing, labs, marking, facilitation; a course outline as an appendix, if you designed the course yourself] [newer instructors might have to define experience broadly. Chapnick recommends that you consider other types of teaching experiences, listed in order of importance: course instructor; seminar facilitator or lab leader; marker (specify what kind of marking); guest lecturer; and guest workshop conductor.]

*a summary of your commitment to professional development [note whether you have given a talk or published an article on teaching and learning issues; subscribe to teaching-related listservs; attend departmental workshops or brownbag lunches on teaching and learning themes; have completed a teacher training course.]


Materials from others
*evidence of teaching effectiveness (evaluations; letters of support; nominations/awards received) [include a chart that summarizes any formal, numerical teaching evaluations you might have collected. Include an explanation of what the numbers on the scale mean. If you have access to departmental or institutional averages, include those for context.]

Products of teaching
* examples of teaching materials [vidence of pedagogical innovations (include a hand-out explaining a new assignment you have developed), complete copies of older teaching evaluations, solicited letters from colleagues or former students]

* course outlines [course outlines that you've designed yourself, or a model outline of your dream course]

[...] A teaching dossier always includes a statement of your philosophy of teaching and learning, is presented in narrative form, makes few explicit references to research, and typically includes a table of contents.

Chapnick also recommends that applicants check out the sample statements and guidelines provided on the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Saskatchewan website. Click on The Teaching Portfolio in the lefthand navigation bar; and then, The Parts of a Portfolio). If you've found any other guides or good advice online for getting through the job application process or for putting together good materials, please let me know!

Rethinking Domesticity in Girls' Lives and Play Cultures

This week I've been thinking a lot about the changing (and not so changing) role of "domesticity" (traditional notions of femininity, home/private sphere, keeping house, proper etiquette, gender roles, aesthetics, etc.) in the lives of girls and women, particularly within the realm of leisure. This is in large part due to the fact that my lecture this week was on "technologies of empowerment," looking at how women are using traditional and new technologies -- often in combination -- to challenge status quo, gender politics, and gender role expectations...as well as to construct new ways of engaging with social institutions (such as markets) and techno-politics. A key theme was how technologies (& technological practices) that have traditionally been designated as "feminine" and/or associated with women (such as looms and knitting needles) share many of the same formal characteristics as key digital technologies, including computer software and networks. While I feel optimistic and very enthusiastic about these developments, at the same time I can't help but be reminded of the very different ways many of these same traditionally feminine technologies have historically appeared within girls' play culture as modes of domestication and containment. Now I'm left wondering how these two areas might be reconciled -- on the one hand to add some perspective to the optimism that surrounds handmade/DIY feminist culture, and on the other hand to produce a more progressive approach to a tendency within girls' play culture that can otherwise seem quite regressive.

I think the best way to start this discussion is to first provide a better explanation of the contents of the above-mentioned lecture. As I may have mentioned here before (and as indicated in the sidebar), I'm currently teaching a fourth-year seminar course called "Women and New Information Technologies" at the School of Communication, SFU. This week, I presented some of the themes raised in Sadie Plant's "Future Looms: Weaving women and cybernetics" (here's a link to a GoogleBooks excerpt), by examining both the parallels between traditional women's craftwork (such as weaving, embroidery, knitting, etc.) and computing technologies, as well as the ways in which these traditional practices are currently being reclaimed and reinvented by young women as part of a variety of cultural practices, business ventures, and forms of feminist community-building and activism. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean by this:

Handmade Nation
A key example (in my lecture at least) is the Handmade/Arts and Crafts movement, which links with contemporary feminism in a variety of ways, not least of which is the potential the movement contains for alternative economic models. One of the sources we "looked at" (although I couldn't get a hold of a full licensed copy in time for a screening - it just came out 2 weeks ago!), was a new documentary by Faythe Levine called Handmade Nation, which chronicles the resurgence of traditional craft-making across North America. Levine also co-authored a companion piece with Cortney Heimerl last year entitled Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design, published with the Princeton Architectural Press. The film and book focus on interviews Levine conducted with crafters and artists across the US, the vast majority of whom are women who have combined traditional practices (albeit oftentimes with a very contemporary spin, e.g. skull and cross bone doilies) and new info technologies to establish both a new crafting community and burgeoning neo-artisan economy. As described on the publisher website:

Participants in this community share ideas and encouragement through websites, blogs, boutiques, galleries, and craft fairs. Together they have forged a new economy and lifestyle based on creativity, determination, and networking.

Open Source Embroidery
Another example I looked at in this lecture is a project/art collective called Open Source Embroidery. Founded in 2005 by postdoctoral researcher Ele Carpenter, the project was created to explore and support artists engaged in investigating the relationships between embroidery and programming. As the website describes, Open Source Embroidery is "based on the common characteristics of needlework crafts and open source computer programming: gendered obsessive attention to detail; shared social process of development; and a transparency of process and product." Very interesting. Here's an excerpt from an article in Wired about the project:

The movement brings together knitters, embroiderers and quilters who see parallels between the way they create their crafts and how open source software creators share their ideas. At the BildMuseet at Umeå University in Sweden, an exhibition — also called Open Source Embroidery — showcases artworks that use embroidery and code as a tool for participatory production and distribution.

“The idea of collaboration has been made cool by open source software,” says Carpenter, the curator of the exhibition. “But artists have been working like this for a long time.”

Even the differences between needlework crafts and open source software are alike, she says. Embroidery is largely dominated by women, while software is created mostly by men, she says. In embroidery, tiny stitches come together to create a pattern visible on the front of the fabric, while its system is revealed on the back. It’s similar to how software is created.

There is of course some argument about how "alternative" these practices really are, and some good feminist challenges to the purported empowerment and progressive politics (if any) that they ultimately bring about. But from what I've seen, they do indeed seem to represent an alternative to (rather than support of) the status quo, one that contrasts in important ways with the liberal feminist approach of making space for women within existing structures/institutions. By creating new spaces and new structures within which women and men can redefine workplace norms, opportunity, and expectations, and thereby challenge outdated (patriarchal) structures -- not from within, but rather on their own terms -- these practices do become political in ways that extend far beyond leisure or a nostalgia-laden aesthetic trend. As such, they could indeed represent a key facet of an emerging political movement.

And while Handmade Nation and sites like Etsy (and the surrounding debate about women and Etsy) and the like focus specifically on craft work, there are also a number of links between Arts&Crafts and various other forms of DIY and the hidden productive practices of women and girls -- from music and film production, to girl's bedroom culture, to open source and hacker cultures. There are also some very interesting overlaps between craft/DIY and women's lifestyle sports subcultures, particularly in sports that have traditionally been male-dominated, such as snowboarding (e.g. Holly Thorpe's article on female snowboarding "feminizing" their gear with hand-knitted toques and other customizations).

In giving some further consideration to these themes and ideas, however, I've become quite caught up in the paradox that emerges when the discourses of empowerment/feminism/community contained within much of the handmade/DIY movement are contrasted with feminist discussions of girls' play. Here, I'm thinking about all the research into girls' commercial culture and toy culture that reveals the enormous emphasis that has been placed on instrumental activities, domesticity and the development of traditionally feminine skills as the most "appropriate" use of girls' leisure time. Within girls' culture, the emphasis placed on tea parties, play kitchen sets, sewing and the like, all become examples of how girls play is shaped by an ethos of "domesticity", which operates both as a ideological justification for girls' confinement within the home (with indoor play & domestic themes portrayed as natural choices for girls' play), as well as the systematic instrumentalization of their play and leisure (play that is geared towards a purposive end (namely of training girls to be future mothers/wives) rather than "play for play's sake").

So my question has become - can these two areas be reconciled within a feminist theory of/approach to play, and if so how?

Starting Out Points
- Arts&Crafts is a key area of kids' toy/play culture, with girls' targeted with a plethora of sewing/stamping/beading/knitting games - ranging from plastic pretend kitchen sets and sewing machines, to semi-functional Easy-Bake ovens and very basic Singer sewing machines, to more-or-less fully functional embroidery sets and the like. While the marketing for these objects is often quite stereotypical, you do see quite a bit of them promoted as educational toys or "alternative" toys as well. Are there links between the current Arts&Crafts movement and the tradition of arts&crafts in kids' (and primarily girls') leisure? If so, where and how are these links promoted? How could girls' toys/leisure be more firmly incorporated into the discourses of empowerment enjoyed by the older girls and women who are engaged in this subculture?

- If purposive leisure is indeed a better conduit into the emerging structures of the "information society" - artisan markets, open source, immaterial labour, the blurring of traditional boundaries between play/work public/private - are we in fact seeing an expansion of traditions established within girls' play culture and women's "leisure" (always a contested category as women have historically enjoyed less leisure, engaged in more purposive leisure, and have more often multi-tasked chores and leisure) into the lives of boys and men?

- Read through the work done by Ludica - this group has done some fascinating work examining some of these themes, particularly in regards to girls' play, gendered relationships with space (domestic, public and digital) and digital games. For example, their article A Game of One's Own examines conceptions of play space from a female perspective.

All I have for now are some preliminary ideas - there are obvious overlaps and obvious starting points, as you can see from my rudimentary list above, but at a theoretical level the empowering dimensions of craft work do seem to trouble my emerging definition of "domesticization" as the form of social rationalization currently taking place within children's digital play (extending from girls' play traditions into boy's play as well through virtual worlds and transmedia intertexts that transform play into a form of consumption/affective labour). Perhaps it is within the vocational/non-alienated labour implications of women's craftwork that its potential emerges??? Perhaps it is the lack of alternatives within girls' commercial play culture (as it is constructed within commercial and social discourses only - I do not mean to ignore girls' and parents' very real ability to choose toys outside of the pink aisle) that makes the emphasis on purposive play so limiting??? More to come as I think these issues through a little more, and in the meantime I welcome any points of discussion or challenges in the comments section below that might be of use in making sense of these questions.

If this is of interest, you might also want to read a previous post I wrote on my "under construction" idea about domesticization as a parallel system of social rationality within modern society.

Here are some examples of the kinds of girl's toys I'm talking about:

The Hidden Playground: New Article in The Escapist

This week's issue of The Escapist is on the theme of "Healthy Living," and explores various ways that gaming can be a part of (rather than a detriment to) a healthy lifestyle. I'm happy to have my article on outdoor play, the free-range kids movement, and portable/ARG game hybrids included in what has turned out to be a fascinating issue that covers both a number of serious health issues (obesity, vitamin D deficiency) relevant to gamers & non-gamers alike, as well as a number of ways that games (e.g. exer-games, Wii, portable gaming devices, fitness games) can be used to promote fitness, physical therapy and outdoor play.

Here's an overview of the contents with direct links to the articles:

Editor's Note by Jordan Deam

The Hidden Playground by Yours Truly

Gamer-Size Me by Craig Owens

Step Into the Light by Chris LaVigne

Waggle Therapy by Lauren Admire

I mentioned awhile back that I was working on a longer article examining how an emerging game genre combining portable game devices, wifi and some of the traditions established within alternate reality games (ARGs) might be used to promote free-range and outdoor play...and this is it. In the article, I propose that while many parents and kids would like to reclaim urban and suburban space for outdoor and "free-range" play, decades of moral panics, housebound latchkey kids, sedentary bedroom culture, stranger danger and family unfriendly urban design have depleted the play opportunities available in many (most?) neighborhoods and city blocks. Of course, given enough time and freedom, kids will find ways to play almost anywhere. But for right now, lack of practice along with the enduring social construction of "public space" as unwelcoming to the kinds of shenanigans most conducive to free play, might combine to make that reclamation a bit trickier than some parents/kids might expect.

My article examines how games like The Hidden Park (for iPhone) and Treasure World (for the Nintendo DS) (while not a substitute for non-digitally-enhanced outdoor play) might be used as "seeing stones" through which public spaces can be "opened up" to play, and made available for those more imaginative and autonomous forms of play that kids enjoy and benefit from most. By breaking down existing definitions of what an urban or suburban landscape is, how it should be experienced and what kids are expected to do there, I argue that these types of games put forth "a direct challenge to the idea that public space is inappropriate and dangerous for kids." Once this space is opened up, so is the play potential.

I use the motif of the "seeing stone" in reference to a number of great fairy tales and kids' books that focus on adventure and the invisible magic that exists all around us, which also acts as fuel for imaginative make-believe play and games. Here's the description from the article:

Imagine this emerging genre as the digital equivalent of a "seeing stone." The seeing stone shows up in a number of modern fairytales, including Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles and Neil Gaiman's Coraline. A primitively carved totem, its key feature is the eye-sized hole in its center. By looking through this hole, the children in these stories are able to see aspects of the world that are usually invisible to humans: magic, fairies, portals to other dimensions, ghosts and goblins and even other people's souls. The idea that the world around us is much more magical than it seems has clear links with childhood traditions of outdoor play and make-believe.

I also wanted to provide some links to some of the sources mentioned or that inspired the article, and here's as good a place as any:

Lenore Skenazy's FreeRange Kids

Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood

Roger Ebert's Raising free-range kids

Henry Jenkins' Complete Freedom of Movement

Kotaku interview with Miyamoto

Hope you enjoy the article!

Transmedia Expansions from Fairies to Fairy Godmothers

There's been so much "buzz" around the Disney Fairies, Tinkerbell and Pixie Hollow these past couple of weeks I don't even know where to start. I was initially thinking of posting about Tinkerbell's recent "makeover" (which actually isn't a makeover but rather just a new additional outfit she appears wearing in the new Disney Fairies direct-to-DVD Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure), perhaps in comparison with other much discussed revamps of girls' culture characters Dora the Explorer, Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite. But style is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the new media powerhouse emerging out of the Fairies/Tinkerbell/Pixie Hollow media brand, which just seems to keep growing in both reach and success since the site's launch a couple of years ago.

Some of the more interesting/important developments right now revolve around the launch of the second Tinkerbell-based DVD, which of course comes with its own Nintendo DS tie-in game, both of which in turn tie-in to the Pixie Hollow virtual world. According to the press release, the new game creates even more linkages with the virtual world than the previous title (i.e. the original game/DVD released last fall). Considering how much of the virtual world (features and activities) are now exclusive to paid subscribers, this likely also ties in nicely with the velvet rope marketing model the site has increasingly oriented itself toward to accord with the VW's gains in population base and popularity. Here's an excerpt about the tie-in features taken from the press release (as published on Business Wire:

Unique to this year’s game is the ability for players to create and personalize up to five of their own fairies, from facial features to hair accessories, each with different talents focusing on tinkering, light, water, animal and gardening. One of those fairies can be uploaded onto the Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow (PixieHollow.com) virtual world from Disney Online, where visitors worldwide have created more than 22 million fairy avatars. Players are then able to use their DS fairy to go on quests, play talent games and gather items within the PixieHollow.com world.

Players can also embark on an online quest that ultimately unlocks a special item on both platforms and they can add ingredients gathered in the DS game to their collection on PixieHollow.com. The two platforms are now linked through up-to-date news and polls, dispatched from the online world directly to DS.

In addition, Disney Fairies: Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure includes DGamer, the online community exclusive to Disney gamers on Nintendo DS, allowing players to connect with others and unlock Fairy-themed items in their DS game.

Interesting to see that Disney is still updating DGamer - I haven't checked in on that game/site in awhile, it might be time for a return visit to see if things have improved or expanded much since its soft launch last year. But anyway, without seeing them firsthand, the cross-platform features sound a lot like the Club Penguin virtual world/DS game campaign built around Secret Agents that emerged soon after Disney acquired the site. I think it might be time for a more formal comparison of the ways in which these tie-ins function, are marketed, and impact the virtual world space/community.

Another esp. noteworthy Tinkerbell news story that also (surprisingly, or perhaps even shockingly) ties into the launch of the Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure DVD is the UN's announcement naming Tinkerbell an "Honorary Ambassador of Green". And then the UN screened the film at its New York headquarters, making it the site of the DVD's "world premiere". Bizarre! Here's an excerpt from the UN press release:

The United Nations today named the Disney animated character Tinker Bell an “Honorary Ambassador of Green” to help promote environmental awareness among children. The announcement came just prior to a screening at UN Headquarters in New York of the world premiere of the Walt Disney animated film, “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure.”

“We're delighted Tinker Bell has agreed to be our Honorary Ambassador of Green,” said Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. “This beloved animated character can help us inspire kids and their parents to nurture nature and do what they can to take care of the environment.”

Today's event is intended to promote environmental awareness in the lead-up to the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, where countries will aim to 'seal the deal' on a new global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Okay...I had no idea that the UN was now part of the Disney promotional machine. I mean, using a beloved children's character as a kid-targeted "ambassador" is only ambiguously different from using a celebrity or sports hero, and there are of course promotional undertones anytime a media persona (real or fictional) gets involved in a campaign like this. Identifying Tinkerbell or any other Disney character built around the promotion of pro-environment values is in itself not so troubling - I've had these discussions with Amy Jussel before about using children's media characters to promote healthy foods. and overall I'm still open to the idea of using icons and themes from kids' culture for pro-social, pro-health and pro-environment type purposes. But all of that aside, it's the fact that this particular initiative announcement came as part of the promotional spectacle of the movie's (and game, books, toys, etc.) "premiere" (i.e. release date) that really stands out as odd, off and unworthy of the UN. This announcement is much too deeply embedded in the marketing of the film and much too in conformity with Disney's promotional interests to be seen as anything but a new and disturbing form of product placement.

Can't get enough Tinkerbell news? Disney Fairies is also an iPhone app now. Hmmm - there sure are a lot of kids' games coming in as iPhone apps. Looking forward to reading some research on parent/child co-use of iPhone devices for (cooperative?) gaming. ************Nov.5th update: And on that note, here are some emerging statistics courtesy of MarketingCharts, which indicate that: "More than 59% of US mothers who own an iPhone say they let their children use it, and 61% of these moms download games or educational content specifically for their kids." Hmmm - and what about dads?********

Not that Disney is the only one playing the transmedia game these days. The examples are endless. A recent, and also fairy themed venture Jan Bozarth's "Fairy Godmother Academy" book series/transmedia brand. As Omar L. Gallaga writes in yesterday's Statesman, Bozarth's book deal with Random House resulted from how well argued and organized her online/multimedia tie-ins were in her initial proposal; tie-ins that came with an existing media team at the "ready to begin work." Gallaga writes:

The staff is made up of designers and artisans whom Bozarth has worked with for about 15 years — the people she says she could trust to translate her detailed fantasy world into what Bozarth and the team call "Transmedia."

Explains Mario Champion, FGA's creative and technical director, "'Transmedia' is a shorthand way of saying the way kids play in a connected age. It's not just that it's digital — it's that it's connected."

Such connected media might mean a part of the Web site where girls can ask questions about or communicate with characters from the books, design their own virtual clothing or participate in a "Million Girl Choir," downloading audio tracks created by friends to combine with their own for a digital duet.

The ambitious project, which the team says will be rolled out over several years as the books are published, combines elements of massively multiplayer online games like "Club Penguin" with design tools, interactive music and video, and activities meant to get readers off the computer and into real-world activities with friends.

The interviews with the designers is well worth the read -- their comments tie into the whole girls' games discourse quite nicely and they have some interesting things to say about making space for UGC, craft and dress-up play, etc. But I can't help but sigh at the suggestion that transmedia is something new or innocuous or kid-based. Kids might play well with transmedia intertexts, but let's please not blame them for multi-modal branding. And the vast majority of the time the texts themselves are designed to maximize cross-promotion and incite multiple sites of consumption, rather than truly experiment with or tap into the opportunities contained within children's transmedia play practices.

I do like how the team presents its vision for the site/book/game, but only a thorough review of the contents themselves will tell if this is just another promotional strategy or something that's actually unique and postmodern. In particular, I think that future reviews (my own or yours) of the Fairy Godmother Academy's online components should focus on testing the following three statements that appear in Gallaga article:

"We're aiming to create a place where the books are a jumping-off place into this world of play and discovery, and of girls finding their own wisdom." ( - Ann Woods, art director of the Web site)

Here, the focus should be on opportunities for UGC or inter-user communication, flexibility of the system, opportunities for uploading original materials without usurping the kids' authorship or IP. Are kids able to engage with and subvert the source materials? If not, how are the books serving as a jumping off place. Where's the "discovery" occurring and what parameters are being placed on it?

In one example of the team's work, girls have the ability to not only choose virtual clothing, but to design it themselves.

What does 'design it themselves' amount to? Are we talking customization or real opportunities for original creations. If it's the former, what is the range of freedom and creativity afforded by the design/options available. What's the palette, what "sizes" are available, etc.?

"It's an intriguing balance," Woods said. "We never dumb down to girls."

This one's a bit harder to give a brief guideline for - what are some good ways to question or identify how games/sites "dumb down to girls" in their language and design. Then again, this might be the most intuitive one to detect. I'd love to see/read some good descriptions of what dumbing down is and what it looks like, so I'll leave this one open.


********On a totally different note:
Also, has anyone been watching the Jim Henson Company's new kids' animated TV program Dinosaur Train? Catchy tunes, cute characters, and some cleverly integrated educational content - I'm sure there are a zillion commercial tie-ins current or in development to consider and critique here too, but in the meantime the series itself seems delightful, intelligent and very Jim Henson-esque. Definitely worth keeping an eye on. Here's a clip to start the week off on a foot-tappingly good note.