Many Flows

Back to reading and thinking about comps stuff this weekend, I read an article by Matthew P. McAllister and J. Matt Giglio about "commodity flow" in children's television. They base this concept on a theory first proposed by Raymond Williams, which introduced the concept of television flow as a way to understand the technological and cultural experience of watching television. McAllister and Giglio further introduce a second term, "promotional flow" to the mix. With my head still firmly stuck in Csikszentmihalyi's definition of flow in play and immersing activities, I've decided to sketch out a brief taxonomy of these "flow" concepts to help keep them all straight (and perhaps trace their overlapping genealogy). Raymond's 1975 Television: Technology and cultural form appears on my technology comp, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunity to explore these distinctions further in the weeks to come.

Television Flow: Relates to television programming and the audience experience. "Flow" describes how channels and networks try to hold their audiences' attention to a single program (despite commercial breaks), from one program to the next. According to Raymond Williams, as McAllister and Giglio (2005) write, television as a technological and cultural experience "beings together discrete phenomena (events that occur outside of the medium in different locales and contexts) by framing them in a continuous stream of images and sound channeled through television" (p.27-8). The ease with which the audience can switch between channels, due to the homogeneity of program structures and uniform scheduling on nearly all stations (e.g. new shows start at the hour and half hour, commercials are often scheduled concurrently), Raymond (1975) emphasized, make flow an inter-channel as well as intra-channel experience...as well as "the defining characteristic of broadcasting" (p.86, 93). It is further enabled by techniques such as program promotions, cliffhangers in programs right before a commercial break, strategic scheduling to decrease incongruence between images and sounds on the screen (and increase their flow into one another).

Commodity Flow: McAllister and Giglio (2005) define this as "the often-seamless movement" and "embeddedness of promotional and commercial techniques throughout television generally but especially in children's television" (p.27). Budd, Craig and Steinman (1999) argue that television enables a "flow of commodities" that is characterised by a visual and thematic homogeneity, which is reproduced across programming, commercials and promotional spots to create a [somewhat] unified experience. This strategy not only works to keep the audience in front of the television, but also "uses all possible television forms to sell." To me, this evokes strategies like host-selling, product placements and program-length commercials.

Promotional Flow: McAllister and Giglio (2005) identify a second influence of "commercial product flow" on television, which arises as a result of the synergistic strategies employed by an increasingly concentrated media industry. They writes, "Corporations owning different media outlets often exploit promotional and licensing linkages between properties to create efficiencies. Television holdings, then, may be used to promote (and be promoted by) music, book, film, and other media subsidiaries" (p.29). The more common term for this is cross-media synergy, but Kinder (1991) has also called it the "children's media supersystem".


Budd, M., Craig, S. & Steinman, C. (1999). Consuming environments: Television and commercial culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Kinder, M. (1991). Playing with power in movies, television and video games; From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: U of California Press.

McAllister, M.P., & Giglio, J.M. (2005). "The commodity flow of U.S. children's television." Critical Studies in Media Communication 22(1): 26-44.

Williams, R. (1975). Television: Technology and cultural form, New York: Shocken.

New Book Alert: The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming

While I wouldn't usually post two book alerts in a row, when I found out that this one had finally been released, I just couldn't resist...as it includes a chapter written by yours truly! After a few delays due to copyright vs. fair use issues, The Player's Realm, edited by J. Patrick Williams and Jonas Heide Smith, is finally available at a bookstore near you. It includes chapters by many of my own favourite games authors, including Jonas Heide Smith, Mia Consalvo, Helen Kennedy and Torill Mortensen, though I'm really stoked to read everyone else's too, especially after hearing so much about these chapters over the past two years. Here's the Table of Contents (oddly, the publisher's page hasn't linked up the author names to their respective chapters, so I've inserted them myself...hope I got it right):

Introduction: From Moral Panics to Mature Games Research in Action (J. Patrick Williams, Jonas Heide Smith) 1

Section 1: Control versus Authorship 17
1. Who Governs the Gamers? (Jonas Heide Smith) 17
2. Terms of Service and Terms of Play in Children’s Online Gaming (Sara M. Grimes) 33
3. Narrative Power in Online Game Worlds: The Story of Cybertown (Nadezhda Kaneva) 56
4. Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: How Systems of Justice Developed in Online Text-Based Gaming Communities (Mel White) 74

Section 2: Discourse and Ideology 91
5. From The Green Berets to America’s Army: Video Games as a Vehicle for Political Propaganda (Aaron Delwiche) 91
6. Rhetorics of Computer and Video Game Research (Lars Konzack) 110
7. From Margin to Center: Biographies of Technicity and the Construction of Hegemonic Games Culture (Jon Dovey & Helen W. Kennedy) 131
8. Ghost Recon: Island Thunder: Cuba in the Virtual Battlescape (Rafael Miguel Montes) 154

Section 3: Experience and Identity 171
9. The Player’s Journey (Mirjam Eladhari) 171
10. Mutual Fantasy Online: Playing with People (Torill Mortensen) 188
11. From Dollhouse to Metaverse: What Happened When The Sims Went Online (Mia Consalvo) 203
12. Platform Dependent: Console and Computer Cultures (Laurie Taylor) 223

Section 4: Consumption and Community 239
13. Mapping Independent Game Design (Jason Wilson) 239
14. Desire for Commodities and Fantastic Consumption in Digital Games (Mike Molesworth & Janice Denegri-Knott) 255
15. Reading and Playing: What Makes Interactive Fiction Unique (Dan Keller) 276

I'll try to post any links to reviews of the book if there ever are any.

New Book Alert: Totally Wired:What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online

A new book on teen/tween online culture just came out, written by the creator of Ypulse blog, Anastasia Goodstein. The book, Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online, provides a journalistic-toned investigation of contemporary Internet usage trends among young people (SNS!!!), focused on dispelling some of the common myths/media panics about youth online. From the publisher's book description:

With headlines like Online Danger Zone and Are Teens Saying Too Much Online? appearing in publications like The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek everyday adults are becoming increasingly worried about what kids are really doing on the Internet and with technology today. What are MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Live Journal? What exactly are teens doing on them? Totally Wired is the first inside guide to explore what teens are doing on the Internet and with technology. Speaking with a cross section of industry professionals and teenagers, Anastasia Goodstein gets to the bottom of how teens use technology as well as the benefits and draw backs of this use.

The author is also maintaining a blog that follows-up on a number of issues discussed in the book, which you can find here.

I found out about this book through Goodstein's Ypulse blog, which I read daily and consider to be an invaluable resource for keeping up on youth/kid culture. The blog focuses on kids and marketing, and while it is certainly written from an industry perspective, it also includes a lot of very thoughtful, academic-like analyses of many of the marketing campaigns and youth trends it reports on. I expect the book to be similar, which leads me to the issue of "why academics should make a point of reading non-academic books". I find this is particularly the case with anything involving youth, technology and new media, as it can take academia years to process, analyze and churn stuff out on these (and any) topics, by which time the technology/social-networking site/MMOG is usually long gone. While this is perfectly wonderful for building knowledge of the field, these texts can usually only provide you with a somewhat indirect form of inspiration: You can see what holes in the research need filling, what research questions should be tackled next, how you could apply the same methodology or theoretical framework to an emerging technological form. But in terms of providing you with specific ideas for case studies, emerging issues that need tackling, etc., nothing beats a well-researched marketing or journalism-based book about current trends. While you always need to read these with a grain, nay a heavy tablespoon, of salt to keep from getting pulled onto the bandwagon, they're always shock full of interesting stats, examples and emerging sub-cultures, the newest youth fads, etc., i.e. lots of ideas that can now be researched and analyzed in depth by you, from an academic perspective, before anyone else in your field even hears about them.

Pokémon and on and on

It's amazing to think that our little yellow friend Pikachu and his Pokémon horde have now been dominating the kids' culture scene for over a decade. Keeping track of games sales and best-seller lists reminds me almost every year that out there, somewhere, there are still a lot of kids playing Pokémon games, watching Pokémon programming, and consuming Pokémon branded goods. Pokémon is the second best-selling video game franchise ever (after Mario Bros.), the show still pulls in good ratings on Cartoon Network and elsewhere, and the toys still generate a regular income flow. This year, it seems that Pokémon might be in for a bit of a "re"-vival (even though it's hardly gone anywhere to revive from), with the introduction of two new Pokémon video games, Diamond and Pearl, due to ship later this month. I've had a long time to think about Pokémon and have almost too much to say on the topic to condense it in any meaningful way here. Instead, I'll refer you to two excellent publications: Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokemon by Joseph Tobin et al., and Gotta Catch'em all: Structure, agency and pedagogy in children’s media culture by David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green. If after reading these you don't think Pokémon may in fact eventually take over the world, then you are a much bigger optimist than I.

The Fight Against TV Food Advertising to Children Continues: with New KFF Report

The Kaiser Family Foundation released a new report on child-targeted TV food advertising yesterday, lending even more support to the various organizations and US politicians currently pushing for increased regulation of children's television and marketing (within the context of the fight against childhood obesity). Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States represents the largest study ever conducted on kids' TV food advertising. It also includes a bunch of useful new statistics on kids' viewing habits, such as top ten network by age category, and amount of television consumed by the different age groups. Some of the study's key findings include:

- Children's exposure to food ads is substantial and varies by age. Children aged 8-12, for example, watch more television than any other group, and therefore see more food ads than other age groups. The authors and literature show that this group is also the most likely to be affected because this is an age where personal food habits start to develop, as kids in this age group begin to spend more time (and meals) away from home, increasingly buy food/snacks with their own money, etc.

- Ads for food and beverages (continue to) dominate US children's television advertising. According to the report, "Food is the most widely advertised product on the networks in the study, and among children’s shows, fully half (50%) of all ad time is for food. Furthermore, most of these food ads promote foods that are unhealthy--fast food, junk food, candy and sugar cereal. None of the ads reviewed were for fruits and vegetables.

- Only 15% of child-directed food ads depict a physically active lifestyle.

- 19% of child-directed food ads try to entice young viewers with incentives, such as free gifts or prizes (a practice that was recently prohibited in the UK).

- Only 10% of child-directed food ads feature a known children's media-character (from TV, film, etc.).

- Low priority ad space for public-service announcements means that children under 8 years see about one PSA promoting fitness or nutrition for every 26 commercial food ads. For tweens, it's one PSA per 48 food ads. For teens, it's one PSA for every 130 food ads.

Mobile Play and More Cells for Tweens

The market for cell phones for kids has had quite a few false starts in the past couple of years, but that's not stopping the industry from trying again this spring with two new product lines aimed squarely at tweens/kids. Gary Rusak, of KidScreen has recently covered announcements by two cell phone companies--PlayPhone and kajeet--that are attempting to finally break through parental and lack-of-interest barriers by combining cell phones with pre-established games and play activities. The most recent, by PlayPhone, intends to combine a pay-as-you-go phone service with popular virtual pet game Tamagotchi. As Rusak writes:

Due out before the summer, the line of brightly colored Tamagotchi handsets are programmed with a digital pet that users hatch, feed, clean and play with in a mobile game environment. Wallpaper, custom ring tones and a bevy of related casual games are also part of the package, and kids can customize their phones even more with content credits and downloadable features available on www.TamaPhone.com.

This follows on the heels of a similar announcement last week by cell phone manufacturer kajeet, who has now secured deals with Limited Too, Best Buy, Nickelodeon and Gameloft to produce a line of pay-as-you-go phones for kids that will also combine phone service with (media-branded) "casual games" and other entertainment-focused downloads (www.kajeet.com). Although Rusak doesn't mention it in his article, the kajeet line will also employ a character-based strategy, combining virtual characters and narrative elements into an interface called "Dudeworld".

Like other kids' phones before them, the TamaPhone and Kajeet line both promise to alleviate parents' fears about excessive access and spending by allowing them to set limits on web functions and downloads, as well as control incoming and outgoing calls. The major difference here seems to be the focus on pay-as-you-go...which makes it easier to get into on a trial basis I think...as well as the pre-programmed integration of games and activities kids actually like (as opposed to just talking on the phone with your parents). I think that older kids' cell models, such as the Firefly, failed in part because they didn't include games and other special features...the phones were much too "dumbed down" to be cool among the (ahem) "tech-savvy" tween market. On the other hand, the prospect of using Tamagotchi to peddle cell phone service to kids is particularly troubling--you would kind of have to have your cell on to feed and interact with your pet, which seems much too manipulative of children's emotions to truly constitute as fair marketing. (For my overall stance on kids' cell phones, you can check out my previous blog post here.)

New Book Alert: Craig Anderson on Video Game Violence, Kids, Policy and Other Items of Interest

I found the following announcement on Game Politics today, about a new book co-authored by Craig Anderson. Anderson is most famous (to me at least) for his high-profile testimonies on the relationship between playing violent video games and exhibiting real-life aggressive behaviours, in two landmark video game cases: Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County and American Amusement Machines Association v. Kendrick. His findings (and testimony) were contested in an Amici Curiae brief signed by 33 media scholars (many from cultural studies) and eventually dismissed by the Courts, but he continues to produce research in this area and to play a key role in the push for video game regulation. You can access the Amici Curiae brief here, and/or read a great critique of it (by SFU's Steve Kline) here. Anyway, it looks like this new book will attempt to tackle some of the issues raised by the whole legislative process that Anderson became involved in, and explore the strange and inconsistent ways policy and research interact when it comes to US media regulation. No matter what side of the debate you fall on, I think this will be an important text to keep track of in the coming months of political/legislative discussions around violent media.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.ca (not yet released in N.America), and a copy of the publisher's description:

Violent video games are successfully marketed to and easily obtained by children and adolescents. Even the U.S. government distributes one such game, America's Army, through both the internet and its recruiting offices. Is there any scientific evidence to support the claims that violent games contribute to aggressive and violent behavior? Anderson, Gentile, and Buckley first present an overview of empirical research on the effects of violent video games, and then add to this literature three new studies that fill the most important gaps. They update the traditional General Aggression Model to focus on both developmental processes and how media-violence exposure can increase the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both short- and long-term contexts. Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents also reviews the history of these games' explosive growth, and explores the public policy options for controlling their distribution. Anderson et al. describe the reaction of the games industry to scientific findings that exposure to violent video games and other forms of media violence constitutes a significant risk factor for later aggressive and violent behavior. They argue that society should begin a more productive debate about whether to reduce the high rates of exposure to media violence, and delineate the public policy options that are likely be most effective. As the first book to unite empirical research on and public policy options for violent video games, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents will be an invaluable resource for student and professional researchers in social and developmental psychology and media studies.

World Summit on Media for Children 2007

Yesterday marked the start of the 5th World Summit on Media for Children, which is being held in South Africa this year. The summit runs until March 28th, and brings together various media practitioners, NGOs, educators, government officials and children and young people who share a goal in ameliorating the quality of children's media around the world, as well as increasing opportunities for children to participate in media production. Here's a snippet from the press release:

The theme of the summit is "Media as a Tool for Global Peace and Democracy." It's organised by the Children and Broadcasting Foundation for Africa, in partnership with SABC, ICASA, and The Department of Communications and with support from Telkom and the Media Diversity and Development Agency. The summit will bring together 1,000 local and international media professionals, government and NGOs working in the area of quality media for children with a specific aim of developing a comprehensive children's media policy framework, to highlight sustainable solutions for high quality content.

These summits usually produce a variety of good resources and mission statements for use in media democratization projects and initiatives aimed at enhancing children's cultural participation. For more information visit the www.5wsmc.com website.

Girls, Games and Sheri Graner Ray

Game-news site Joystiq has posted coverage of a panel on "Getting Girls into Gaming" which took place recently at the unfolding SXSW conference. Among others, the panel featured game design guru and author Sheri Graner Ray, whose book Gender Inclusive Game Design is next on my comps reading list (just as soon as I finish Allison Druin's The Design of Children's Technology. They discussed a number of issues relating to gender and games, including a thoughtful revisiting of the age old "how do we get girls to play video games" conundrum. From the Joystiq article:

"The panel first asked the question, "What constitutes a female gamer?" Jame Pinckard said, "Women aren't just this monolithic block of 'gamers', they all want different types of games. Just because a Barbie video is made for a 12 year old girl, doesn't mean a 26 year woman has to play it." Sheri Graner Ray took it a step further, adding "There is no definition of a female gamer, and trying to tack a label to them does a disservice. The female gamer is simply a female who plays games. She's just a diverse as any other market out there.""

The panel (and article) also pointed out that although 42% of online gamers are female, the fact that this stat includes casual games obscures significant under-representation of female players in areas like online console gaming (where they make up only 2%). They also discussed the trickier aspects of approaching "girl games" and the desire to attract the female demographic as a problem that can be solved through focus groups and statistics. As Pinkard highlights:

"The majority of game publishers and developers are male, and when they try to make games for female gamers, they use things like focus groups and research numbers. As a result, they usually miss the target and develop games for them that suck. Then the games don't sell, so the publishers say, "Well, women don't play games."

Of course, the same problem doesn't usually exist for "boy games", since the developers probably approach these in a more open, "let's make an awesome game" kind of way.

The article theorizes that girls and guys like the same kinds of games (which is certainly the case for some and certainly not the case for others) and narrow it down to a marketing problem...though I think that what they're pointing at is actually problems with the way that gaming is framed within society. Which could certainly be a contributing factor, though I can't say that I agree with this as a conclusion.

Assembly Bill 1392 and In-Game Spyware

Short entry today for a change. I just found out that California assemblywoman Lori Saldaña went ahead and introduced a bill last month (introduced on the 23rd, and first read on the 26th of February 2007) aimed at strengthening existing online privacy laws, which would potentially include new rules about the use of spyware in online games. Assembly Bill 1392 is scheduled to be heard in committee on March 27th. As it stands, the bill is exceedingly vague - read it here - but it will be interesting to see what develops during the committee hearing next week.

Publishing and The Peer Review

Our grad secretary sent out a link today to a pretty cool online resource for (Canadian) grad students called The Peer Review, that includes an excellent article on publishing as a grad student called The Ultimate Guide to Scholarly Publishing. Here are some highlights/key points from the article that I think are of particular importance to grad students trying to get their work published:

When to Publish:
"[T]he most important thing is to start the process early as possible. One thing many students don’t get their head around, Freeman explains, is that when you are admitted to graduate studies, it is because of your potential, but your ongoing progress is based on your accomplishment."

Picking a Journal 1:
"When choosing where to publish, the key is to match the publication and the quality of your work. [...] It’s great if you can get into the most prestigious journal in your field, but the main goal should be to work progressively to a goal: "stay productive, be out there, be putting your work out in places that people can see it and often that means in a variety of places.""

Picking a Journal 2:
"The easiest way to know if your work will fit in a particular journal is to read the journal. "Why on earth would you submit to a journal you don’t read?" asks Freeman. If you read a journal, it is likely that you not only have a sense of the type of research it publishes, but also some of the finer points of its style."

The Three Keys to Editing your Submission:
- Quality: "It’s amazing the number of articles that get tossed out at the beginning because the quality is just so poor,"" [...] "The less editors need to work on your piece, the more likely it is to get selected for publication."

- Clarity: ""What did you do? Why did you do it? What does your study or idea contribute to what we already know about the subject? State this clearly in the abstract, introduction and cover letter...""

- Context: ""If there is one mistake authors make, it is not to describe the big picture," says Dhand. "What is known, what this piece of work is adding to the field and how this can be applied or take the field further.""

Making Sense of Peer Review Comments:
"[F]eedback is sometimes totally tactless because reviewers are in a hurry. And note that ‘revise and resubmit’ does not mean ‘reject.’ It’s very common for a paper to be accepted contingent on minor changes. Or, they may just say revise and resubmit, and then you will need to find out if it has been accepted, provided the changes are made, or if it must enter the review process again."

Publishing as a Process:
"There is no great mystery to the process, it just seems mysterious because it is drawn out, and can be derailed by any number of very tiny mistakes, errors that are not just technical, like poor editing, but also mental mistakes — assuming, for instance, that harsh comments mean there is little hope for your work..."

The Process of Publishing:
"...journals are picky, reviewers are overworked, publication schedules are slow, and competition is plentiful. If your work is of relevance and importance, you can be assured that there is a journal that will publish it."

To all this I would add that getting involved in the peer review process directly is also a great way to dispel some of your more primal fears about the whole thing. Seeing how it all works from the perspective of a peer reviewer can really help you to identify areas in your own work that might need tweaking/development, to understand the context from which comments and revisions are drawn, and to develop more sympathy/patience for the length of time it can take for the reviewers and editors to get back to you.

On a personal note, I want to wish the best of luck to my partner and colleague Anil Narine who is commencing his week-long comprehensive exams today!!!

Life Lessons from the Pussycat Dolls

I've been trying to ignore this new reality show called Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll which premiered on CW earlier this month...hopefully for obvious reasons. It seems, however, that I was one of the few of my demographic who did - MediaLife magazine reports that the show has averaged a 3.2 rating among women aged 18-34. More importantly (to me anyway), is the fact that it averaged 4.3 among teenage girls ages 12-17. The article offers a few theories about why that might be--aside from the obvious, that the Pussycat Dolls are a pretty wildly popular group right now, especially among teen demos. Or the enumerable similarities this new show shares with teen/cult favourite America's Next Top Model--it even repeated directly following ANTM a couple of weeks ago. No, MediaLife thinks that the show is popular because of its "empowering" qualities - an absolutely chilling possibility. They write [and I've inserted my own comments in brackets like this one]:

"There are several likely reasons [why the show is so popular among teen girls], and the first is that the show is aspirational, in the way that magazines like Fitness and Seventeen are [!]. They see in the group and the wannabes fit bodies [the majority of the contestants have professional dance training] and the latest look [more on this later]. They see the latest dance steps [hmmm - for strippers perhaps]. And they see their self-confidence, which is hugely impressive for girls at an age when self-doubt is the norm [see below]. They see role models."

Intrigued and disgusted, I sat down this afternoon to watch a repeat of last week's episode. This particular episode was, fittingly, all about confidence--how some girls have too much of it (and are therefore doomed to fail), and how some girls are seriously lacking in it (and therefore malleable to the show's objectives of "empowering female sexuality" - hmmm). The judges decided to teach the candidates about "confidence" during a night out at a Hollywood restaurant by giving them a surprise challenge after (perhaps during?) dinner--to put on lingerie and stripper dance (sans actually removing any clothing--not that there was much to remove) in boudoir-styled window boxes in front of the entire restaurant. Surprise! It looked like something out of a red light district in Amsterdam, and was particularly painful to watch after hearing the contestants' initial shock at even being IN a restaurant with, to paraphrase one of the girls, "half-naked ladies dancing above the bar".

The show ended with the elimination of the girl with "too much confidence"--it was getting in the way of her performance in that the judges thought she danced and looked "too much" like a stripper, and not enough like a sophisticated Pussycat Doll. Yikes! This show comes from the same IP that wanted to market Pussycat Dolls dolls to 6-year-olds (they backed off after major public outcry). And while MediaLife doesn't report on the tween demographic, these past initiatives make me seriously wonder how much spill-over there is into younger female audience segments. The show is a must-see, unfortunately, for those of you interested in girls' culture, though on the bright side it does provide PLENTY of fodder for academic analysis.

Exergaming in Texas

Jason Dobson has written a piece over at the Serious Games Source on a new partnership between Konami (makers of Dance Dance Revolution) and a new chain of "child focused" fitness clubs in Texas called NexGym. As part of the deal, Konami wil be installing Dance Dance Revolution games at all future NexGym locations. Dobson writes,

"As part of the agreement, children between the ages of 3-14 will be able to take advantage of the health and fitness benefits of Dance Dance Revolution at all Nexgym locations during interactive classes and open gym “exer-gaming” sessions. Konami will also promote DDR tournament events at existing Nexgym locations and in connection with future Nexgym grand openings.

NexGym, which opened its second location in Texas earlier this year, distinguishes itself by offering interactive classes and programs for children ages 3-14 and exergaming programs featuring video game and virtual exercise technology equipment designed specifically for kids 6-14. Nexgym also offers “Xtreme Birthday Parties” with a focus on fun and fitness, as well as programs for children with special needs, nutritional guidance and custom fitness programs for children."

The concept of gyms for kids is pretty intriguing, as is the idea of "exergaming" programs. Going to the gym IS pretty boring, not to mention the fact that most of the activities and machines there are oriented pretty purely towards adult physiology, so I definitely see why a new format--combining more aerobic activities and, well, fun--would be necessary. Less than a year old, NexGym (formerly Energym) represents the first official gyms-for-kids chain that I've heard of. While both existing branches were opened in Texas, the company plans to open 10 new locations over the coming year. The company is banking on a couple of things. First is the growing likelihood that parental concern about soaring child obesity rates will soon create a significant consumer demand (perhaps even in lieu of citizen demand) that options such as these be made available. The second is that the western focus on "rational" or instrumental play as ideal play will provide the illusion that regimented, technologically-enabled fun represents the surest way towards better health--both physical and mental. The website reflects this focus on its "About" page:

"Nexgym is the leader in the growing trend in kids fitness. With an ever-increasing population of children who are unfit expanding across North America, the time is right to provide a facility which has the right technology to engage children, a precise understanding of children and their needs, and an exclusive brand and image which brings the concept to life."

Now, I am NOT going to complain about a facility that provides kids with a greater number of exercise alternatives, particularly one that emphasizes kids' having fun as much as it does other health benefits, but there are a couple of things here that deserve noting. What concerns me most is that commercial entities are once again at the forefront in providing kids with the spaces and tools they are most lacking in other areas of life--in this case play spaces and pro-social technologies that at least initially seem responsive to (some of) kids' own needs when it comes to physical activity and exercise (it's missing cooperative play/team sports and fresh air, but it's a start). As citizens of a theoretically democratic and socially-responsive government, Texans and Americans should take one look at this initiative and wonder why the school systems (like the one in West Virginia) and health departments aren't offering similar kinds of programs for free (or at least at a subsidized cost). Knowing that obesity is tightly linked to class and socio-economic status, a highly specialized fitness center that charges a $49/month membership fee + additional fees for things like karate lessons and yoga might just be an indication of a new form of emerging social stratification based around access to health/fitness knowledge and opportunities.

As for the concept of "exergaming" and what it could mean in relation to theories around rationalized play, I definitely see a great opportunity for an extension of "ludification" theory, but will have to think it over a little more before making an approach.

The French Democracy

Very cool article in this week's Escapist by Allen Varney about last year's machinima hit The French Democracy, and the particular copyright issues raised by machinima as an emerging art form. He writes,

If you shoot a high-def film with a Canon camera, Canon doesn't own your movie. If you publish a book or magazine that uses fonts owned by Microsoft and images corrected in Adobe Photoshop, neither Microsoft nor Adobe owns your publication, because their licenses specifically grant you ownership. But if you make a machinima film using The Movies, Activision (the publisher) controls it. Activision controls everything.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in digital IP issues and/or user-generated content. It offers a great summary of the particular legal/ethical issues associated with machinima, concentrating on Activison's The Movies as a sort of case study. My law professor (and author of Video Game Law) Jon Festinger pointed out this game as a potential locus of future (digital) IP debates, and Varney seems to agree that a machinima-centred IP conflict may yet come to pass, although perhaps not for some time:

Copyright problems aside, it's hard to envision a machinima movement with political clout. What is the usual fate of a political work produced outside the existing power structure? Such works aren't inherently, inevitably marginalized, but history shows that's the way to bet. "The French Democracy" is to machinima as, say, Democracy Now is to American television. They are both commentators in the wilderness, exiled by systemic pressures that have no technical fix.

You can read the full article here.

300 and the Female Anomaly

Unless you've been sleeping under a rock for the past three days, you already know that Zack Snider's spectacular adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 is a massive success, earning more than $70 million on its first weekend (I saw it on Sunday!). What does this have to do with Gamine Expedition, you might ask? Well, while the film doesn't fall under my usual focus on kids' culture and videogames, 52% of those who saw it over the weekend WERE under the age of 25, which certainly makes it part of youth culture. But more significantly I've been really fascinated by the press and industry attempts to make sense of the film's success, which seem to reproduce those found within comparable analyses of the video game industry - namely, sticking to their stereotype-guns when it comes to notions of the gendered audience.

It seems that the audience for 300 this past weekend was both slightly younger and much more 'female' than the industry expected it to be. Surprisingly (well, not really) this isn't driving the "experts" to rethink their gender assumptions when it comes to highly-stylized action films (like 300, Sin City, Kill Bill, etc.) - instead, they've somehow found a way to make the numbers fit into the same old worn-out gendered templates of "fanboys on the Internet" and "girls remaining faithful to their heartthrob." Case in point, the LA Times reported today on the "fanboy" power behind the film's success, which was further enabled by those fountains of buzz "viral marketing" and "MySpace":

Fanboy buzz is not enough to sell a film -- "Snakes on a Plane," anyone? -- but Garabedian points out that while the online community was obsessively talking about "Snakes" they were ultimately making fun of it. The people who were driving the chatter around "300" were genuinely excited about the film, especially the way it looked. And after Comic-Con, Warner Bros. marketing department made sure that the fanboys got the usual dribs and drabs of movie art and trailers just to keep their excitement up.

The marketing folks also took full advantage of MySpace. There was of course the requisite MySpace page for the film (now standard for all movies) -- featuring a ferocious looking muscle man in a metal helmet plus tons of video clips, wallpapers and links to the film's official website. But the stroke of genius came when the studio sponsored a feature upgrade to the site that told users they could store 300 photos on their profile thanks to the movie "300." (Previously the limit had been 12). That started Jan. 2 and was incredibly popular with teens. The result was billions of ad impressions and 8 million viewings of the trailer. Is it any wonder that the 52% of the people who saw "300" were under 25?

Eek! Contrast this to this item from ScifiWire, which put forth its interpretation of the film's then-anticipated success among the female audience couple of days ago:

Zack Snyder, director of the upcoming graphic-novel adaptation 300, told SCI FI Wire that he was caught off guard by the number of women who want to see the film, which is an action-packed R-rated sword-and-sandals epic. The reason is simple: Gerard Butler.

Snyder said he was "surprised" by the strong following among women of Butler, who stars as Spartan King Leonidas. "I knew that there were these women [who] loved Gerry, but ... who could ever know?" he said in bewilderment in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend.

Indeed, most of the questions addressed to the 300 panel at WonderCon came from female fans of Butler's, many of whom run Web sites devoted to the hunky Scottish actor. It also came as a surprise that fans will see Butler in any film, no matter the genre; Butler has appeared in films as diverse as Phantom of the Opera and Dear Frankie.

So, despite the fact that this is Butler's first big film, we are to somehow believe that his female fan base is so dedicated that they will make sure to see him "in any film, no matter the genre", and large enough to make a significant dent in the boxoffice figures. What this basically amounts to is explaining away women's/girls' excitement for 300 as an anomaly - one that finds its true source in female fans' worship of Butler and their desire to maintain an audience "relationship" of sorts with this particular actor...no matter the genre (a.k.a. even genres that are otherwise "not for them"). Instead of trying to expand or dispel existing (narrow) notions that "what women want" out of films are romantic comedies and relationship dramas, they seem to have found a way to merely reproduce these notions within a slightly different context. Even though women are obviously watching horror and action movies in great numbers (just look at the success of LOTR and the superhero movies).

This immediately reminds me of T.L.Taylor's discussion of gender and games in her book Play Between Worlds, and how female gamers are viewed by industry and academics as "anomalies"--not representative of the larger female population, because they are drawn to media content that is also "not for them," and therefore not worthy of serious consideration if the object is to understand what would attract more female players to videogames. In their quest to maintain these categories, the media is truly missing out on opportunities to both create better quality content and reach a larger a.k.a. more diverse audience.

New Developments on the US Regulatory Front

As reported by the KidAdLaw.com website, two important reports pertaining to kids and media in the US were recently presented to Congress. The first consists of a five-year progress report on COPPA by the FTC, which maintains that (as reported by KidAdLaw) the COPPA rules:

[H]ave been effective in protecting the privacy and security of young children online without unduly burdening Web site operators. The report does not recommend any changes to COPPA or to the Commission’s Rule, but does note that, because widespread age verification technology is not available, age falsification remains a risk on general audience Web sites not intended for children’s use. The report also identifies social networking sites and mobile Internet access as new andemerging issues in children’s online privacy.

I love how the FTC both blames kids for existing inadequacies in the system ("age falsification"), all the while claiming that although social networking and wireless access present "new and emerging issues" the current rules somehow don't need updating. The FTC also seems kind of impressed that children's websites have come up with such innovative ways of making money off kids without collecting much "personally identifiable" data. *Sigh* They are the "Trade" commission after all, but this just goes to show that privacy and commerce aren't really issues that should fall under the authority of the same governing body.

The second report was presented by the FCC, who are continuing their campaign to tighten regulation on violent television content, in particular during family and child-heavy viewing times. They're now claiming that violent content can be regulated in a similar manner as sexual content (the old "violence as porn" argument - I'm having a bit of deja vu here), which would somehow mean it could occur without infringing upon First Amendment rights. I don't really understand how that works, but it keeps coming up in the video game cases as well so there must be SOME sort of logic behind it (though it would seem that in the states censorship is always censorship...only unless it involves sex). According to KidAdLaw:

The FCC report states that Congress could pass a law that would authorize the agency to regulate violent content during the hours that children watch TV, just as sexual content and profanity are restricted. The report concludes that there is “strong evidence” that violent media can impact children’s behavior, Chairman Martin told the AP.

The site also has a number of new and interesting articles (and links) discussing the massive impact of the UK's recent media ban on advertising unhealthy foods to kids. Check out some of the coverage here and here. I'm really liking this new resource, especially since you can sign up for email updates which they send every couple of weeks or so. It's certainly maintaining its industry focus, but it's nonetheless very thorough in keeping up-to-date on developments as well as public + press reactions to new laws and policies.

Further Thoughts on Okami

The winners of this year's Game Developers Choice Awards were announced today, with Gears of War picking up a number of awards, including Game of the Year. While Okami unfortunately wasn't picked for Game of the Year as I had hoped, it did win for Best Character Design (yay Amaterasu!), and received an award for Innovation (along with Wii Sports and a Flash game called Line Rider...what a great year this has been for the game industry!). And now that I'm about halfway through the game myself (it took my game-tester roommate over 40 hours to complete, and I'm only about 22 hours in), I can say with certainty that Okami deserved that and a lot more.

The experience of playing Okami is unique and strangely uplifting (to read an overview of the plot and some coverage of critical reception of the game, check out the Wikipedia entry). I never could have imagined how enjoyable it is to experience running around the countryside as a goddess in wolf-form, restoring life to dead trees and polluted pastures, freeing and feeding the wildlife (who fall in love with you as a result), leaving in my wake an endless stream of flowers and leaves instead of the usual piles of bloody corpses. While the emphasis is on creativity, there is certainly conflict and a large battle aspect to the gameplay - and Amaterasu is equipped with some handy weapons and excellent fight moves with which to conquer enemies. But much of the gameplay, including battles, relies on your skills with a paintbrush - with which you sort of "interrupt" the game, which then reveals itself as an ancient scroll. Once you've extracted yourself to this meta-level, you are then able to simply "draw in" desired narrative turns or devices based on a series of brush strokes you learn over the course of the game. Thus, you can use the brush to "slash" your enemies, or draw a stream of water from a nearby river to extinguish a fire-demon, or draw a sun in the sky to illuminate your path. As a result, you're constantly reminded of your concurrent roles as a character AND as an author of the game narrative and experience. As a goddess, you are both of the universe of the game but also above it - which is a great, reflexive subject position to provide for a video game player who is already occupying these concurrent roles, though not always this explicitly.

The game itself is quite immense, with many areas to explore and revisit again once new skills (i.e. brush strokes) are acquired. The first half of the game revolves around the return of an old enemy that (according to the ancient myth, in all its ambiguity and contradicting versions) Amaterasu helped to vanquish 100 years ago, who is now back to re-attempt domination of medieval Nippon. The surprising thing is, while the plot leads up to an eventual re-match that at first seems to signify the end of the game, you soon find out that the "end" is not the end, but simply the first albeit major step in a much larger quest. Now presented with an overarching quest of undefined scope and even content, you are reassured by several characters that when faced with a seemingly insurmountable task, your best bet is to tackle it one component at a time...much like a PhD, or a comprehensive exam reading list. The gender representation is a bit tongue in check - our travel companion is a bug-sized "lady's man" who incessantly hits on the beautiful sprites and big-breasted priestesses we encounter throughout our journey. Amaterasu herself is apparently quite beautiful - you occasionally encounter someone who can see your true form - although the avatar is (so far) solely represented as a stately white wolf...though I'm sure there will be some kind of "reveal" by the end of the game. Overall, though, I've found that these elements are treated with humor and again with reflexivity, this time on the genre conventions of fantasy/adventure video games (well, video games in general).

More to come once I've completed the game in full. So far, though, Okami is headed to my list of favourite games of all time for its innovative and unique gameplay experience, stunning graphics, and engaging gender-inclusive narrative.

LEGO MMOG (that's a lot of capital letters) Announced

From The Escapist Daily, an announcement from LEGO that they have selected NetDevil to assist in the building of their upcoming MMOG/persistent environment. From The Escapist blurb:

"The LEGO brand represents construction, creativity, and problem solving, and the LEGO Group would like to develop new and engaging ways for fans to interact with the LEGO brand as children around the world spend more time online," said Lisbeth Valther Pallesen, the Executive Vice President, Community, Education, and Direct Division LEGO Group.

She went on to remark that the massively multiplayer online market can merge online social interaction and physical play which will provide new experiences for children and LEGO enthusiasts alike.

As LEGO already runs a highly successful family of websites/online games/online communities, not to mention the highly popular LEGO Star Wars games, they seem well suited to this particular type of endeavour. I'm pretty interested in the said "merging" of social interaction and physical play--presumably with real LEGO sets, which necessarily implies purchase. The LEGO games already represent a somewhat abstracted example of advergaming--while there is no doubt that there is massive branding and even UGC appropriation going on, it's been difficult to define how this is different from any other media-branded game or cross-media initiative. Is it enough that certain characters are present in a game to argue that it works to promote other products featuring those same characters or narratives? (I say yes!) Must there be a link to a specific set of products? (No, but it's easier to get other people on board when there is!) Branding is such a difficult issue in kids' media - it sometimes seems like there is little else out other than (cross-)branding.

In other news, the Corus/YTV MMOG is up and running, under the name GalaxSeeds, which you can check out here. I haven't played it yet, but will surely be blogging about it within the next few days.

Child-Generated Content as Media Fad or Technologized Play?

There's a provocative think-piece in today's KidScreen Daily written by John Marley (a series producer at UK-based Talent Kids, creators of Best of Friends) on child-generated content and Nickelodeon's recent ME:TV announcement. His main argument is that although children are early adopters, they are also early abandoners when it comes to new media fads, which (according to him) makes it unlikely that user-generated content will be all that successful as a media strategy targeted toward the younger demographics. Marley lists several previous attempts to use UGC-television programming in the past, and describes the fickleness of the "multiplatform" generation. He then goes on to conclude:

I can understand why commissioners can get dazzled by the idea of getting kids to provide editorial content. It's cheaper, you can own the rights in every format in perpetuity [**SMG winces**] and, if they film it, it must - as I mentioned earlier - resonate with them, right?
[...]
[W]hile there is still a certain cachet for those kids lucky enough to actually see themselves on TV, the rise of home video and webcam has slightly dulled this as a motivator. In a kid's mind these days, it's only exciting to be seen on TV arriving somewhere swish in a limo, being chased by the paparazzi!

Now if, as a producer, you package that thing correctly for them, then you could have a hit on your hands. The user-generated prospect that will work best for the kids' audience, I believe, is one that springs from a larger back concept that will already have some appeal in the minds of children. Get them hooked into a back story, and then you can shape the content with which they start to provide you. That way you are more likely to get footage that will be genuinely "on message" for your audience and hopefully make for good content.

I can't help but agree to some extent with Marley's valuation of "UGC" (or CGC as I like to call it when the users are children) as quite the hype-magnet right now. Reading the industry literature on the "vast potential" of UGC, where potential always means either profits or branding or market research data (these last two in the hopes of eventual profits), it's often puzzled me where and how exactly the industry thinks they can make any real money off the common vlog or machinima. Of course, television, magazines and newspapers all make their real profits from selling advertising space, so perhaps this can translate into the YouTubes and XNA Game Studio Expresses, but doesn't THAT sound a bit like the net-bubble of the late-1990s? I agree with Marley's conclusion that Nickelodeon is going to need more than just a toolset for kids to upload home-videos to draw in an audience of any significance or shelf life. His notion of providing the "back story" or a narrative umbrella is one currently used by Zimmer Twins, and provides the rationale for the new TV-themed MMOGs I've been blogging about. This could certainly be one way of harnessing kids' (well, users generally) propensity for appropriating and playing with media-brands.

In this respect, perhaps Marley is looking at this from the wrong perspective. Can we really compare UGC/CGC to the more "passive" forms of media consumption of yesteryear? Why try to integrate these experiences? There is an audience aspect to CGC (well, the possibility of one anyway), but perhaps Marley's focus should remain on the production angle and on understanding what this is really an extension of. Is it an extension of television watching (consumption)? Or is it perhaps better understood as a digital networking of creative activities (production) like and including fan-fiction and branded play? And from this perspective, nothing is more effective or engrossing for kids than playing and creating with others - CGC may not "replace" television watching, but it may very well extend and technologize (and eventually mediatize) the creative play practices that make up a big part of their everyday lives. The problem is that television profits necessarily derive from the "audience commodity," to the point that even UGC/CGC must somehow (for the current business models to continue working and generating profit) come down to audiences and consumption. The shift to the "prosumer" and the "audience/user as producer" shakes this up at such a fundamental level--it's fascinating to see how the media industries scramble to adapt, even while failing to shift their own mode of thought away from traditional models.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

It was Theodor Geisel's (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) birthday yesterday, and the 50th anniversary of The Cat in the Hat the day before that. Like so many people with an interest in children's media, Dr. Seuss holds a special place in my heart as one of those rare beacons of light (along with Jim Henson, Fred Rogers, Ernie Coombs and Judy Bloom) in what can often seem like a veritable quagmire of low-quality production and exploitative commercialization. His interest in speaking to children on their own terms, in teaching even very small kids about human rights, self-respect and sustainable living--all the while making us laugh and exploding our imaginations wide open with new words, sounds and insights--continues to inspire and set a high standard for what a children's media professional can and should be.

Resources:
Philip Nel (2005) Dr. Seuss: American Icon. Continuum.

Phillip Nel (2003). "The Disneyfication of Dr Seuss: faithful to profit, one hundred percent?" Cultural Studies 17(5): 579-614.

Richard H.F. Lindemann (2005). The Dr. Seuss Catalog: An Annotated Guide to Works by Theodor Geisel in All Media, Writings about Him, and Appearances of Characters and Places in the Books, Stories and Films. McFarland Company.

Seussville.com

Or listen to this awesome mashup, Dylan Hears A Who

Tools of the Trade: Databases and Style Guides

Just a quick post today about some new research tools that I find exciting these days. The first is a new style guide coming out this year called Wired Style: The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual, written by David Thomas, Kyle Orland (of Joystiq) and Scott Steinberg, that promises to offer guidance on "spelling conventions and game criticism, plus company information and historical timelines" for the videogames industry. According to Orland, the manual will provide:

[S]ome consistent answers for those niggling copy editing questions that constantly come up when writing about games -- questions like whether videogame should be one word or two (the guide says one, you say two), whether to capitalize the B in Xbox (no) and whether the term "Wiimote" should be excised from the English language forever (yes, yes, a thousand times yes).

You can read some preview coverage of the manual at Joystiq here, and at GamesIndustry.biz here.

In other news, I've been hearing a lot about a new web-based reference database called Zotero that I'm pretty excited to try out and possibly integrate into my data-collection for my thesis research. Here's a brief description from the website:

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather and organize resources (whether bibliography or the full text of articles), and then lets you to annotate, organize, and share the results of your research. It includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store full reference information in author, title, and publication fields and to export that as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software such as del.icio.us or iTunes, like the ability to sort, tag, and search in advanced ways. Using its unique ability to sense when you are viewing a book, article, or other resource on the web, Zotero will—on many major research sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for you in the correct fields.

It's currently in the Beta stage, but already looks very impressive, as you can see from this online demo. Plus it's compatible with EndNote, the program that I'm currently using to organize and manage my references and comp notes, so this might be just the ticket to integrating online sources into my existing system.

ESRB Ratings System Revamp

Having recently watched the wonderful documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated (a behind-the-scenes look at the American movie ratings system, the MPAA), I can't help but be skeptical of the ESRB's (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) recent announcement that they are revamping their own ratings process to better address, well, content. The big news here is that they've decided to hire full-time raters, which will allow them to now play the games themselves instead of relying on game companies to self-report potentially objectionable content. Both GamePolitics.com and Joystiq have been following this development closely, and you can read some of their articles here and here.

Obviously, it's high time that this switch was made. It's hard to believe that the Board was able to claim objective and accurate ratings based solely on a few clips and game companies' varied (and, yes, subjective) understandings of what the Board would qualify as violent, sexual, etc. content. It made me think about the MPAA, however, and the types of people that make up THEIR ratings team - in This Film is Not Yet Rated, they discovered that the vast majority were middle-aged parents of adult children (and not parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17, as the MPAA suggests), and typically quite middle/upper-middle class (they didn't explore this in too much detail, but the size of their houses and the small salary attached to the position of 'rater' strongly suggests supplementary income). They sit around watching movies all day, taking notes, discussing content, and then vote on a rating.

I just don't think that this same approach is going to work with video games, namely because of the demographics and nature of gameplay. While the average age of a digital game player is 29, the average age of console players and players of games that would require the more-thorough playthrough in the first place (i.e. NOT casual games or online Solitaire, etc.), is surely much lower. And the pool of qualified people - assuming they're looking for raters who are already know how to play videogames (and hopefully are good enough to get through long games and learn the various different control configurations) and not planning on sending new raters to some sort of video game boot camp (which I doubt would really work that well) - is much smaller (and male dominated, which is another issue altogether). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I just don't think it's likely that the same type of people that currently decide on film ratings would be willing or able to play 20+ hours of a game in order to rate it. This could mean a much different set of criteria and demographics for the ESRB raters, and I really wonder if this will change the general tone of the ESRB or its resultant ratings in the future.

New Articles in The Escapist...& Feminist Media Studies

The new issue of The Escapist is out today, featuring a selection of "editor's picks" (articles that didn't play well with the other issues) including an article written by me (yay!) about the topic of my MA research, datamining in kids' advergames. This article is the culmination of quite a bit of hard work - I contacted the magazine's editors last spring to see if they'd be interested in publishing me (and sort of kept pestering them until they agreed), while the article itself is quite a divergence from the style and voice that you become used to as an academic. It was a long road, but one that I'm immensely happy and proud to have taken, as this represents my first professional publication outside of academia. A big thanks to Russ Pitts and the editorial team at The Escapist for giving me this unique opportunity.
Check it out yourself by clicking here.

In a second item of good news (shesh!), the online discussion on Digital Games and Gender I participated in last fall with Helen Kennedy and Mia Consalvo has been published as the "Commentary and Criticism" section of the latest issue of Feminist Media Studies journal. (Subscription is probably required to access the article online)

Child-Generated Content Gets Televised

This news item appeared in KidScreen Daily last week, written by Gary Rusak:

February 19, 1007: Nickelodeon is launching a new TV block...that draws from online counterpart Nick.com. For two hours every weekday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Nickelodeon's Me:TV will feature content uploaded by audience members to its main website.

Hosted by Alexandra Gizela and Jordan Carlos, the block features four kids live on-air via webcam, online voting, gaming, giveaways and celebrity guests. It takes cues from current Nick shows U-Pick Live and Slimetime Live, using a live studio audience and kid participation through instant messaging, phone calls and internet message boards to up the interactive quotient. Kids are encouraged to submit their videos to www.nick.com/metv, where they will be rated and shared by the community, à la YouTube. Unlike the adult-oriented site, however, Me:TV is being heavily monitored and moderated, and the net requires parental permission before it will put any user-generated content on air.

On a related note, YTV will once again hold its Spring Break Show-down, allowing kids to pick what programs will air over their spring break and getting them to vote for favourite shows, etc.

Angelina Ballerina and Barbie Hit the Stage

This is a pretty cute story about a co-venture in the UK between HIT Entertainment and the English National Ballet to bring popular children's character-brand Angelina Ballerina to the real life stage. From the ballet troupe's press release:

Angelina’s Star Performance brings the magic of Angelina Ballerina to life in her first live performance on stage. The production features a cast of eight dancers from English National Ballet with over 100 performances over three weeks in 20 venues across the UK. [...] Angelina’s Star Performance will be a special introduction to ballet for children from the age of 3+ and the tour will be complemented by an education programmed designed to give children the opportunity to experience ballet. The performances will also feature fun activities and workshops in the venues including the opportunity to take part in Angelina Ballerina Dance Academy™ classes.

A similar kind of venture was recently attempted in the US, where you can now catch the Columbus Symphony Orchestra playing live renditions of famous songs included in the Barbie ballet movies, while scenes from the films are projected overhead. The idea behind both projects is to introduce a new generation of youngsters to traditional cultural forms, in this case the symphony and the ballet. Of course, the idea is also to introduce a new level of commercialization to yet another aspect of cultural life. I suppose both parties are getting something out of it - but for the kids watching these productions (or participating in a media-branded ballet class - eek!), it's above all just another case of brand expansion.

To find out about Barbie/Mattel's ongoing relationship with the New York City Ballet, read this!

Sexualization of Girls in the Media

The American Psychological Association (APA) released a new report earlier this week about the on-going sexualization of young girls in advertising, merchandising and the media. In a press release on the reports' findings, Dr. Eileen L. Zurbriggen, a representative of the APA Task Force on Sexualization, states:

“The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development. We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development.”

The Task Force has defined sexualization "as occurring when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another’s sexual use." Their study included an extensive review of published articles examining the contents and effects of a variety of media and marketing, as well as family and peer influence. As with other APA literature reviews into media effects, the report does not argue causality, but does conclude that a link (correlation) is likely and therefore supports reduced exposure and increased parental intervention (such as media education).

I particularly like the way the APA has included products and marketing discourse in its review, as seen in this article about inappropriately sexy children's toys (such as Bratz dolls). They seem to be approaching the issue in a comprehensive way, demonstrating how a coherent and near-ubiquitous message of sexualization can be found across the gamut of children's (and particularly girls') culture--from toys and clothing, to media and public discourse, to peer groups and how the issues are addressed at home. It's much more convincing than a mere media effects model (which sometimes tries to isolate influence), primarily because it tries to take into account the way in which we experience the media as (more or less) integrated elements of our particular cultural environment...instead of as a series of somewhat distinct relationships.

Anyway, there seems to be a lot going on around this topic these days, with a high profile lawsuit in Australia involving a left-wing think tank's claims that retailer David Jones sexually exploits children in its ads. This will be the first time the issue of sexualization in advertising has been considered by a court, so it will be interesting to see how it all turns out. There are also a number of books coming out, both academic and general interest, including one co-authored by Jean Kilbourne and Diane Levin (planned title: So Sexy, So Soon), as well as one by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown entitled Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our daughters from marketers' schemes (available now). For a great look at the history of eroticization and sexualization of young girls in Western popular culture, I recommend Valerie Walkerdine's wonderfully provocative book Daddy's Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture.

Trend Watch: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Merchandising Bonanza

The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles computer-animated movie is coming out on March 23, amidst a stunningly comprehensive cross-promotion/merchandising bonanza that will attempt to revive the brand to its glory days of yore. One of my most vivid memories of the original TMNT toy fad from the 80s and early 90s involves the release of the second feature film, green popcorn at the cinema (even Maniwaki did not escape THAT grosserific promotional stunt), and an extended period of wearing our karate gui at inappropriate times to make sure everyone knew that we, too, were Ninjas. Everyone had a favourite Turtle (Donatello!), and there was a unique kind of frenzy around the brand that I do not remember really ever experiencing before TMNT.

While a television show based on the original hit series has aired on Saturday Mornings over the past couple of years with some success, the brand has yet to reproduce that same level of frenzy among today's youth. As with many of these retro-80s brands, however, the secret ingredient is parents' nostalgia - the hope is that as parents watch the show or film with their kids, their warm and fuzzy memories (of the brands they themselves enjoyed as kids) will compell them to try to relive the experience through their children...by buying them the products, bringing them to see the film, etc. This strategy has been gradually building momentum, as 80s kids (the first generation to experience a hyper-commercialized children's culture) have now reached adulthood and are starting to have kids of their own. And I suspect we'll see a lot more of it in the next 5-7 years (as more of us start having families).

Here's the full list of cross-promo initiatives that we can look forward to in the coming months, as provided by KidScreen:

McDonald's: TMNT Happy Meals with eight different premiums will be available and promoted through TV, radio and online campaigns.

Airheads: A special lime-flavored Airhead will be included in 12 million packs of the candies. Each package will also contain a TMNT temporary tattoo. TV spots will tag the promotion.

Time Warner Cable: Time Warner's many media outlets are going to promote a sweepstakes that offers the chance to win a trip to Warner Bros. Studios. Additionally, the company is holding advance screenings in three major US markets and mall events in Dallas and L.A. The TMNT Ubisoft video game is slated to sit at the center of the promos.

Cool Cuts 4 Kids: The salon chain is offering TMNT coloring books, card games and other items, as well as a sweepstakes to win a private screening of the movie. The chain will also distribute advance movie passes in Dallas.

Kmart: Customers who purchase US$10 worth of TMNT movie toys from Playmates Toys will receive an exclusive pack of four collectible trading cards.

Wal-Mart: 1,000 of the chain's top stores are giving away movie posters to every customer who buys a TMNT movie toy.

Toys 'R' Us: Customers who spend US$20 on Playmates Toys' TMNT movie merch will receive a US$5 movie-branded gift card from the chain.

Licensee count: 35 manufacturers are onboard with products ranging from video games (Ubisoft) to apparel (Hot Topic).

Global Internet Penetration 2006

eMarketer.com has published the most recent statistics on Internet penetration by population (in both millions and %) for a number of countries around the world. While the US still represents the world's largest Internet market (181.9 million), the article predicts that China is likely to "take the lead" within the next couple of years. The world's largest country currently holds the world's second largest market, with 133.5 million online, but at a mere 10.2% penetration rate (compared to the US at 63.6%) China still has a lot of room to grow as Internet access eventually expands into the bulk of its population. Canada continues to rank among the "most connected" countries in the world with a 63.4% penetration rate, just behind the US, Australia (64.5%) and Japan (68.4%). These statistics seem a little low to me (esp. for Canada), so proceed with caution when using them.

There are currently over 1 billion Internet users worldwide, representing 16.6% of the global population.

Speaking Engagement: ACT Book Workshop

Update: You can now access the full program, abstracts as well as (coming soon) audio and video files of the presentations (including mine) on the ACT Lab website. Enjoy!

Next week I will be presenting an overview of the work I've been doing with Andrew Feenberg on expanding instrumentalization theory to the study of digital games, as part of a one-day workshop for the upcoming Applied Communication Technology (ACT) Lab book. Here's the official announcement:

Graduate students in the ACT Lab have been working for a year with Dr. Andrew Feenberg and several of his colleagues on a forthcoming book entitled (Re)Inventing the Internet: Critical Case Studies. This workshop is a report on the progress of their research. The presentations correspond to chapters that explore the social construction of the Internet in a variety of settings, from video games to online education, civic participation to music sharing. The theme is the shaping of the Internet by the practices of users who attempt to influence its design and impact. The Internet appears in these presentations not just as a functional device but also as a field of struggle within which a variety of social and technical factors meet, contend, and converge to produce new forms.

Presenters include noted philosopher of technology Dr. Andrew Feenberg, communication scholar and author of Internet Society Dr. Maria Bakardjieva and Dr. Norm Friesen (Canada Research Chair at Thompson River University). Other panelists include: Ted Hamilton, Cindy Xin, Michael Felczak, Florence Chee, Sara Grimes, Darryl Cressman and Kate Milberry.

Friday, February 23, 2007
Segal Graduate School of Business (500 Granville St.)
4800 Policy Room
10am-4pm

The workshop is co-sponsored by SFU’s School of Communication and the Institute for the Humanities.
Admission is FREE but reservations are required. Call 604-268-7845 to reserve seats.

My presentation will focus on a chapter I'm co-authoring with Andrew called "Rationalizing Play: A critical theory of digital gaming." Here's the abstract:

Despite the rapidly growing body of research and theoretical discussion of digital games and gaming communities, few serious attempts have thus far been made to establish a critical theory of digital game technologies. Yet games exhibit rational features in all societies by their very logic, which implies equality of players whose moves constitute equivalents exchanged under strict classifications and rules according to strategies of optimization with precisely calculable results. In this way, games appear as a realm of rational behaviour long before rationalization overtakes society as a whole. As long as they were limited to individual activities practiced within traditional contexts, however, they did not represent a form of social rationality. With the spread of new forms and practices in digital gaming, particularly the growing participation in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) on the Internet, the rational features of games become the basis for the production of a form of social rationality analyzable on terms similar to those employed in the study of technology.

This paper attempts to construct a new framework for the study of games as sites of social rationalization, applying Feenberg's critical theory of technology through an expansion and modification of his concepts of primary and secondary instrumentalization. We begin by making the case for a consideration of games as systems of social rationalization, akin to other modern systems such as capitalist markets and bureaucratic organizations. We then propose a differentiated conceptualization of play that allows us to understand play as a process through which the player focuses attention away from the undifferentiated action of everyday life. This approach also enables us to see how the experience of play changes as it becomes increasingly rationalized through the technological mediation and widespread standardization that occurs as a game becomes a large-scale social practice. Our theoretical framework culminates in the construction of a theory of the rationalization of play, which we have called ludification, which outlines the key components found in all socially rationalizing games. Finally, we will test our theory by applying our framework to the specific example of MMOGs.

MMOGs present a particularly compelling case study, for their players hold a high level of situated knowledge that enables them to engage with digital games technology in a number of ambiguous and unanticipated ways, and as such continue to have tremendous impact on the development, content and function of games within digital culture. Through these unplanned aspects of technical relations the "margin of manoeuvre" of digital games is uncovered, through which, we will argue, players have the potential to truly revolutionize this new medium. As sites of ongoing struggle between players and programmers over the design of the games and usage of the game elements, MMOGs allow for an exploration of ludification that also considers the potential for democratic rationalization inherent within all socially rationalizing systems.

If any of you are in the Vancouver area and would like to attend, I advise reserving asap, as it would seem spaces are quickly filling up. And if any anonymous readers are able to make it, please do introduce yourself to me after the talk!


Updated: Press Coverage of (Re)Inventing the Internet:
"Commerce 'a threat' to democracy of Internet" in the National Post
Same story in the Vancouver Sun
TRU Press Release

UNICEF's Annual Report on Children's Well-Being: Canada Ranks 12

The UN released its annual report on children's well-being in the world's 21 richest (OECD) countries yesterday, showing a continued negligence on the part of powerful nations when it comes to the care of their youngest citizens. While Canada came in 2nd for Education and 6th for Material Well-Being, we scored 12 overall, tied with Greece. This is particularly surprising given that Canada is consistently placed at the top of the UN's Human Development Index (the Quality of Life Survey). With low scores in young people's sense of well-being (15th), risky behaviours (17th), peer/family relationships (18th), and health and safety (13th), Canada will have some work to do before its kids catch up with its adults. We also have a disproportionately large number of families living below the poverty line, a large percentage of which are single-parent households.

Meanwhile, the US and the UK occupied the lowest overall scores, coming in 20th and 21st respectively, with low scores in all six of the measured categories. I can't help but think of the soaring childhood obesity rates in both of these countries, and wonder how much all of these things might be linked. For example, the US scored last in health and safety, which measures things like low birth weight and infant mortality (both of which are often associated with developing countries and low-income groups), but also very low (20th) in peer/family relationships and risky behaviour.

Here's the full list:

1. The Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada (tie)
12. Greece (tie)
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom

And here are the top scorers for each of the six categories measured:

Material Well-Being: Sweden
Health and Safety: Sweden
Educational Well-Being: Belgium
Family and Peer Relationahips: Italy
Behaviours and Risks: Sweden
Subjective Well-Being: The Netherlands

You can download the report, read the UNICEF press release, or check out this article in yesterday's Globe and Mail (registration may be required after 7 days) for more information.

Lucas, from Star Wars to Lego

(Image reproduced from Gizmondo)

In recognition of his massive contributions to media-driven toy mechandising and the invention of the contemporary action figure, George Lucas was inducted into the toy industry Hall of Fame this weekend. The event both launched the American International Toy Fair and set the tone for the fair's (and the industry's) ongoing emphasis on movie-toy crossovers. Lucas has played a key role in the evolution of children's play culture, primarily by way of his numerous and highly innovative forays into the licensing and merchandising of the Star Wars franchise. The films have supplied a seemingly endless array of characters, creatures, vehicles and starships upon which toys, action figures, LEGO building sets and now video games continue to be based. More importantly, Star Wars was the basis for a new level of cross-media, cross-product, transnational synergy that soon re-set the bar for what a successful kids' media brand could hope to achieve. As Dan Fleming (1996: 96), author of Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture (one of my comp readings) writes, "[I]nternational merchandising of this kind is a ten-times more lucrative business now than it was before Star Wars...[The release of the first Star Wars film] marks an unmistakable watershed in terms of a much more densely interconnected and interdependent global popular culture of imagery and artifacts."

The bust that LEGO has created in honour of Lucas' induction (seen above) is a particularly apt symbol of Lucas' on-going role in shaping children's play, through both the spread of media-branding into an ever expanding diversity of children's playthings, as well as the close relationship this shares with digitization. LEGO and Star Wars currently enjoy an immensely lucrative partnership, that extends both brands from the physical (LEGO playsets and related merchandise) to the virtual realm (through the LEGO Star Wars video games and highly popular online community). Both incarnations promote a form of narrativised or branded play that in fact encourages kids to appropriate, subvert, and manipulate, but ultimately submit to the thematic motifs and narrative structures provided by the films and related media. Looking again to Fleming's (1996: 104) analysis, we can see how his description of Star Wars brand action figures and toys can easily apply to the LEGO sets and video games as well:

"The narrative elements, or derived 'play scenarios' as Kenner's Star Wars toy designers thought of them, marked a substantially new development in the way children were being encouraged to interact with toys."

While previous TV-based toys encouraged kids to play out scenes or scenarios from the texts themselves,

"these new narrative contexts had multiple narrative possibilities deliberately built into them from the beginning. With clearly established teams of characters and basic story structures..." kids were given the basic tools for the creation of endless plot derivatives, and encouraged to do so.

I'm not sure what exactly to make of all this, but I do like "narrativised play" as a concept. I find it much more suitable to the malleable, semi-empowering forms of branded play that are currently so popular among the children's industries--play that integrates real opportunities for agency and creativity (and user-generated content) within the overarching, oppressive authority of a well-defined media (or consumer) brand.

You can read the Lucas Film press release from back in May (when the announcement was first made) here.

Or click here for a fascinating story about LEGO Education Centers via KidScreen.

Cyberkids at the Toy Fair

The American International Toy Fair starts next week (Feb. 11-14) and this year everyone is all "a buzz" about " high tech"...again! Part of this is a result of the ongoing celebratory discourse around tech-savvy "cyberkids" (which promotes the idea that if kids are encouraged to develop their innate technological skills they will be better prepared for a future as IT workers), but mostly the industry seems to be responding to consumer trends. The US toy industry grew for the first time in ages last year (to $22.3 billion), primarily due to a 22% increase in the "youth electronics" category--which grew from $871.5 million (2005) to $1.1 billion (2006). (Note: That's not including video games, which have their own category and represented an additional $12.5 billion last year in the US alone). The Toy Fair (as it's called) is a big deal for toy manufacturers and retailers, who are now dealing with a $60 billion global industry which remains dominated by US toy companies (Mattel and Hasbro are the biggest in the world, with Japanese companies Bandai and Sanrio, and Denmark's Lego rounding out the top five), and by US retailers (Wal-Mart and Toys'R'US are the top two toy sellers in the world (in that order)).

As toy trend specialist Reyne Rice describes, "About four to five years ago we saw that kids were starting to leave the toy industry for four main areas: music, fashion, electronics and entertainment. So by bringing those play patterns into products that are suitable and accessible for kids -- and priced for families' wallets -- the youth electronics aisle has exploded with those types of products."

While tech toys are seemingly nothing new, it appears that their dominance over this year's Toy Fair is worthy of note. I also noticed two key themes in the press and corporate discourse around the event so far that I think are worth exploring:

1. Toying with Technology
The first key theme is a sort of dumbing down or "toy-ification" of existing technologies that are believed to be popular among kids. This is immediately apparent in Gelfand's Wired coverage, wherein he states: "[T]oy manufacturers will be introducing a host of adult technologies aimed at small children -- including kid-friendly laptops, graphics tablets, digital cameras and a host of other high-tech items." A good example is the ClickStart laptop for kids, which consists of a toy computer that plugs into the TV instead of into real computer applications or the internet. According to Chris Byrne (the "Toy Guy"), "Kids insist on being on the computer, and giving them one that satisfies that desire to be like mom and dad, and have a computer, but one that connects to the TV, is really good" (cited in MarketWatch).

I see here a fascinating contradiction - on the one hand, there's this urge to have the child play with technology, but on the other hand the implication is that real technologies are for adults. Instead of really engaging with the technologies themselves, these toys encourage kids to "play" at or role-play using the computer. A sort of Easy-Bake Oven for the digital age. Of course, the idea to have kids "play" at computers is an attempt to safely replicate the widespread reality of kids playing on computers. By transforming a new and perhaps threatening relationship, that of children-and-technology, into the more traditionally understood relationship of "children and toy", the notion of the cyberchild is reconstituted in familiar terms--where the parent retains authority over technology, and the child's activities are redirected towards the contained space of the playroom.

2. Enclosure
The second trend involves toys and software aimed at constraining existing technologies to give parents a sense of control over their children’s technologically-mediated activities. Three new toys in particular stand out in this regard, Mattel/Fisher-Price’s Easy-Link Internet Launchpad (which plugs into your PC’s USB, and acts as a portal and internet filter to ensure kids can only access certain age-appropriate websites…perhaps primarily those created by Mattel???), Vtech’s V.Space online (an educational desktop application), and Hasbro/Tiger Games’ Net Jet (an online gaming system for pre-teens). Again, the emphasis is on control, though in this case the toy/software integrates existing technologies (such as the internet) but in a highly limited way. Thus, kids can go on the internet, but can only visit certain websites and engage in certain types of activities. As with the previous batch, however, I fear that the social construction of these new technological artefacts positions children in a very specific and highly ideological way. While the celebratory discourse around kids and technology remains an underlying factor here (it is, after all, the aura), the relationship is perceived as something that must be contained, enclosed, stopped and modified. The creative aspects seem to be left out almost completely (although there are some art/graphics games that encourage creativity with digital art), as are the social and cultural aspects of going online to play with other kids or to participate in a new form of cultural production. Instead, kids’ digital play is re-interpreted as a highly purposeful and primarily commercialized form of play. The emphasis on education is no coincidence—the desire to transform children’s online play, as Ellen Seiter describes, into a productive pursuit is obvious within these toys which seek to appropriate the relationship by selling parents the magic beans of the digital age: safety and education.

Here are the full articles for the Wired, and MarketWatch coverage.