Marvel's LittleBigPlanet - Product Placement or Player Generated Content?

I haven't really had much time to absorb let alone relay any of the barrage of information coming out of this year's Comic-Con, but I came across this little gem yesterday and just had to write up a post about it. Sony and Marvel have entered into a cross-promotional partnership that will see official Marvel costumes (available for purchase and download) introduced into Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet. As The Escapist's Andy Chalk writes:

"While we don't know what exactly to expect from this new relationship, it does open some intriguing possibilities for future crossovers. Will the release of new Marvel films result in official LittleBigPlanet crossovers? Could characters created specifically for LittleBigPlanet eventually find their way into a Marvel comic? (It's happened before, you know.) Perhaps a bit more ominously, is it possible that Sony will begin to clamp down on user-created levels that tie in, unofficially, with the Marvel Universe?"

While others have furthermore speculated that the costumes might come with special powers, Chalk's mention of the IP implications is what piqued my interest (that and the possibility of playing as and designing levels for Rogue, Mystique or She-Hulk). Historically, Marvel has not adopted the most open approach to having its characters and IP re-appropriated by gamers. The biggest example of this remains the The Marvel v. NCSoft/Cryptic Studios case back in 2005, wherein Marvel filed a lawsuit against the game developer in regards to City of Heroes, on the basis that the game made it possible for players to infringe on Marvel's IP. Yikes! Follow the slippery slope down that fuzzy line of logic, and you end up with lawsuits launched against Microsoft Word (or paint supply companies for that matter) on the basis that their software makes it possible for people to plagiarize. Anyway, the Marvel v. NCSoft case got its fair share of press back in 2005, for instance over at Terra Nova. And some excellent points about creativity and freedom of expression were made within the motions to dismiss that were filed at the time, such as:

"Kids with wandering imaginations have long decorated school notebooks with pictures of fantastic and supernatural beings of their own design. The ingenuity of individuals, as expressed through the creation of characters incorporating timeless themes of mythology, patriotism, 'good,' and 'evil,' has been a source of entertainment in the form of role-playing games for ages. In the face of technology that enables individuals to engage in such activities in a virtual, on-line context, Marvel Enterprises, Inc. and Marvel Characters, Inc. (collectively, 'Marvel') have taken the unprecedented step of attempting to appropriate for themselves the world of fantasy-based characters..."

The case was ultimately settled out of court, an outcome that caused quite a bit of debate in and of itself...did it mean that City of Heroes was in the right, or did it mean a further delay in the establishment of "fair use" within a gaming/UGC context? You can read some of that coverage here, here and here. For instance, as Greg Lastowka (assistant professor at Rutgers School of Law and Terra Nova author) noted at the time (as quoted on ZDNet):

"...[T]he terms of the settlement apparently allow the NCSoft character creation engine to stand, which is a victory for the players. [...] However, Marvel's claims of player infringement have not been formally rejected by the court, which means analogous claims might be pursued by Marvel, or a like-minded company, in the future."

The settlement was made all the more ambiguous by a subsequent announcement that Cryptic Studios (the makers of City of Heroes) and Marvel (and Mictosoft!) were teaming up to develop an MMO based on the Marvel Universe. As Alice would say, "Curiouser and curiouser!" For those of you interested in the outcome of it all, I'm not too sure what happened, except that last week Joystiq reported that the Diablo creator David Brevik had been hired on as lead in the Marvel MMO's development.

Flash forward a couple of years to yesterday's announcement, and Marvel's tune certainly appears to have changed. Or has it? As Chalk points out, the partnership and introduction of branded ($$) costumes is likely to come with some strings attached. Would Marvel allow "counterfeit" costumes to continue to compete (especially as free downloads) in the same LittleBig Market? Probably not. And seeing as their solution the last time they found an IP loophole was to become business partners with the loophole provider, it does seem pretty likely that this is not merely a promotional opportunity for the media giant, but a preemptive strike as well.

In addition, there's still that ongoing, unresolved issue of players' rights vs. IP holders' rights, which in LittleBigPlanet has unfolded in a strange back and forth, with some players' levels being deleted "without warning or explanation", while other "media-inspired" levels have continued on without hassle. For many of the players whose levels have been deleted (**not including what I can only assume must be another million removed for obscene or abusive content**), there seems to be a general feeling that copyright is the common denominator. As Kotaku's Owen Good writes:

"Traffic on the LittleBigWorkshop discussion board seems to back [this] up. "This just happened to tons of levels in what seems like a matter of minutes, including my own level 'Failure To Launch.' " Says one user. "By the trend I see from the levels I can no longer play from my recent levels on my planet, its all about copyright. Some levels I've seen now unplayable due to moderation: Pacman, Batman, and Scrubs related level."

If "Failure to Launch" was taken down because it shares a title with a romantic comedy from 2006, then this is truly out of hand. The thread is more than nine pages long now, including a claim that a level based on the PlayStation 3 was taken down. Destructoid rightly points out the absurdity of a console exclusive being unable to refer to that console."

Of course, a plethora of player-generated levels based on videogames, films and television properties remain in circulation, which begs the question of which properties/brands are "safe" to reference and why. The durability of certain media-inspired levels is probably in part the result of the vastness of LittleBigPlanet's user-generated levels catalogue (which recently reached the 1 million mark...more on that below), and in part the result of a growing realization among media producers that UGC might just be the most effective form of "web 2.0" marketing you can find (and it's free!). As Kotaku's Luke Plunkett describes, not all companies are upset by player-generated IP infringement. This sentiment is backed up by Media Molecule's co-founder Alex Evans, who in an interview with IGN describes three copyright issues that the game has faced from the outset:

"There were three issues; one was negative and two were positive. The negative one was how hard it was to get worldwide legal harmony, because different countries have different laws around copyright infringement. We knew that people would be creative, and that there would be references. It was hard getting the right balance on a worldwide angle. But then there's been these two mad positives; one was the high quality of the levels, including the infringing ones. The other point is the number of IP owners who came up to us and said please whitelist us – we'll never ever ask you to pull infringing stuff. I can't say who that is, but those two things really shocked me, I think it shocked [the IP holders], who were like, hang on, my IP's being represented and it's being represented really well. The IP holders have to have last say over the representation of their brand, and that's fair enough, so we've always got to have a method for people misusing a brand, but what's been really lovely is how well represented so many brands are."

A great example of the type of "synergy" that Evans is describing here can be seen in this recent Ghostbusters cross-over.

But when you look at all the creativity and care that's going into so many of the player-generated content, you have to wonder why all of these partnerships and product placements seem so necessary to the IP holders (as opposed to just letting the players have some fun). Will Marvel's "Spiderman" really be that much better than this homemade version? And what about the fun of re-creating your favourite heroes and characters? What will happen to players' freedom to create and recreate when their creations aren't just being monitored and regulated, but supplanted outright by branding initiatives?

It's funny, but also quite timely I think, that this issue should come up (again) now, especially with all the hope and hoopla around Sony's recent announcement that in the nine short months since the game's launch, LBP players have created and uploaded 1 million levels to the PlayStation Network. As David Radd of Industry Gamers writes:

Sony calculates that the number of levels is equal to roughly one level generated every 21 seconds since LittleBigPlanet launched. It would take any one of the 2.4 million unique players that have played LittleBigPlanet online nearly five years playing non-stop to experience every uploaded level.

There's obviously a lot of potential here for democratizing culture and cultural production. Despite the fact that most (80%) PlayStationHome users fall within the typical 18-to-35 year-old male gamer demographic, Sony sees significant promise of player diversification and a gradual bucking of established trends within that other, growing 20%. More diverse representation, more accessible tools, and growing interest in UGC all spell opportunity -- opportunity for a more diverse (obviously), more engaging, active and responsive cultural climate. If, that is, stifling copyright/IP regimes don't throttle the life out of it first.

Revamp!

After many years with the all-pink palette, I decided it was time for an aesthetic overhaul. Apart from the new "look and feel", everything should be in the same place it was (or thereabouts) before I upgraded the template, although I suspect that I may be ironing out some kinks over the next few days as I discover lost items, dead links, and so on.

The image in the banner above is cut out from one of Becky Shaefer's brilliant Lara Croft needlepoint pieces, which circulated the web a few years ago, and which I still get a huge kick out of. Hope she doesn't mind my appropriation of her work.

For you regular readers of Gamine Expedition, please feel free to let me know what you think of the revamp :)

Ridiculous Life Lessons for Silly Girls

I'm happy to see that along with the recent influx of a new (though arguably somewhat recycled) batch of "girl games" (a.k.a. pink games), the debates about girl games, girls and games and the space for girls within gaming culture are all being actively reinvigorated in a great collection of reviews, articles, discussion pieces and forums. Some of my faves so far are The Brainy Gamer's review of Majesco's Drama Queens (Nintendo DS), L.B. Jeffries' summary of the unfolding "girl games" discussion over at PopMatters, Tracey John's tongue-in-cheek Wired review of various "girl games" and the "ridiculous life lessons" that they contain (hence the first part of the title for this post), and now a great response to John's article featured in The Escapist written by Susan Arendt (called "Silly Girls" and the inspiration for the second part of my title for this post). I ended up writing quite a long response to Arendt's article in the Comments section of her article, which I figured could also serve double-duty as a blog post and give me a chance to get my two-cents in. But first, a quick recap of John and Arendt's articles to set up the context.

Tracey John's article reviews a representative selection of the huge number of "girl games" recently introduced (or soon to be) onto the market, pointing out that while parents fixate on violence in videogames as a cause for concern, there's a lot of other things to get worked up about, including gender stereotypes and the limited selection of games that make it to the "pink aisle" at the videogame store (yep, there's one there too!). As John describes, these games contain all of the same hyper-feminized and highly traditional themes and gender scripts found throughout girls' commercial culture:

A wave of new games for tween girls... [are] serving up innocuous gameplay designed to let players become perfect little princesses. Aimed at that lucrative, Hannah Montana-fueled intersection of childhood and adolescence, these games might give 8- to 12-year-olds their first experiences with fashion, make-up, popularity … even boys.

The weird thing is that you can view these "wholesome” games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto’s random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA’s influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS’ upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?

She goes on to describe the themes and "life lessons" included in EA's new Charm Girls Club, The WB's The Clique: Diss and Make Up, Majesco's The Daring Game for Girls (which gets the only truly positive review of the bunch), a new edition to Dreamcatcher Interactive's Dreamer Series: Top Model, two more Ubisoft entries Imagine: Babyz Fashion (can't wait to play at getting yelled at by the babyz' stage parents this time around) and Imagine: Detective, two new girl games by THQ - Princess in Love and My Boyfriend (which sound like basically the exact same game), two more from Ubisoft in their Style Lab series - Makeover and Jewelry Design and Nintendo's Style Savvy. Lots of make-up and fashion and social relationships, reminding me very much of the "girl games" movement of the mid-1990s, which saw similar titles emerging from both large conglomerates (like Mattel) and from a number of the independent, feminist developers attempting to establish a more clearly delineated, more popular, girls' games market by focusing storylines and themes on stuff that actual girls were understood to enjoy. Of course, this raises all the usual problems raised by essentialism...when applied to girls or gender or any group, there's always an enormous risk of stereotyping, of over-emphasizing certain elements and particular types while excluding others all together.

And this is where Susan Arendt's article comes in. Arendt basically responds to John's article by defending girls' right to play silly games with traditional themes if that's what they want, and by pointing out that as a culture we're much too quick to dismiss anything "girlie" as necessarily bad or lesser. As Arendt writes:

Ah, what's that I hear? That these games "perpetuate negative stereotypes"? Which stereotypes would these be, exactly? The ones that young girls like cute boys, looking at clothes, and gossiping about each other? Granted, it's been a few years since I was the target demographic for these games, but when I was a wee lass, I engaged in all of those activities so much that I practically had Master's Degrees in them. I somewhat doubt all that much has changed.

The simple truth is that young girls like stupid things. They like shopping and makeup and boys and ponies and glitter and The Jonas Brothers and a whole legion of other things that will make you feel like your brain is dissolving if you think about them for too long. And please, this is not your cue to protest about how you were never like that, you liked bugs and science and all the things that small girls typically don't because you're not about to be forced into some label, dammit! Get over it. If you grew up preferring dirtbikes to Barbies, that's grand, but if you didn't - if you fretted over the best color nail polish and prowled the local clothing stores like a lion on the savannah - well, that's ok, too.

[And here's my response, reproduced from The Escapist comments forum:]

I love the debate and issues that both these articles engage with. Girl games suffer from the same ostracization as most other forms of "girl culture" - whether it's princess parties and My Little Pony, or the daring girls who have the nerve to join the dirt biking team, there's always someone around just waiting to point out how "wrong" it is. Though in defense of Tracey John's article, that shouldn't mean that we can't hold them to the same standards as any other game... in terms of subjecting them to critique, analysis and discussion, as well as demanding the same levels of variety, innovation, immersion, good storylines, characters, etc. etc. as any other genre. John points out a pretty important aspect of this "new wave" of girl games - they mostly all revolve around the same three or four themes, contributing to the ongoing (though admittedly quite *sparkly*) cluttering of a market that seems to be growing despite these games rather than because of them.

My beef with this new spurt of girl games isn't that they exist - I agree with Susan that they should if there's a demand for them, but that they're taking shelf space (and development efforts) away from other genres that might do a bit better at filling the substantial gap that still exists within the girls' games market. Girls play online games WAY more than console games (90%+ vs. 28%), and I'm pretty sure that Stardoll, BarbieGirls and The Sims aren't the only titles capturing their attention (Runescape, Club Penguin, and Free Realms are all extremely popular among girl gamers as well). When it comes to console games, Guitar Hero and Wii Sports (and even Grand Theft Auto) rank way up there on girls' lists of their favourite games. I wish the industry would start looking toward girls' actual gaming habits rather than simply reproducing the same old themes that already dominate both the girls' toy aisle (a suffering market as girls now abandon their toys and dolls at younger and younger ages) AND the girls' games shelf.

If the industry is ever going to build more significant and sustainable inroads into the ever-elusive "girls market" they're going to have to add a few more tricks to their dog and pony show (hmm...dogs and ponies sounds like the premise for a new Ubisoft Imagine title). Maybe start by taking all those games that girl gamers already like and then actively market them to other, non-gamer girls? Even if it means that maybe some boys somewhere might see the game being advertised to girls? Even at the risk of associating that game with, *gasp*, girl culture? Would that really be so detrimental to sales figures? Would boys really abandon Guitar Hero just because they saw an ad during Spongebob that featured some girl players and a female voice-over?

Or maybe by finally taking a chance on "Science Mama", realizing that expanding into new markets is never risk-free, and that yet another "Princess Secret Crush" game is just as likely to tank as it is to sell? I mean, how many of these girl games have totally and utterly failed? And how many awesome and innovative girls games have been buried and left for dead by a market that emphasizes same-ness above (and to the detriment of) all else? Thomas mentions this in her blurb on The Daring Game for Girls: "Like the book, the game offers handy tips and facts as well as non-stereotypically female activities, encouraging girls to seek adventure - not boyfriends or cute clothes, for once. So, of course, no one will actually play it." Tell that to Her Interactive, makers of the extremely popular Nancy Drew games. There's so much untapped and unchanneled potential out there, yet all the industry's powerhouses (EA, Ubisoft, etc.) seem to be able to come up with is more of the same. And when a "different" game does somehow manage to get through, they fail to promote it, thereby letting the "market" "prove" there's no room for innovation.

Or maybe by realizing that girls aren't going to be drawn into gaming as a lifelong passion by themes and characters alone (although they are important). Design is so key to attracting new players...intuitive controls, rich environments and, of course, accessibility. The really sad thing about many of the girl games currently on the market - [and I know I'm going to get some negative responses from this, but here goes] - is how poorly they're designed. Clunky, buggy, overly-restrictive, with limited customizability and very low re-playability. Too much endless grinding at repetitive, mostly mindless (and buggy!) mini-games that have little or no relationship with the larger game. And this has been a shockingly pervasive feature of girl games ever since the first wave happened in the mid-1990s. There are of course a number of well designed, innovative titles as well (e.g. Super Princess Peach!!!), but these are way too few and far between. I anticipate that most of the titles in this newest batch will reproduce the norm, not the exception.

All of which really makes me wonder...who and what is this niche really for anyway?

Data Mining Kids and Teens' UGC and Social Networks

Via YPulse, and in follow up to an earlier news item the site broke last week, some coverage and discussion of Echometrix's new service PULSE, a self-described "real-time web based sentiment analytics tool that specializes exclusively on teen data (ages 7 to 21)." The service is already getting some buzz and news attention, and my immediate thoughts and concerns are no more positive now that I've read some of the initial reactions.

First off..."teen data"? Since when are 7-year-olds considered to be teenagers? What they really mean is children and teens, so COPPA should be in full effect here, but anyway. The confusion of kids and teens in Pulse's own descriptions of the service obviously makes it all the more problematic, not to mention difficult to analyze. Although it's possible that they really do distinguish between teens and kids in terms of the data they actually collect in some cases, in others (such as UGC) they are quite explicit about including data from both kids and teens. Furthermore, according to their URL and their Tween Pulse Research Blog, the company is pretty aware that they're not really limiting their research to teens...it probably just sounds more palatable that way.

The rest of the claims made in Pulse's corporate materials are downright creepy, and basically boast about mining youth-produced UGC, blogs, forums websites and chatrooms, along with any IM that "teens" engage in through the company's other product, "FamilySafe." According to Proudfoot, and as the product name would suggest, FamilySafe is an Internet security program that monitors and analyzes everything a child does online, and then alerts the child's parent of "anything alarming" through text messages. So far, FamilySafe monitors approximately 150,000 young people in the US and Canada, all under the rubric of providing parents with more "control" over their kids' online activities. Of course, it's highly doubtful that parents who have signed on to the FamilySafe were considering the larger market value of the "non-alarming" information that is also collected from their children through this service, but then again I guess you can't really be all that surprised when you discover that the market research firm you've paid to monitor your kids has a hidden agenda. Sorry to all the parents who bought FamilySafe unaware of its market research implications, but in this day and age of widespread corporate surveillance, a little research into the company's ownership and a thorough reading of the terms of service is pretty much mandatory when installing software that will track your/your kids' every online move. On the other hand, this is also a great (and possibly very devious) example of the corporate misuse (abuse?) of parents' safety concerns as a Trojan horse for market research and/or marketing.

Anyway, here's an excerpt of The Pulse product description:

Every single minute PULSE is aggregating the web’s social media outlets such as chat and chat rooms, blogs, forums, instant messaging, and web sites to extract meaningful user generated content from your target audience, the teens!

PULSE contextualizes the aggregated content and provides instantaneous customized summaries in real time of the teen market. The PULSE identifies, evaluates, and graphically displays a wide spectrum of analytic information relating to the type, tone, grade, frequency of communications, impressions, needs, desires, hopes, dreams and wants of this teen audience who live on the Web.

[...] we focus on user generated content, which is the only data source solid enough to reveal the author’s true attitude and emotion. We provide you with access to 100% unbiased, unfiltered, and user group generated content from a vast network of teen focused content sources such as forums, blogs, chats and IM conversations.

Well, as unbiased as any of us are when we post stuff online. There is certainly an element of performativity within individuals' online identity management practices that is being ignored here. But this very critique can also become a slippery slope into dismissing the importance of what Pulse and their contemporaries are doing. A good example of this is found in the article discussed in today's YPulse post about, um, PULSE. The article, written by Shannon Proudfoot for Canada.com, describes the invasive nature of the data mining service but quickly jumps to downplaying its importance by positioning the service within the context of that standard old argument of 'how little it will ultimately matter because you can't really find anything out that way, and people don't post real info about themselves online, and aren't marketers just so out of touch with the youth, etc., etc.'. Not that I recommend starting a moral panic around this or anything, but there's got to be a better way of exploring these things without it coming off as either insanely and unrealistically pessimistic or as insanely and unrealistically optimistic. Luckily anastasia is much more nuanced in her discussion of the article, outlining both the perceived weaknesses of the Pulse methodology, as well as highlighting the need for regulation "when it comes to mining data of internet users under the age of 18."

In terms of the methodology, obviously the corporate description is overly celebratory and vague. anastasia seems optimistic that the data collected won't be all that useful, as do the teen and IT expert Proudfoot interviews in her article. Granted, Proudfoot's interview with Echometrix CEO Jeffrey Greene doesn't reveal much to the contrary, as he glibly dismisses tried and tested qualitative research methods (which the market industry has really perfected over the past three decades) in favour of Pulse's own quantitative approach:

"Services like Pulse are in huge demand because they provide nearly instant feedback in a swiftly changing media environment, Greene said, and fly-on-the-wall results are much more accurate than traditional market research.

"Teens are so clever that people who attempt to do research in the teen marketplace often tell us that teens 'game the system,' " he said. "When teens participate in an online poll or a focus group, they know or think they know what answer we want to hear, so that's the answer they provide."

The company said Pulse predicted Kris Allen's surprise American Idol victory before the results were announced in May. Teens talk about iPods 13 times more than the Zune MP3 player, the program reveals, and the iPhone gets four times more buzz than the BlackBerry."

But the thing is, the data they're collecting includes a lot more than the mere number of times a particular brand name is mentioned, and we would be wise to remember that data mining technology is advancing at lightening speed before assuming that their methods are ineffective just because they're not releasing any "rich" proprietary information to the press. YPulse's anastasia describes PULSE's methodology as lacking in comparison to focus groups and surveys because the data is likely to be decontextualized and misinterpreted...an opinion also expressed by Proudfoot's teen insider. But rather than think of PULSE's market analysts as a bunch of out-of-touch suits, who "at 50-something has no idea how a teenager thinks, saying, 'This is really interesting!'", we should instead suspect that some pretty on-the-ball, tech savvy, youth culture (and behaviour) experts are much more likely to be the ones interpreting the data collected...and rather than looking at solely at frequencies, i have no doubt in the world that they will also be tracking how teens talk and when, to whom and how their opinions change over time, and applying all sorts of rich qualitative methods in their analysis (discourse analysis, trend analysis, profiling, identifying archetypes, etc.). That's the beauty of data mining...the info you can collect is vast and the connections you can make between units of data boggle the mind, and there's always the potential for rich interpretation...even if that's not what Echometrix is currently promoting (or revealing, or even doing).

Proudfoot also interviews an independent technology analyst, Jesse Hirsh, who expresses similar reservations about the efficacy of the system, stating: "Nobody ever posts an honest Facebook photo of themselves. They post the best Facebook photo of themselves, so they're not really being honest, are they?" But then again, doesn't that picture actually tell us quite a lot about what that person wants, even if it's not such an accurate picture of who they are? What they want to portray to others, how they would like to see themselves, what they think of as an ideal or appropriate or funny public display, etc.? And isn't marketing all about identifying and exploiting our wants and ideals?

Overall, what this story tells me is that even if PULSE doesn't succeed with their own attempt to data mine youth-produced UGC, the fact remains that the technology is out there and its ability to exploit kids' online contributions, thoughts and communications is being overtly and unapologetically promoted as such to the public. If there were any lingering doubts that kids' UGC requires some regulatory protection to prevent its misuse and misappropriation by (adult-led) corporations, this newest case study should finally put them to rest. It's in the public domain, but are kids' authorship rights really being fostered and adequately supported in this kind of environment? Perhaps it's time for a Creative Commons-produced terms of service, which teens and children can put on their websites, blogs and forums, explicitly and formally forbidding users of the site (human or automated, including Echometrix's webcrawlers) from appropriating content published on the site for profit without explicit permission of the author...I mean, isn't that how the public domain is actually supposed to work anyway?

On a more positive note, big props to Proudfoot for interviewing a teen as one of the experts on this clearly teen-relevant issue. Awesome!

Princess Culture Marches On

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago re-examining the whole girls' "Princess Culture" phenomenon, which I think strikes a particular cord right now (economic recession, the start of wedding season, etc., etc.). Written by Megan Basham, the article explores both the puffy gowns and tiaras princess culture, as well as the many luxury items and merchandise that have attached themselves to the princess phenomenon in title only (think Paris Hilton versus Cinderella, but as nodes along the same bubblegum pink continuum). As Basham writes:

Call it trickle-down narcissism. Today, even as the economic crisis continues, many middle-class parents aspire to give their daughters the best of everything, "the best" meaning the most expensive. A quick tour around suburbia will show princess-themed bedrooms (the rhinestoned-and-feathered kind, not the cartoon-character kind) and ostentatious birthday parties, as well as pedigreed dogs being toted in designer bags by 10-year-olds. Maintaining a diva daughter has become one more way to one-up the Joneses.

The article goes on to describe recent research and a new book by Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, which tracks the rising egotism among college students...particularly among young women. Twenge's research found that "college-age women are developing narcissistic traits at four times the rate of college-age men", a trend she attributes at least in part to the many ways in which the "princess phenomenon" surfaces within girls' lives. Here, she seems to be referring to a sort of "trickle down" effect of princess culture into parenting practices which Twenge says can be described as "princess parenting"...the over-indulgence of daughters who are lavished with luxury goods and "unrealistic praise. Parents not only tell girls they are the prettiest and smartest but also train them to see themselves as the center of their worlds through clothes and accessories."

It's an interesting study, though it's a bit hard to swallow when contrasted with all the research and stats showing the continued prevalence of body image issues and low self esteem among young women and girls (I suppose the phenomenon she describes involves only a very particular subset of young women). Still, the connections between princess-style narcissism and subjectivities of consumption is fascinating, by which I am referring to the bit about girls being taught that they are the "centre of the world" but also that their position as such is mediated through (or even dependent on) the consumption and display of commodity goods (clothes, accessories, etc.). This whole idea of expressing "uniqueness" and worth through the display of luxury goods certainly does seem to tie in with the whole ideology behind "princess culture", which even in its more "traditional" form of dressing up in Disney store-bought princess gowns has become deeply intertwined with conspicuous consumption.

Dan Cook talked a bit about this last year (for e.g., check out this interview with Cook in follow up to a talk he gave on the subject), and it looks like his current research might be focused on unpacking the Disney Princess phenomenon specifically. According to Cook, the rampant popularity (and $$ success) of the Disney Princesses line is still growing, and Disney Princess merchandise is now a $4 billion industry, much of it focused around “lavishness and ultra-femininity". I've written a bit about the criticisms around the hyper-feminine ideals promoted by the Disney Princesses before, which you can read more about by following the links provided in this post from last year. You should also read this excellent piece written by Shannon Prince for Racialicious, which discusses Tiana, from the upcoming The Princess and the Frog, who is both the newest addition to the Disney Princesses line and the first African-American Princess. Prince's essay provides a thoughtful, critical analysis of both Tiana and the Princesses in general, and addresses many of the issues that have been raised around the Disney Princesses by both academics and feminist activists.

OR, for a completely different perspective, check out this article from Australian news source The Age.

I like that princess culture is starting to get some good critical inquiry from the likes of Cook and Twenge. The initial reactions were, well, a bit reactionary, and seeing as the phenomenon doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon, some good unpacking of what it means and how it functions within girls' lives is really key. Another great example of this emerging academic trend is Miriam Forman-Brunel's (who wrote Made to Play House, a fantastic history of the commercialization of girls' doll play) recent historical overview and critical analysis of princesses in girls' culture, co-authored with Julie Eaton and entitled "The Graceful and Gritty Princess", which appeared in a recent issue of the American Journal of Play.

Other sources of interest include a "Disney Princess Watch" initiated by Parents for Ethical Marketing, through which you might want to check out this recent photo exhibit by Dina Goldstein entitled Fallen Princesses. The project, as Goldstein describes, aims to "place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues." Her work (as you will see) is directly inspired by the Disney Princess line, and engages directly with both the imagery and themes promoted by the Disney Princess' films and associated cultural/consumer products. It pushes the envelope a bit, but that's a good thing, isn't it? Goldstein writes that in coming up with the scenarios for her photos, she "began to imagine Disney's perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues." I find the Belle and Jasmin photos particularly memorable...at once shocking and cliche, which is a difficult mix of feelings to evoke.

Virtual Worlds Law at NYLS State of Play

I was in the midst of semi-live blogging about today's State of Play VI conference, when I noticed that Greg Lastowka is already doing a darn thorough job of it over at Terra Nova. Since there's no need to reproduce his notes, I'll just provide you with some highlights and some of my thoughts on what's gone on so far today...see comments section (below) for (possibly) more updates later on.

Biggest highlight so far has been the fact that nearly every speaker so far has mentioned kids' rights and legal/content trickiness in their talks to some degree. Raph Koster's keynote (which largely centered around his current project, Metaplace, a ugc virtual worlds building platform/community, which seems pretty neat) had a bit about kids, the problems (logistical and ethical) of restricting minors, or trying to. He also raised a pretty provocative question re: how "big" does a virtual space need to be to qualify as a world...he gave the example of The Little Prince, whose planet is tiny, but a world nonetheless...which I really liked since I've often struggled with defining (or defending) some of the kids' vw's I look at as truly qualifying as "VWs"

This morning, I also attended the session on virtual worlds law, "Current Legal Issues for Virtual Worlds". Here, Roxanne E. Christ presented a historical typology of UGC, which was a little sketchy, but I liked her categories (if not the categorizations of sites/activities that went with them) - "user-moved content" (space shifting, content shifting, customization), "user-shared content" a.k.a. peer to peer (e.g. napster, grokster, etc.), "user-mashed content" a.k.a. bricollage (YouTube, Jaydiohead, but in here she also talks about sites like Veoh, which stream and allow individuals to post and stream content, but don't actually store files or allow for download...are they protected under Safe Harbour clause of the DMCA?, etc.); and "user-created content". Included in this last category are virtual rooms (like Metaplace), machinima, "mini-me's". She says that the UGC revolution is coming - virtual goods as property, user rights in ugc, the eula as the law, and the ownership and use of player data are all current and ongoing issues of relevance here. In terms of the idea of the EULA as law, Christ says (wow...that is so strange to write in a blog post) that this is probably not realistic - there are already cracks in this system, and it raises the issue of minors contracts. (e.g. she mentions that in California, which has the "Jackie Cooley Law" passed in response to the abuse of child actors in the 1940s, minors contracts are voidable, etc. and so in the case of kids' the EULA can't be the law). She suggests that resolution to this issue might be piggybacked onto privacy laws/policies (which already delineate special rights for kids under 13 years, as well as a special set of responsibilities for sites and data brokers dealing with child users). She even listed the issue of the "capacity of minors to contract" as #1 on her list of top 5 issues that need to be resolved now in relation to UGC. Agreed!

On the same panel, Sean F. Kane (who spoke about drafting better, more comprehensible EULAs) - also addresses minors and the issue of "who is accepting it" as a huge question when dealing with minors, complications between parents and kids, age and consent. He and his panel mate should discuss the ethical and legal problems with suggesting that parents can sign for their kids and provide verifiable adult consent through, say, credit card verification. This might cover some bases, but really doesn't deal with the extra challenges presented by children's own rights of ownership and consent (or at the very least to be protected from exploitation and from adults mismanaging their rights and making decisions that may not be in their interest). Examples such as the "Jackie Cooley Law" [**need to find a link to verify spelling, etc.**) raise the huge importance of approaching children's rights and parents' rights as intertwined but also separate.

Speaking of UGC, mash-ups, etc., I finally had the opportunity to see Brett Gaylor's brilliant, fun, awesomely soundtracked, RIP: A Remix Manifesto...on the planeride here, of all places. Shout to to Air Canada (for the first time ever) for including such innovative selections in its Canadian film section. You can watch it for free online. And show it to your students. Or remix it yourself and add more/new content. very cool.

But anyway, I should get back to conferencing like a good delegate. In the meantime, check for updates on Terra Nova, as well as the NYLS State of Play website (currently down, but should be back up and running soon) for video of the keynotes and at least some of the panels.

Update: Afternoon
The afternoon panels have had quite a different tone from the morning sessions...I've attended the industry panel ("Beyond the Magic Circle", which focused on how intangible and affective digital-game based reward systems can be used as motivators for participation in various communities and/or activities...many of them corporate, it seems), and am now in the midst of the "Economies and Economics" session featuring heavy hitters Julian Dibbell (!) and Edward Castronova (!). An an entire panel on virtual economies and economics might sound dry, but what it really comes down to is property, user struggles, democratic rationalization (in some cases), in others, commercialization of play, and some higher level discussion of the blurring of play and trade. In a sense a great follow up to the discussion on Huizinga's magic circle, in particular the one that took place on the backchannels during the panel and Q&A (in fact, Dibbell states as much himself near the end of his panel intro).

First up, Stephanie Rothenberg, a mixed media artist whose work explores user experience, labour and labour issues, and most recently the academic research of Castronova and Dibbell - how cool is that! Rothenberg presented a piece she created with Jeffrey Krausse, which exhibited at last year's Sundance Film Festival, called Invisible Threads, which uses a virtual sweatshop based in Second Life within an installation piece that people could then interact with "irl". The exhibit aims to explore and represent invisible labour flows, making conceptual and tangible connections between goldfarming (which produce immaterial goods out of real labour) and material sweatshops (which produce material goods out of "hidden" or suppressed labour), as well as "playing" at being a labourer (which seems to be the experience of many of the participants who became labourers in the installation piece virtual sweatshop. (She also recommends checking out this film http://www.sleepdealer.com)

Next up, Margaret Wallace from Rebel Monkey, the game design company behind a new virtual world for tweens CampFu. Wallace's talk provided a rare inside look at the discourse, rationale and strategies behind micro-transaction model vw's aimed at kids. She talked about "monetizing engagement", and all the different ways that their company sees user engagement translating into RMT transactions (e.g. Users play together, which makes them want to buy virtual items to show off/communicate to each other; players form teams and make friends, which might make them want to buy gifts for other players, etc.). Like SO many (too many) kids' vw's these days, the game basically offers players the option of playing games or shopping, or else chatting and interacting with other players (community building, social networking, chatting, some collaborative play).

With a look and feel similar to Nicktropolis or BarbieGirls (though with more sophisticated graphics). Wallace describes the game as currently limited to a "sharded experience" environment (i.e. a series of "rooms"...cool term!), but the company plans to switch to a "scrollable world" design in a few months. Wallace reports that even among the players, much of the chat is focused on the goods themselves - avatar customization as fashion statement. Again, like most kids' games, CampFu self-describes as "free-to-play", but really what we're looking at here is a micro-transaction model, in conjunction with a velvet-rope marketing strategy (i.e. we'll let you "in" for free, but you can only access the good stuff if you pay for it). They even have a segregated "two currencies" system, which Wallace claims was designed to "offer opportunities to everyone to participate" - both those who pay and those who don't or can't. There's a currency that you pay for with real-world or "hard" money, and then there's a "tickets" system. Tickets are the rewards won by playing the mini-games, and can only be used to purchase consumable items (items that expire after a certain number of uses). Th currencies - that you pay for. The tickets are described to be aimed at increasing engagement (and time spent in the site), to "engage players whether they buy or not", as well as "introduce players to virtual currencies" and currency systems, idea of virtual items collection and shopping, in the hopes of fostering future behaviours. Velvet rope + pedagogy of consumption...yikes.

But CampFu doesn't want to miss out on other, more subtle ways of extracting exchange value out of their players. Players can also earn the "FuCash", the game's virtual currency by filling out surveys and "special offers" (not sure what those are)...so it looks like becoming uninformed participants in market research is the only way to get the FuCash required to buy avatar clothes and other coveted items, other than to buy it with real world money. Wallace showed some graphs demonstrating player participation (although not overall numbers), showing that since the site launched in Feb.09, the average session duration rose from an average of 21 minutes to over an hour (as of May 09). I wonder how their business model is working out, where kids are getting their FuCash (if any) or if they're just using the free components for a novel place to socialize...we'll see.

Andrew Schneider of RMT (Real Money Trading) says that today's black market for virtual items (for real money) has surpassed $2 billion in gross transactions worldwide.

Edward Castronova, in addition to telling us that no one has to use his term "synthetic worlds" when speaking to him about vw's, reasserted the need for some form of official, formal, hopefully democratic delineation of economic relationships within virtual worlds, one that defends user rights as well as those of corporations. It's an old argument, esp. coming from him, but one that certainly needs continued reiteration, particularly now that vw's have become so pervasive...while still using basically the same corporately-biased EULAs and IP (and governance) claims that have dominated the market since he first wrote about all this in 2002. I really liked his tempered delivery, acknowledging the importance of economic recuperation, but also reminding us that market downturn isn't justification for ignoring player rights...hinting that it's in fact further indication that EULA reform (although he doubts that EULAs can provide what they need to, he also thinks its more likely that this type of thing would happen in the market than initiated by governments) and an alternative (player-driven?) discourse for establishing/regulating vw laws and social (incl. economic) relationships is exactly what's called for given the exploitative relationships that so often emerge when corporations are left to regulate themselves. Or at least, that's what I got from it.

And then, in Q&A, Jim Bower, the founder of Whyville zinged the entire panel by championing "kids as the future" of responsible governance and democratically-articulated covenants, pointing to the large Kafai-led project on Whyville players (including this article on cheating in Whyville and "Stealing from Grandma", written by Deborah Fields and Yasmin Kafai, which is fantastic). He also admitted that Whyville is actively and purposefully "training" its players in civic responsibility, which Castronova had a really hilarious and zinging response to, though props to Bower for admitting that his vw is not some neutral, innocuous or so-called "safe" haven, but rather a very ideological and discursive system (social and technological) where players are indeed learning all kinds of rules and norms, not just from the explicitly pedagogical tools, but everything else as well (each other!). Also, funny that no one pointed out that CampFu is putting just as much effort into training its players, in how to want and believe in virtual currency systems and subjectivites of consumption.

Anyway...Awesome!

What New in the Kids' Games Market

There have been so many great games and exciting announcements pertaining to kids' gaming culture (and the kids market) lately, especially now that this year's E3 has come and gone, that the thought of trying to digest (let alone dissect) it all can be more than a little overwhelming. That's why I've put together this thematic Guide to What's New... in various segments of games culture, focusing on those projects and announcements I find most relevant to kids or that have particularly caught my eye these past few weeks. The list is by no means exhaustive, and it's likely already out of date it's taken me so long to put it together, but my hope is that it will still be useful to some of you, for catching up on new developments and flagging things for follow-up.


What's New in...Console Games
So much of the biggest big news from this year's E3 involved console games (see Buzzstudy's analysis of the Top E3 Announcements according to online buzz, and the updated version they sent to Kotaku), including a number of interesting, exciting or otherwise noteworthy announcements and developments that relate directly to kids' games/gaming cultures. Here's a quick run-down:

A new (collaborative!) 1-4 player Super Mario Brothers

A more expansive and expansion-friendly Wii Sports Resort

Super Mario Glaxy 2

Beatles Rock Band (it's rated "T" but who are we kidding...that hasn't stopped the previous Rock Band titles from spreading like wildfire among the under 13 set. It seems parents don't object as much to "mild language" in lyrics as they do to hyper violence...go figure)

But just in case they do...they're launching a new LEGO Rock Band as well...bizarre!

From Media Molecule, more news about their sequels to the award-winning LittleBigPlanet, with LittleBigPlanet 2 and (which was first way back in October) and LittleBigPlanet PSP. More on that property below.

Not ready to put the property to bed quite yet, Ubisoft will be releasing TMNT: Smash Up, based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In addition, earlier this month Warner Brothers finally confirmed the widely-accepted-as-true rumor that it is teaming up with LEGO (once again) to collaborate on a Harry Potter tie-in (once again), this time in game form. The much anticipated LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is expected to be released sometime in 2010.

You might also want to check out this "Top Ten Kids Games Announced at E3" List published in The Industry Standard.


What's New in...MMOGs
There's been a ton of online buzz about SOE's kid-oriented MMOG Free Realms, which launched in late April (2009). In addition to a recent article in Wired magazine, you should check out this article in the New York Times, this blog post by Izzy Neis (whose move to Twitter has left me with an empty hole in my daily blog roll that no one else could ever hope to fill), and this ongoing (?) thread started by Greg Lastowka on Terra Nova. And, you know, try it out for yourself - it's free and even has a "Quick Play" feature...possibly designed for critics and academics ;)

In other news, FusionFall just keeps on trucking. You can now follow their progress through an online Developer Diary, which is pretty useful for tracking changes and industry discourses about the evolution of the game, community, technology, etc.

And over at Disney, Pixie Hollow is continuing to impress, in no small part by generating actual profits and driving a wildly popular new Disney property. According to Virtual Worlds News, the player population has now reached the million member mark, and is the flagship of the Disney Fairies brand, which is currently worth about $2 billion (in global annual retail sales of ancillary products and media).


What's New in...Girlie Games
Same old, same old, as EA Announces the Girls Charm Club (as described in this Business Wire article), and the casual gaming market gears up for a "pink games" re-revolution (via YPulse). Always ready to throw her stylish hat in the mix, Barbie/Mattel also announced some sort of Digital Doll House project awhile back that would seem to fit well with these trends.


What's New in...Indie Games
Too much! But of particular noteworthiness is Nathan Jurevicius and TouchMyPixel's beautiful, slightly creepy, funny, kid-friendly (and free!) online game, Scarygirl. It's been attracting a lot of buzz too, as seen in this "Best of Indie Games" shout out courtesy of Tim W., and subsequent interview with Jurevicius conducted by Phill Cameron, over at Gamasutra. As Tim W. writes:

"Scarygirl is a completely free to play flash game which involves platforming, adventure, puzzle and even fighting-game style elements. The visuals are incredible and the content is absolutely expansive with over fourteen levels of gameplay to plow through."

Indeed!


What's New in...UGC Games
More Spore for Kids! Read news of upcoming, kid-targeted, Spore spin-off projects (for Nintendo Wii, plus a My Pokemon Ranch-style virtual pet-type game, Creature Keeper) over at Wired blog.

News from Kidscreen magazine that Media Molecule is looking for kids' merchandising opportunities and partnerships for its LittleBigPlanet property (centered around uber-cute Sackboy and friends).

Also, some very interesting news from Microsoft about a kid-friendly (and, one would hope, accessible) version of XNA called Kodu, which you can read about over at USA Today


What's New in...Gaming Technologies
Too much to list here, I'm afraid, what with Microsoft's Project Natal, the PS3 motion controller, and all the (seemingly) smaller Wii motion sensor upgrades. I recommend reading some of the many industry lists/summaries, etc., or to breeze through this compilation of E3 coverage and interviews, posted over at AdAge.


And as for What's New...With Me!
I'm off to NYC tomorrow to participate in the Grad Student Symposium at the State of Play Conference, hosted by New York Law School (in conjunction with the University of Southern California Network Culture Project at the Annenberg School for Communication, and with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation), and featuring multiple games scholars and designers that I'm simply dying to meet (and/or meet again). Should be an amazing and thought provoking few days, in one of my favourite big huge cities. Enormous thanks to Dan Hunter and Naomi Allen (and anyone else involved in the conference organizing team) for letting me tag along.

CFP Alert: Science Fiction in Children's Film and Television

Found this on the UPenn English CFP list, and thought it might be of interest to some - a CFP (deadline recently extended to July 15th) on scifi in kids' television and film. Very interesting idea, and it's true...there is a definite gap in the literature that this book could potentially fill quite nicely. Here are the details, reprinted from the UPenn site:

Science Fiction in Children's Film and Television (Deadline Extended to 7/15/09)
R.C. Neighbors and Sandy Rankin/University of Arkansas
contact email: childrens-scifi@hotmail.com

It has often been said that science fiction is a literature of ideas. Through the use of familiar tropes, such as spaceships, aliens, and ray guns, the genre uses the future (and sometimes the past) to comment on the present--on current social, cultural, and political ideologies. Likewise, media directed at children often focus on advocating or criticizing similar ideologies, sometimes for a didactic purpose. It is interesting, then, that so little has been said about the joining of these two genres--children's science fiction--particularly when dealing with the visual media of film and television.

Toward this end, the proposed essay anthology To Infinity and Beyond: Science Fiction in Children's Film and Television will attempt to fill this gap in scholarship. It will primarily deal with how children's visual media use science fiction to promote or discourage certain ideologies. However, essays on other issues dealing with science fiction in children's programming--such as the encoding of science fiction tropes in children's media, conversations between children's film/TV and adult science fiction, science fictional elements in other genres, and the growing popularity of science fiction in children's visual media, etc--will be considered. A publisher has already shown interest in the collection.

Topics of Particular Interest

Lilo and Stitch
Flubber
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Dexter's Laboratory
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Transformers
Land of the Lost
Lost in Space
Brain (from Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain)
We have already received many excellent proposals (including several over Doctor Who and the film Wall-E) and are looking for a few more to round out the collection. If interested in contributing to the collection, please send your CV and a 300-500 word abstract to R.C. Neighbors and Sandy Rankin (childrens-scifi@hotmail.com) by July 15th. (If a draft of the essay is already completed, please send it along with the other materials.) Graduate student submissions are welcome.

So many cool opportunities, so little time. Immediate ideas include Muppets from Space, Atomic Betty, Astro Boy, Futurama (which just got "renewed"!), Zixx Level Three and some sort of reworking of my co-authored paper with Neil Narine analyzing films depicting child gamers (which included quite a few sci-fi pics, The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, etc.). I'm not sure I'll have a chance to submit something, but it is nonetheless a very compelling idea for an edited collection.

Awesome Resource Alert: Open Thinking's massive list of online media/tech literacy vids

Wowza - talk about a treasure trove of valuable resources. Open Thinking is the personal and professional blog of Canadian academic Dr. Alec Couros, who is a professor of educational technology and media with the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. The site is a self-described "growing collection of personal reflections and resources" touching upon various issues relating to media and tech literacy, from democratic media to pedagogical tools, to critical media literacy and questions of citizenship and social justice. In addition to many incredibly useful posts and discussions of these (and other) topics, Couros has now posted an extensive listing of 80+ online videos relevant to teaching, researching and presenting on media and tech literacy....thematically organized, with summaries (!!!), and as far as I can see all up-to-date and active. Some of these have made the rounds, some are taken from traditional media channels, some are user-generated, all are worth a gander.

Here's the link - enjoy!

Opportunity for BC Academics (grad students and faculty)

In my search for funding and something to do now that the end of my thesis writing is finally in sight (well, in "end of summer" sight, but still!), I'm starting to think about new and different ways I might be able to apply my research and expertise. Our new grad chair recently mentioned the following, very interesting opportunity for collaboration with local companies called the MITACS ACCELERATE BC program, which brings together BC companies and academics on research projects of mutual interest. Here are the details:

The MITACS ACCELERATE BC program is currently accepting proposals from professors and graduate students/postdocs in any faculty or department for research projects conducted in collaboration with BC companies. This innovative internship program funds 4-, 8-, or 12-month research projects.

MITACS ACCELERATE is open to all university faculties and departments that train graduate students including Arts, Engineering, Humanities, Physical Sciences, Applied Sciences, Social Sciences and many more.

The MITACS ACCELERATE benefits for professors and grad students/postdocs:

* Provides an opportunity to apply expertise to challenging industrial issues
* Leverages your existing funding from industry
* Provides funding of a grad student/post-doc
* Provides a valuable career opportunity for grad students and postdocs
* Application process has limited paperwork; quick turnaround. Proposals are accepted at any time
* Foreign grad students and postdocs can participate
* Can help you to attract grad students and postdocs


Details:
The intern, under the supervision of a faculty member, spends approximately half of his/her time over a minimum four-month period onsite with an eligible BC partner (a company, industry association, not-for-profit or crown corporation) or in the field, developing a better understanding of a jointly-identified research problem of importance to the company. The balance of the intern’s time is spent at the university with a professor, developing a solution to the organization’s s challenge.

The company’s contribution of $7.5K per four-month internship unit is matched by MITACS, with funding support from the Government of BC and the Government of Canada. The intern receives a minimum of $10K of the $15K in funding, with the remaining $5K supporting other costs associated with the project.

Although internship proposals are accepted at any time, it is strongly recommended that for internships intended to commence Sep 1, 2009, proposals be received by MITACS by July 15, 2009. This will allow adequate time for peer-review and transfer of funds to the university. The MITACS business development team will assist you with the application process.

For more information, email internships@mitacs.ca...

There are a limited number of internships available with non-company organizations (including hospitals, government labs and agencies and not-for-profit societies), and with partners in other provinces. Please speak to a BC business development representative for more information before submitting a proposal.

For more information about the program (including past examples of funded internships) visit the MITACS ACCELERATE website.

Do Pink Ouija Boards Only Contact Girlie Spirits?

Via Celeste at Bust Blog (the magazine's online component), news that Parker Brothers (i.e. Hasbro) has recently launched a pink, sparkly Ouija Board game. This is in addition to their recent glitz-covered, bubble-gum pink edition of Scrabble. [Have girls ever felt excluded from Scrabble or its target audience?] Anyway...here's the description posted by Celeste:

Even more absurd is the pinkification of the Ouija board. All of those girls playing Wiccan didn’t know what they were doing when they were trying to contact the dead and scare themselves silly. The twenty-first century (pink) edition knows what us girls really want to know with the question cards that come with the set. Don’t worry, they have the really important questions included like "who will text me next?" "Will I be a famous actress oneday?" "Who wishes they could trade places with me?" Now our beloved Ouija board is nothing more than a glorified fortune teller.

Terrible! As IF Hasbro/Parker Bros feels the need to include extremely stereotypical pre-scripted questions...and as though girls couldn't come up with their own much more relevant and interesting questions. *sigh* Not to mention, of course, that girls HAVE been using Ouija boards just fine on their own for much longer than these branded versions have been around (and probably more so than guys, though I'd be interested in getting a hold of some stats on that. See Sadie's post at Jezebel making a similar point).

I'm actually more disturbed by the implications of the "Who will text me next?" cue cards than I am by the sparkly pink repackaging, which is likely designed more to attract much younger players than to appeal to older girls and teens. (btw: Have previous editions ever included question cards? We only ever played with an extremely old version (no cards, but the box was also ripped), and a quick search online didn't produce any evidence of cards in past editions, so I'm thinking no, which makes these cards and their contents all the MORE troubling).

In terms of the pink, though, while I obviously have pretty positive feelings about pink (as you can probably tell from this site), I'm also critical of the gender coding going on here and of how hugely problematic "pinkification" is generally as a marketing and design "solution"...problematic for everyone involved (promoting hyper-feminine stereotypes, excluding boys, subtly implying that non-prink things are therefore NOT for girls, etc., etc.). There are definitely some complex underlying issues here, and you can see some of the paradoxes play out in the post's "Comments" section. I've really appreciated the different perspectives Bust readers have expressed so far (isn't it supposed to be scary and doesn't pink sort of detract from the dark mystery of it all, why champion pink in some cases but not in others, etc.) and I also really like the author's (Celeste) assessment of the move:

Apparently the people over at Parker Brothers think they’re the hot jock in a nineties movie taking on the task of making over that nerdy, artsy girl into a hot chick. [...] We get it already. Girls like pink. It doesn’t mean that every product targeted at them has to resemble bubblegum.

Be sure to check out Amelie Gillette's article about the game over at AV Club as well. Funny (as always) and critical, her coverage incorporates some great satirical analysis of the game and it ridiculous cue cards, such as:

OMG. It's true. Thinking up questions about your own life to ask the dead is hard! Sometimes you're at a slumber party, and someone brings out a Ouija board, and the only question you can think of is "Slom?" which isn't even a word or anything, and would probably just make the princess ghosts who float around waiting for someone to use a pink Ouija very, very angry if you asked it. And you don't want to get those princess ghosts angry, because when they're angry they just go around and punch sleeping girls right in the fallopian tubes, which, everybody knows, is how you get your first period. Yuck.

Obviously, it's much easier to use the question cards."Who will text me next?" "Who wishes they could trade places with me?" "How many calories am I burning off right now?" "How condescending is this Ouija For Girls game?" These are the questions that you want answered, girl!

The official product description is also worth checking out for how the game is being positioned by its own marketing discourse (both hilarious and disturbing). It might also be worthwhile to think about how this all ties in (if at all) to the mounting buzz that Hasbro is planning to produce a Ouija movie (directed by Michael Bay no less). I think maybe the execs at Hasbro should do a little Ouija session of their own on that one...I predict it would that little plastic pink "planchette" about 0.1 seconds to position itself at "NO".

Kids in Virtual Worlds: Run Down of What's New (So Far) in 2009

I've been pretty immersed in the thesis lately and haven't had much time to post. However, as I have a number of items pertaining to kids' virtual worlds that I've been meaning to blog about just collecting dust and of no use to anyone 'till they go live, I figured I should just compile them together in a quick, informal list of "potential resources" or "stories of interest". I'll get back to full dedicated posts (and analysis) asap, but in the meantime...here's what's caught my eye of late:

Real Kids in Virtual Worlds
Via eMarketer, some great new figures and stats about kids' use of virtual worlds in the US. According to their data, 8 million US children and teens visited virtual worlds on a "regular basis" in 2008. They estimate that 37% of online children aged 3 to 11 years use virtual worlds "at least once a month" (a number they have also projected will grow, to 54% by 2013). The article comes with a handy-dandy table, reproduced below:



Interestingly, despite the highly commercial nature of so many of the virtual worlds designed and marketed to children, eMarketer seems to think the market is somehow lagging when it comes to advertising. As Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst and author of the new report Kids and Teens: Growing Up Virtual, states:

“Unfortunately, as with social networks, advertising has not kept pace with usage. Not surprisingly, the hype and fizzling out of Second Life, combined with the tough economy, have made some marketers skittish for virtual worlds in general.”

She should take a look at Nicktropolis if she thinks that's the case. Although I'm sure that what she "means" is third-party advertising, not branded vw's advertising their own properties...how that doesn't qualify as advertising, however, I'll never figure out.


Are Media Companies Missing The Virtual World Mark?
Michael Pole wrote this article for MediaPost describing all the ways he thinks media companies are "missing the virtual world mark" by failing to take advantage of "huge opportunities to market and monetize their content libraries in Casual Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) worlds." This includes failing to appreciate the power of "casual MMOs" to rally consumer communities around their favourite brands and products. As a counter example, i.e. "success stories" that have effectively applied this approach, he lists a number of kids' MMOs including Disney's Toontown, Pirates of the Caribbean and Club Penguin, Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis, and the Cartoon Network's Fusion Fall. Pole says: "This is just the beginning of a new trend in consumer entertainment, signaling an even greater opportunity for media companies to explore this burgeoning space."

He could have used the same or similar examples for his second point, that media companies are missing out on the new opportunities available within MMOs to "promote and monetize...content libraries and new franchises through micro-transactions, premium subscriptions, e-commerce, sponsorship and advertising." Webkinz and Club Penguin anyone??? The rest of the article goes over some of the economics of Casual MMOs (which can cost less than $3 million to develop...in contrast with "high-quality console-based videogames, which Pole says take between $10 and $50 million to develop), development schedules, and IP considerations. Overall, very informative article.


New Resource Alert: 360Kid Blog
Maintained by Scott Traylor, 360Kid Blog contains news and original research relating to kids and technology...esp. digital technologies, toys and games. So far, Traylor has posted this excellent analysis of Webkinz house designs, and an awesome article about virtual worlds play and web-enabled toys (reprinted from an article Traylor wrote for the May issue of Playthings Magazine). The site is a treasure trove for industry-pov analysis and discussion about many of the same issues and phenomena I discuss here at Gamine Expedition. A must see for anyone interested in kids and digital play. The blog is attached to a larger initiative, a company called 360KID, described on the blog "About Us" pages as:

"[A] kid-focused content and technology company dedicated to creating a love for learning by making quality products that educate as well as entertain. 360KID provides turnkey development services to the education, broadcasting, and toy industries. We are a multi-award winning and three time Emmy nominated company, creating educational products kids and teachers love."

Bookmark it!


Changes in Store for Kids' Virtual Worlds
Posted on AdWeek back in March (I told you I was behind!), this article by Mediaweek's Mike Shields describes how the kids' virtual worlds market should expect a "shake down" this year as advertisers pull back (or pull out) on their online advertising spending, as the current ad recession will likely dissuade advertisers from investing what little money is available in experimental forums (such as MMOs and other VWs). Shields overviews a presentation given by Strategy Analytics's Barry Gilbert at the Engage Expo! conference in New York, describing that while 2008 saw “an explosion of kids worlds...this year he predicts contraction and consolidation in the market as many of the dozens of kids/young-adult virtual worlds that launched in the past year may either merge or fold. “We don’t see it as a sustainable market,” he said. This appears to be particularly the case with "social worlds" - social networking based virtual worlds, as opposed to MMOGs, which were for the most part excluded from the figures and analysis given out during Gilbert's speech. Gilbert describes that although in 2008 "social" virtual worlds (not counting MMOGs) collectively pulled in $1.2 billion in revenue globally, only around 10 percent of that (approx. $125 million) came from advertising. As Sheilds writes, "He predicts that in '09 ad spending will decline to around $100 million and won’t bounce back until 2011."

So...does this mean that (casual) MMOGs for kids are all good, whereas social worlds are in trouble?




How Do MMOs Make Money?
Via MMOSite.com, coverage of a recent report released by market analyst DFC Intelligence examining how commercially successful MMOs make their money. The article points to World Of Warcraft as the "most successful MMO" with an estimated annual revenue of USD 500m, and to the estimated combined revenues of USD 1,875 million currently generated by the top ten MMOs in the world. The article then goes on to provide an overview of very interesting patterns among the "top ten MMOs", including:

Only one of the top-ten MMOs (Lineage) was launched in the 1990's whereas all others have been launched in this decade.

MMOs are distributed fairly equitably around the most significant global market territories i.e. North America, Europe, Asia (Korea, Japan and China). Many of these games target global markets and are active in various territories.

MMOs have a wide diversity of styles and demographically targeted groups with children, teenage and young adult markets all well-represented.

The majority of the top-ten MMOS are in the fantasy genre. This is typical of emerging game markets. Fantasy is typically the first successful genre to be commercialised because it tends to attract early-adopter gamers first.

The MMOSite.com article then switches gears a bit to examine just how these MMOs generate revenue for their operators and investors, looking at retail, subscriptions, virtual good sales and hybrid models. But what is perhaps of most interest/use is the 5 pages dedicated to listing and describing the top ten most profitable MMOs, complete with launch date, genre/platform, revenue sources, and (DFC Intelligence estimated) revenue generated in 2008 (well, the range anyway...they sure don't give out specifics too freely when it comes to revenue). Awesome! Here's a very quick reproduction of the list, sans graphics...be sure to check out the MMOSite original for the full effect:

1. World of Warcraft (2004-present) "Western MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Monthly subscription, retails sales, prepaid cards; DFC estimated 2008 revenue: USD $500 million+

2. Fantasy Westward Journey (2004-present), "Asian MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Prepaid cards; USD $150-$500 million

3. Maple Story (2003-present), MMORPG "for kids" (hmmm...but they say 13+, don't they?), client-install software. Revenue sources: Microtransactions, prepaid cards, international licensing; USD $150-$500 million

4. Legend of Mir and World of Legend series (by Shanda) (2003-present), "Asian MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Prepaid cards, virtual item sales, Freemium (??), subscriptions, USD $150-$500 million

5. Lineage I (1998-present) and Lineage II (2003-present), "Asian MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Subscription, prepaid cards; USD $150-$500 million

6. Runescape (2001-present), "Western MMORPG", web-based. Revenue sources: Premium subscription, prepaid cards, real-world advertising; USD $50-$150 million

7. Club Penguin (2006-present), "Virtual world for kids", web-based. Revenue sources: Premium subscriptions, prepaid game cards, [ADD: micro-transactions through trading cards, toys]; USD $50-$150 million

8. Lord of the Rings Online (2007-present), "Western MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales; USD $50-$150 million

9. Warhammer Online (launch?-present), "Western MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales; USD $50-$150 million

10. Age of Conan (2008-present) "Western MMORPG", client-install software. Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales; USD $50-$150 million

Be sure to contrast these figures with the ones released by Screen Digest, which I posted about in March, dealing specifically with the North American + European markets. Some similarities, some differences...in doing so a more complete picture of the global MMOG market starts to come into focus. Also, be sure to check out this commentary by YPulse anastasia, which provides some analysis of the MMOSite article and its relevance to kids' marketers.


NPD - Six Million New Gamers In Last Year
Via Brandon Sheffield for Gamasutra, coverage of the 2009 DICE Summit talk by NPD Group senior analyst Anita Frazier, covering a bunch of trends analysis and projections relating to the digital games industry. Among her key findings, a number of interesting tidbits of info about gamer population sizes and demographics, including:

In total, 61% of the US population now games...an increase of 6 million gamers from the previous year.

"About half of unit sales are for kids 17 and under. The retail market is very dominated by young people." The audience is 72 percent male, but women control "about half the spending in video games," says Frazier, reminding us that casual and more family-oriented games are spurring industry growth.

Love how all these stats just never add up, e.g. ESA's "Industry Facts", versus everyone else's.


Emerging Issues in In-Game Advertising
Another article from Gamasutra, this one written by Greg Boyd and Vejay Lalla, and providing a detailed overview of current issues, trends and challenges for in-game advertising. They provide some great stats, including confirmation that the global digital games industry generated approx. $40 billion in 2007, and that research firm Parks Associates estimated advertising in the game industry to be $370 million in 2006, growing to $2 billion by 2012. They review a number of issues to consider when thinking about integrating in-game advertising, from placement to measurement, to audience backlash. Compelling industry-pov read.


$594 Million Invested in Virtual Worlds in 2008
As reported in GameSpy, coverage of a report released earlier this year by Virtual Worlds Management that estimates roughly $594 Million was invested in virtual world companies in 2008. Impressive, given the state of the economy in 2008, but these numbers are still down from 2007's "spending binge" (as GameSpy calls it) of $1.4 billion. The article describes how only a fraction of the nearly $600 million went to funding large worlds aimed at "mature gamers"...instead, the bulk went into smaller, web-based games aimed at children and teens, as investors likely hope to reproduce the enduring success of Club Penguin andWebkinz.

The story was also covered by GigaOm's Wagner James Au, who writes:

[M]uch of last year’s investment also went into worlds aimed at kids and teens, which continue to enjoy enormous audience growth. (The largest, Habbo, is almost as popular as World of Warcraft, and profitable with far less development costs.) By VWM's tabulations, 19 kid-oriented companies saw '08 investment, compared with 11 virtual worlds for adults — though in my observation, the latter category actually includes several worlds such as YoVille and Metaplace that also strive for teen appeal.

In a related article, Au also talks about some of the VW revenue models that are attracting the most attention:

Most youth-oriented virtual worlds are free to play, depending on such methods as "freemium" upgrade subscription, microtransactions, and gift card purchases for revenue. Which explains why so much 2008 money went into companies that monetize virtual worlds in these ways and others — $64.7 million for five companies, according to VWM.

NPD: Kids choose digital content over physical format
Seeing as kids are exhibiting increasing comfort with and even preference for "digital only content", as described in this recent KidScreen article by Emily Claire Afan, the interest in monetizing kids' virtual worlds described in the previous article isn't all that surprising. Afan's article includes a bunch of useful info drawn from a the NPD Group's Kids and Digital Content III study report, which examined children's (aged 2 to 14 years) engagement with four different digital devices: computers, portable digital music/video players (PDMP), cell phones and video game systems. Items of note include:

- Convergence is on the rise: Although kids have traditionally used different devices (cell phone, laptop, handheld gaming console, etc.) for different types of content (e.g. ringtones on cell phones), NPD more cell phone users aged 2 to 14 years listened to music and sent/received images on their handsets than in previous years. Portable digital music/video player users also watched music videos on their portable players, and kids spent 12% of the time spent using video game systems watching movies.

- Overall usage for game consoles, PDMPs and computers has risen since 2007, mainly as a result of increased usage from kids between 9 and 14 years. However, use of these devices (including cell phones) among younger kids (under 9 years) was largely unchanged from previous years.

- Gaming is the most popular activity among child users: 85% of the child users play games, followed by music (60%). Roughly a third of kids surveyed watch videos and 22% download ringtones/tunes.

- Girls are using digital content more and more, and are "driving the increased growth in video game systems usage" from 50% usage in 2006 to 57% in 2008. Boys, on the other hand, are now watching more TV shows on digital devices than before.

- The largest increase in usage of digital devices occurs among 9-year-olds.

- Game-playing appears to be the first digital activity that younger children engage in: 82% of kids between 2 and 5 years play games on one or more of the devices surveyed.



And last but certainly not least:
5 Things You Should Know About Kids And Video Gaming
Written by MediaPost's Anne Marie Kelly, this article provides a wonderful amalgamation and analysis of some recent stats on kids and gaming drawn from the "2008 American Kids Study" conducted by Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI). According to MRI's study, 86.8% of kids aged 6 to 11 years played a video game in the last 30 days via one of four platforms (computer-based, hand-held, online, cell phone...29.1% played a video game on a cell phone!). Check out the original article for the full details...in the meantime, here's brief overview of the points she covers:

"1. Frequency of Play Increases With Age":
- Of the kids who played a digital game in the previous month: 27.1% played every single day. 35.1% of boys play every single day, while only 18.0% of girls play every single day.
- Propensity for daily play is highest among 10-11 year-olds. "children in this age group are 16% more likely to be daily players than gaming children as a whole."
- "Only 15.0% of kids 6-11 played less than once a week."

"2. The Need for Speed Trumps Board Games"
- 61.4% of child gamers listed action/adventure genre as their top picks, followed by racing at 46.0%, sports (34.0%), fighting (31.0%), puzzle/strategy (29.5%), educational (28.8%), and card/board games (24.9%).

"3. Deciding What to Play Involves Collaboration"
- Nearly half (44.4%) of the respondents said that decided what to play was a "collaborative effort between themselves and their parents." This was true of both boys and girls, and stayed about the same across the age range examined.
- Only 21.1% of kids said they got to choose on their own, while 23.0% said their parents made the decision alone.

"4. Collaboration Helps Dictate Game Ratings"
- Only 9.5% of kids 6-11 reported playing games rated Mature 17+. Among the 10-11 age group, this stat increased to 16.7%....14.3% boys and 3.9% girls.

"5. Word-of-Mouth Referrals Are Key"
- 63.5% of respondents said they learn about new games through recommendations from friends,
- 45.8% learn about new games from family members.
- 18.0% discover new games via Internet sites.
- 73.1% say they in turn recommend games to friends, and 56.8% recommend games to family members.

Phew! That's a lot of info to digest! Happy Reading and Happy Weekend!

Awesome Resource Alert: Journal Issue on Kids and Technological Environments

I've been perusing the recent issue (vol. 19, no.1) of Children, Youth and Environments (after receiving an alert in my inbox), and thought it might be of interest to many of you. The issue theme is "Children and Technological Environments" and includes a number of excellent articles by academics I'd never come across before, but who are doing very interesting and innovative research on kids and technology in a variety of contexts. Here's the issue description:

Children, Youth and Environments has just published a special issue on "Children and Technological Environments." It features a substantive introduction by the guest editors, Nathan G. Freier and Peter H. Kahn, Jr., and 14 high-quality, peer-reviewed articles on such topics as interactive humanoid robots, digital libraries, virtual natural environments, video and online games, hacking, assistive technologies for children with learning disabilities, and learning by doing with shareable interfaces. The authors include leading researchers from the U.S., Britain and Japan.

It's so great to find a new resource, and a new body of work that shares so many parallels to my own. You can access the journal here for free (with registration). I particularly recommend Gregory T. Donovan and Cindi Katz's article entitled "Cookie Monsters: Seeing Young People's Hacking as Creative Practice", as well as Nicholas A. Holt and Douglas A. Kleiber's article "The Sirens' Song of Multiplayer Online Games".

Enjoy!

Hasbro TV

I've been a bit slow to the punch with this one, but since it's become a mini-hotbed of controversy, I figured I should go ahead and add my two cents. Last week toy giant Hasbro, the makers of Transformers and My Little Pony (among many, many others), announced it was teaming up with Discovery to launch a new television network featuring, you guessed it, "content built around the toymaker’s brands". Here's an excerpt of Plaything coverage of the announcement details:

Both the network and the venture’s online component will feature content from Hasbro’s portfolio of entertainment and educational properties, including original programming for animation, game shows and live-action series and specials. New children’s and family entertainment and educational programming will be based on brands such as Romper Room, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Cranium, My Little Pony, G.I. Joe, Game of Life, Tonka and Transformers, among others. The TV network and online presence also will include content from Discovery’s library of children’s educational programming, such as Bindi The Jungle Girl, Endurance, Tutenstein, Hi-5, Flight 29 Down and Peep and the Big Wide World, as well as programming from third-party producers. Creative work will start in the next few months, the company says, beginning with early stage development for properties including Romper Room, Tonka, G.I. Joe, Transformers and My Little Pony.

The partnership will also mean an early retirement for the Discovery Kids Network, although apparently the "Discovery Kids" brand will continue on as a merchandising brand and on international networks. It's especially sad that a full-blown product-centric network will be replacing one originally conceived as an educational network...even if Discovery Kids was already pretty heavily commercialized. The message this announcement sends is loud and clear...the children's industries are ready to take on the last weary sentinel of children's media regulation, the separation (no matter how minute) of ads and content. Although governmental regulation of advertising to children has waned significantly, old policies restricting certain types of cross-promotional activities within television programs or time blocks directed specifically at children have somehow survived. And although its become increasingly difficult to have programs labelled as "program-length commercials" anymore, it's hard to imagine that the FCC (or CARU at the very least) won't be forced to investigate the ethics and legality of an whole children's network built entirely around product placement.

Children's advocacy groups are already calling foul. As Ira Teinowitz writes on The Wrap, the Hasbro/Discovery deal "may wave a red flag in front of regulators already worried about TV product placement and embedded advertising," and groups such as the Center for Digital Democracy, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and Commercial Alert are making sure that red flag isn't ignored. For example, as Jeff Chester, exec director of the Center for Digital Democracy, describes (in Teinowitz's article):

“The [Federal Communications Communications] already has an open proceeding on embedded advertising. This proposed network raises issues for the children’s market that policy makers are going to have to deal with.”

and from Susan Linn, director of the CCFC:

“Hasbro's deal means that the new network will be one long infomercial aimed at children...As evident from TV programs like the Bratz and others, the FCC doesn't seem to equate program-length commercials with product placement--but they should.

and from Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert:

“It’s very hard, to see this as anything but a scheme to deliver program length advertisements to children and a massive loophole in the current rules."

Of course, there are also various statements and articles that take a more pessimistic approach, claiming that with all the licensing, cross-media partnerships, product placement, branding and merchandising already prevalent within children's television and other media, a toy-based network wouldn't make much of a difference. But although it might seem that way (especially with examples like the Disney channel floating around), it's not necessarily the same. Starting with a clearly defined product-centric strategy does impact on the contents of the resulting media texts...product cycles can put serious strains on creativity and enforce rigid (economic-driven) structural demands on character development, narrative, etc. Think of the formulaic plotlines found in every episode of Pokemon you've ever seen and you'll see what I'm getting at. And it certainly does impact upon the relationships kids are able to build with their toys AND their media (not to mention play, and all the other realms of activity at the centre of the commercialization debates) when every point of contact is telling them that the only (or at least most important) way to engage is to buy/collect/consume. For more on this, I refer you once again to Buckingham and Sefton-Green's article explaining why collectible toy-centric media (a category in which Transformers, Tonka and My Little Pony certainly belong) are so uniquely effective and devious, entitled Gotta Catch 'em All: Structure, Agency and Pedagogy in Children's Media Culture - it does a great job of balancing out the different p.o.v.'s, while still coming to some pretty clear and useful conclusions about the role of toy-based media brands in contemporary childhood.

Besides which, I just have to say that just because product-placement is prevalent within children's media culture (oftentimes in bold defiance of the regulations against it) doesn't mean that newer, more audacious developments don't warrant public scrutiny and resistance. What this partnership communicates is that left unchecked the children's industries will just continue to push at the limits of what society deems to be an acceptable level of commercialization (and commercial exploitation) in children's culture until they're reigned in or passed the point of no return (which is usually bad news for everyone involved). Or they fail miserably (on that note, I can't wait to see what the Mommy Blogs have to say about this). Either way, this Hasbro deal could present a good locus for increased public (including kids!) engagement on these issues.

For more on the Hasbro deal, check out this recent article by Claude Brodesser-Akner for Advertising Age on Habro's Transformer-ation from toy maker to entertainment powerhouse, courtesy of the CCFC, or this article in the Wall Street Journal.

And be sure to read the full statements released by the CCFC and Commercial Alert.