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.

Hey Kids! Take Your DS to School

Via Kotaku, news about some fascinating international initiatives aimed at better incorporating videogames into school curriculum. While North America continues to lag behind in this area, school districts in the UK and Japan are making significant leaps and bounds toward finding viable educational applications for various digital gaming technologies, particularly the Nintendo DS (and now DSi). As Kotaku's AJ Glasser writes,

"Leading the charge toward a Nintenducation in the UK is Scotland. Their Centre for Games and Learning (aka The Consolarium) is an extension of the Scottish Government Schools Directorate that presents teachers and education administrators with ideas for implementing all kinds of gaming consoles into schools.

Derek Robertson, National Adviser for Emerging Technologies and Learning and administrator of the Consolarium, says that the use of the DS in schools is now commonplace, compared to when he first introduced the consoles to schools in 2006. "Initially I purchased 30 [Nintendo DS consoles] and carried out my first Dr. Kawashima [aka Brain Age] trial. The extended trial saw us handing out over 450 consoles to support our project."

While The Consolarium provides suggestions about which games (and systems) might be most amenable to curriculum development (such as Brain Age), it also encourages schools and teachers to be experimental and try out other games and approaches. As Robertson (cited by Glasser) explains, "Our main approach is not to prescribe a series of lesson plans but to suggest how the game, be it Nintendogs or Hotel Dusk, can be used as the contextual hub about which learning in a variety of curricular links can grow from."

The Consolarium seems to be filling a crucial function in the movement to "digitize" the classroom, that of providing support and resources to teachers who would like to integrate new media into their teaching, but don't always have the skills and/or tools to do so. The need for a "Digital Teacher Corp" was recently identified by the Joan Ganz Cooney Centre as a key priority in raising student engagement and updating classroom curriculum. As Cooney Centre Industry Fellow Carly Shuler writes in her recent report Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children's Learning (download the full report here):

"Teachers cannot teach with devices they do not understand. Professional development is essential to the future of mobile learning. Perhaps most important is to avoid a problem that has often occurred with the incorporation of technology into education in general: It is not just a matter of showing teachers how to use the devices; rather, it is crucial to show them how to use them within their curriculum."

In follow up to the report, the Cooney Centre's Levine and Thai wrote in a recent article for the New York Daily News:

"We should start by introducing digital innovation in every school. Teachers are resistant to using digital technologies because they cannot teach what they do not know. Schools of education and professional development programs are using a Stone Age approach to deploying games in classrooms. That should change now.

As a down payment to President Obama and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's challenge to improve school outcomes and teacher quality, we propose the establishment of a Digital Teachers Corps. It would integrate new digital games from research-tested educational media programs such as Sesame Workshop's "The Electric Company" to improve children's essential literacy and math skills and to attack the weak performance of English-language learners across subjects. Games and simulations perfected by our military institutions and medical schools could be adapted to teach higher-level content in science and technology as well as world languages - all areas where the U.S. has fallen behind."

Looks like The Consolarium might be a good place to start when it comes time to articulate the model for how this "Digital Teachers Corps" might work.

Paid to Play - Club Penguin Recognizes Playbour, Cont'd

Quick update on the Club Penguin story. This week's edition of the Club Penguin Times provides further details about the new salary feature: Starting May 1st penguins who "work" as tour guides and/or secret agents will be "paid" 250 Coins a month (per position, which means that some industrious penguins can earn 500/mnth). They'll receive their "paychecks" through Penguin Mail. Too cute!! :) BTW: Check out this article on Associated Content about "What the New York Times Can Learn from Club Penguin", which describes how the Club Penguin Times has an "average monthly readership of about 6.7 million readers a month"...yowza!

Paid to Play - Club Penguin Recognizes Playbour

Wow...I'm so impressed by Club Penguin's most recent developer blog post, a.k.a. Community news post, announcing that they will soon be "paying" members who perform community services in-game. They're not giving many details yet, but the post is titled "Penguins Getting Paid!", and includes the following teaser description:

"Have you ever thought about taking the quizzes to become a tour guide or PSA (Penguin Secret Agent)? If your penguin is old enough, and you're interested in helping out around the island, you might want to consider the challenge... It's going to be announced in the newspaper later this week that starting May 1st, penguins will get paid every month for doing those jobs!"

Payment will no doubt come in the form of coins or items, of course, but it's a payment nonetheless. The reason I'm impressed is that by "paying" players for their contributions Club Penguin is acknowledging the value of the players' "immaterial labour". Players' willingness to perform (virtual) community services is often an important of part of virtual worlds -- it helps to ensure that in-game communities run smoothly, and fosters inclusiveness and camaraderie among players. Many games "offload" community building activities onto players. Well, offload is perhaps a strong word, since determining the nature of one's own "community" is empowering and a huge part of what makes virtual worlds so appealing. But even if the tasks are undertaken voluntarily, that doesn't mean they aren't also productive, generating a form of immaterial labour or "playbour" necessary for "producing" the virtual world experience, which is then promoted and sold to other players (via membership fees, etc.). Recognizing the value of this labour is a key step in preventing its exploitation, so kudos to Club Penguin for further empowering its young players and communicating to them that their time and energy is a valuable and important part of the site (and a key component of its business model).

With the spread of virtual communities and player-generated content, immaterial labour is becoming an increasingly relevant area of debate and study. Check out the following sources for further discussion of the various issues involved:

Julian Kücklich (2005) "Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry", Fibreculture Journal, issue 5.

Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2005) "A Playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour", Fibreculture Journal, issue 5.

Andrew Herman, Rosemary J. Coombe & Lewis Kaye (2006) "YOUR SECOND LIFE? Goodwill and the performativity of intellectual property in online digital gaming", Cultural Studies, Vol. 20, Nos 2/3, pp.184-210.

Terranova, Tiziana (2000) "Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy", Social Text, 18(2), pp.33-58.

Pybus, Jennifer (2007) "Affect and Subjectivity: A Case Study of Neopets.com", Politics and Culture, issue 2.

Côté, Mark and Jennifer Pybus (2007) "Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: MySpace and Social Networks", Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 7(1), pp.88-106

Or (if you have subscription access) my own paper from a couple of years ago: Grimes, Sara M. (2006) "Online Multiplayer Gaming: A Virtual Space for Intellectual Property Debates?", New Media & Society, 8(6), pp.969-990.

Pretty ironic...my last post, which discusses the weaknesses of automated filter/monitor systems, somehow caused my blog to be flagged as a potential "spam blog"...love it! thanks to google for proving my concerns are not misplaced :)

Virtual Playground Monitors

Via yesterday's New York Times, a great article by Leslie Berlin (who is the project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford) about the different techniques and technologies used to moderate children's virtual worlds for inappropriate/dangerous content and risky behaviours. The article focuses on vw's that try to monitor "intent as well as content"...rather than simply blocking keywords or limiting communication altogether. It also describes that bullying and disclosing personal info remain the most common dangers faced by young people online. According to Berlin, the biggest challenges for vw moderators are keeping up with "user innovations" aimed at bypassing moderation tools (such as "workarounds" or "secret codes"), as well as striking a balance between technological solutions and human judgement when it comes to deciding which words, workarounds and behaviours should ultimately be filtered out. However, this "balance" is becoming increasingly reliant on technology and sophisticated in-game surveillance tools. She describes the process as "a continuing game of cat and mouse between the young people and the technology designed to protect them." For instance:

NetModerator, a software tool built by Crisp Thinking, a private company based in Leeds, England, can monitor online chat “for intent as well as content,” says Andrew Lintell, the company’s chief executive. To build the tool, he says, Crisp Thinking analyzed roughly 700 million lines of chat traffic, some from conversations between children and some, like conversations between children and sexual predators, provided by law enforcement groups.

The software is integrated into a virtual world’s site. If the technology uncovers phrasing, syntax, slang or other patterns in a conversation that match known signs of bullying or sexual predation, it sends an alert to a moderator, who can then “drill down” to look not only at the entirety of the specific conversation, but also at every posting from either participant.

“We can capture a full picture of a user’s history on the game,” Mr. Lintell says. NetModerator also includes a filter that is updated regularly to include new words, abbreviations or character combinations that can be read as words, like “sk8.”

Berlin goes on to describe that the NetModerator program is already being used in a number of virtual worlds for children, including Cartoon Network's FusionFall, which uses the software to monitor open chat and player-to-player e-mail. Is this reminding anyone else of Minority Report? Private surveillance technologies being used for extensive data-mining and profiling...not exactly what pops into your mind when you think of a playground monitor, nevermind the deeper questions this raises about how these particular "patterns" are established and what other behavioural trends are being tracked concurrently.

For instance, another example described in the article is a new technology by Keibi Technologies, which is used to "determine whether user-generated content — like videos, images and text — contains objectionable material." It also builds a profile of every person who uploads content, and is currently used by "several sites aimed at children and teenagers"...which makes those profiles all the more comprehensive (and potentially invasive).

In some cases, using these tools has allowed sites to reduce moderator staff from over 20 people to just 3 or 4. But of course, the sites and designers don't want us thinking that they're relying solely on automated filter software (which has in the past proven itself almost invariably ineffective and/or overly-restricting). The argument is that because so much of the obvious stuff is being flagged by the system, moderators now have more time to focus on the "subtle or hard-to-interpret messages"...interactions and behaviours that aren't outright "offensive", but that may hint at something much more serious (such as the suspected presence of a predator, or that a user may be suicidal). The work that moderators do is definitely incredibly important -- particularly in children's websites -- it's difficult, complicated and for the most part surprisingly undervalued. If these technologies are truly making their jobs easier and allowing them to get into the grey areas a bit more, then that's great...but seeing as so much gets by moderation systems as it is, and that even the most advanced software still can't accurately predict human intention...and seeing that the increased reliance on automated systems is resulting in drastic reductions of human moderator staff rather than a simple shift in focus...it kind of makes this whole line of argumentation pretty sketchy.

Berlin and her interviewees also describe some of the "workarounds" that kids and teens use to circumvent filter technologies, highlighting the continued weakness of these systems. For example, they use:

...spammers’ tricks like inserting random spaces or deliberate misspellings into their chats. Ms. Littleton has heard of users trying to identify their hometowns in code. (“Opposite of pepper, body of water” is Salt Lake City.) Ms. Marshall has intercepted them trying to share phone numbers by typing the letters that correspond to the digits on a telephone keypad.

When one site blocked the word “love,” Ms. Marshall says, the children substituted the word “glove.”

Such ingenuity is one reason that technology alone will never provide enough protection, she says. “Kids will find a way to communicate,” she says, “and you can’t block every word in the dictionary.”

Technologists agree with her. “There’s no silver bullet from a technical standpoint to do this,” says Mr. Smith at Keibi. “This is about helping humans to make a decision about whether there is a problem.”

The article also has some useful stats about growth in the kids' vw sector, such as:

By the end of this year, there will be 70 million unique accounts — twice as many as last year — in virtual worlds aimed at children under 16, according to K Zero, a consulting firm. Virtual Worlds Management, a media and trade events company, estimates that there are now more than 200 youth-oriented virtual worlds “live, planned or in active development.”

My big takeaways from this article? The sense that the more things change the more things stay the same...despite the big push for "safety first" in many of these sites and guarantees of 24 hour human moderator services, there's still a huge drive to rely on technologies that seem...for the most part...not all that different from the automated filter systems of five years ago. More sophisticated maybe, but not exactly a horse of a different colour. Second - more and more evidence of the huge piles of data being amassed in these sites, as well as the troubling convergence of surveillance and profiling...using "safety and security" as an excuse to not only monitor and analyze children's behaviours online, but also to make decisions about them based on "predicted intentions." Third - the incorporation of UGC into the mix....I'm sure they are definitely looking for offensive materials, but how is that measured, what are they looking for, whose interests are being prioritized (corporate copyright regimes, anyone?), what's the impact on free speech/expression, and...of course...what else are they looking at (likes, personal habits, consumer trends, etc.).

Opportunity Alert: Stupid Fun Club and the Corus PhD Fellowship in Television Studies

Two very appealing new opportunities have been announced over the past few days that I thought might be of interest to readers of Gamine Expedition. The first, via Emily Claire Afan over at Kidscreen, stems from an announcement that Will Wright will be leaving his current position at EA to head up their newest collaboration...a multimedia IP think tank called the Stupid Fun Club. As Afan writes:

The entertainment think tank is in charge of developing new IPs across a variety of media from video games and movies to TV, online and toys. Will Wright, the designer behind the hugely popular Sims franchise, and most recently Spore, will be leaving EA to run Stupid Fun Club, which he and the video game publisher own equally as principal shareholders.

From this investment, EA also gains the right to develop game concepts from SFC projects.

Wright has dabbled with the Stupid Fun Club as some sort of mysterious side project for several years now, but its past projects (and existing website) don't reveal much about the future scope and aims the "idea hub" might take. I'll be keeping an eye out for additional info...and job postings!

The second opportunity is academic-oriented, and comes in the form of a pretty sweet PhD fellowship in television/cross-media convergence studies at the University of Alberta, funded by Corus Entertainment. Here's a reprint of the fellowship position description - notice that the deadline is fast approaching!:

The Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta is pleased to announce the establishment of the Corus Entertainment Ph.D. Fellowship in Television Studies commencing September 2009. The fellowship is worth $10,000 per year and is eligible for renewal subject to successful progress through the program of study. Applicants should be working within the broader area of critical-cultural television studies. However, the specific area of research interest is open (i.e. industry analysis, audience reception, fandom, textual criticism, convergence culture, etc.).

The successful applicant will also receive the Sociology department’s standard PhD funding package. This includes four years of GaP funding initially worth approximately $21,500 per academic year as well as nomination for the Provost’s Doctoral Entrance Award which covers tuition. The University of Alberta also offers numerous competitive doctoral grants and awards and the department’s graduate students have a notably high success rate in securing both on-campus and national research grants. International students are eligible to apply for the fellowship.

The deadline for application is April 30, 2009. It is anticipated that the decision to award the scholarship will be made no later than May 15, 2009.

Corus is a market leader in specialty television and radio with additional assets in pay television, advertising services, television broadcasting, children’s book publishing and children’s animation. The company’s multimedia entertainment brands include YTV, Treehouse, W Network, CosmoTV, VIVA, Movie Central, HBO Canada, Nelvana, Kids Can Press and radio stations including CKNW, CKOI and Q107.


Questions about the fellowship or letters of interest should be addressed to:

Dr. Serra Tinic
Associate Professor, Media Studies
Department of Sociology, Tory 5-21
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2H4 Canada
Email: serra.tinic@ualberta.ca
Tel. 780.492.0480

Questions about applying to the Ph.D. program should be addressed to:

Dr. William Johnston
Associate Chair, Graduate
Department of Sociology
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2H4 Canada
Email: william.johnston@ualberta.ca

Spore API - How Cool is THIS?

Via Dmitri Williams through the Gamesnetwork email list, news about an incredible opportunity for academics and researchers being offered by EA/Spore. Not sure when this was officially launched, but it's the first I've heard of it, and although I don't have time to comment right now, you can expect a post very soon filled with lots of "wows" and "awesomes". In the meantime here's a copy of the full announcement:

Exploring Custom Content in Spore

Spore is a social network based on player creativity. Each user in Spore is equipped with powerful 3D editors that enable the user to design any creature, building or vehicle they imagine and then share their creations with each other. Spore also allows players to exchange ideas and critiques about each other's creations, keep track of a creator's most recent work and collaborate on projects. Since the launch of Spore back in June of 2008, over 3 million users have joined and created nearly 100 million assets. The community also continues to grow with a new user joining every minute and a new creation being shared every second. For a glimpse into this online community, see www.spore.com/sporepedia which provides basic information about the newest and most popular creations among other perspectives. Sporepedia reveals that creations have spanned a broad space, alluded to a wide array of genres (Star Wars, Sesame St., Pokemon) and even explored new ideas in architecture, sculpture and other design.

However, one website alone is inadequate to explore this huge collection of custom content. As a result, Spore has released the Spore API: www.sporeapi.com. It is a collection of public web services that provide access to data about user activity, their relationships and the content they produce. This poses a unique opportunity for aspiring or seasoned developers, academics, and data visualization gurus. What tools can be built to navigate through this data set, track trends, organize and discover new content? For the novice, building a web application that allows a user to easily navigate through the millions of Spore creations and social web would be a tool welcomed by the community. For the more advanced student, understanding the propagation of ideas across the social network or building recommendation algorithms based on past user activity are just some examples of research projects to pursue. In any case, the Spore API awaits new approaches to exploration and understanding of this unique online world.

Little Big Planet Online Hits the 2 Million Mark

Wow. Via Chris Remo over at Gamasutra, news that earlier this week, the much discussed, much adored LittleBigPlanet hit the 2 million mark...in online players! (VGChartz puts total sales at 2.13 million). Together, these 2 million players have created 725,000 online levels, generated about 4 million comments, and played the game over 125 million times. As Remo writes:

The PlayStation 3-exclusive sidescroller relies heavily on user-generated content both to provide more gameplay for owners of the game, as well as to serve as grassroots-level marketing demonstrating its avenues for creativity.

[...]

In a press release today, publisher Sony Computer Entertainment specifically called out a number of particularly impressive levels, including "LittleBigPlanet Takeshi's Castle," "LBP Jurassic Park," "LBP-MotorStorm," "LittleBigCalculator," "Uncle Fritz's Funhouse Frenzy," "Illumina Garden," and "Huge Pinball Machine," which it calls a "community favourite."

Follow the links for Youtube clips of these and various other awesome and/or pop culture-inspired levels. My favorite clip among them is this one of a uber-cool "Mirror's Edge" level.

The article also includes an interview from Sony marketing director Mark Hardy, who describes that LittleBigPlanet "is giving people from every walk of life the opportunity to express themselves creatively. The game is just the start. This is Creative Gaming: never-ending experiences that take on lives of their own through their players." Nice! If anyone knows where I can find out some user demographic stats for this game, esp. in relation to online participation rates, please please please drop me a line. I've had this game and all the fascinating developments around it (UGC, IP, cross-generational play) slotted as my next research project for awhile now, and it's exciting to see it's becoming such a massive, community-generating success. Now...if I can just finish writing this thesis already so that I can get started on the analysis ;)

In other news, the Cartoon Network's branded MMORPG FusionFall also hit a milestone this week, passing the 4 Million mark...pretty impressive considering the game has only been out since January. According to VirtualWorldsNews, this number describes "registered users," including both free-to-players and subscribers (a.k.a. basic and premium memberships). VWN describes:

FusionFall combines a a fair amount of gameplay, both in roleplaying and action-oriented styles, and is also looking to add in more social options. To celebrate the milestone, Cartoon Network is giving away a free Zak Saturday Bubblehead Helmet virtual good.

Apparently, once you get past the first couple of levels, the game is actually quite fun and addicting to play. I'll have to give it another go asap.

Hello Kitty MMOG Coming to North America

Via the WarCry Network, news this week that Sanrio's girl-oriented MMOG Hello Kitty Online, based on Hello Kitty and other cutesy-bootsy Sanrio characters, will soon be expanding its services to North America through a partnership with Aeria Games & Entertainment Inc.. Here's an excerpt from the Sanrio/Aeria joint press release:

The announcement was made at the 2009 Game Developer Conference®, held at San Francisco's Moscone Center from March 23-27. Hello Kitty Online is the eagerly anticipated official massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) of the Hello Kitty universe. Aeria Games will manage North American online publishing and game service operations for Hello Kitty Online. Sanrio Digital will manage retail publishing of the game and operate SanrioTown (http://www.sanriotown.com ), the Sanrio-themed portal and social networking site integrated with Hello Kitty Online.

"Sanrio Digital is very excited to partner with Aeria Games, who will be our online publisher and operator for Hello Kitty Online in North America. With Aeria Games' leadership position in the free-to-play casual MMO sector and Hello Kitty brand awareness among the underserved female gaming audience, Hello Kitty Online will grow into a leading social gaming destination for teens and female adults," said Robert Ferrari, Vice President of Publishing & Business Development of Sanrio Digital.

The game will be "free-to-play with optional premium upgrades," a model that is proving to be immensely successful these days (see last week's post on Club Penguin). Already successful in various parts of Asia, Hello Kitty Online will continue to announce and implement expansion plans throughout 2009. In addition to promoting the Sanrio brand and media characters, the game is intended t establish itself at the nexus of the "underserved female gaming audience" by providing a "magical and cute" environment focused on themes of friendship and caring (sound familiar? i wonder if they'll ever design a vw for girls that doesn't revolve around those themes)...both virtually and IRL. As described in the press release:

Aside from redefining traditional MMO gaming with the inclusion of integrated social media services provided by SanrioTown, Hello Kitty Online connects the virtual world with real world charity events: during past beta events, Sanrio Digital translated player activities into real donations to charities such as UNICEF. Sanrio Digital intends to continue charitable initiatives as part of North American strategy for Hello Kitty Online.

Very much in keeping with the growing/ongoing "games for change" trend spreading across kids' digital culture (e.g. see this recent MediaPost article about Nickelodeon's "Games for Social Change"). Additional details can be found in a recent post on Gamezig,which describes some of the Hello Kitty Online charity events that have unfolded to date. Here's the excerpt:

"In a recent beta, the event "Food for Friends" invited players to craft virtual items to raise money for UNICEF and the Asian Youth Orchestra. A similar event named "Helping Hearts" asked players to craft virtual items that Sanrio Digital then converted into hundreds of real gifts for the children of the Po Leung Kuk residential child care unit.

Sanrio and Aeria Games have announced that similar virtual-to-real world charity initiatives will be coordinated for the North American market as well. I wonder what they (or the kids) will come up with. Oh corporately manufactured charities...such a cool opportunity for kids to get involved in social movements, but why is the cost always that kids end up being enlisted in viral marketing and brand promotion?

Club Penguin Is Now the Second Most Profitable MMOG

Via Keane Ng over at The Escapist, a new report by Screen Digest listing the Top Ten revenue generating MMOGs of 2008. And as Keane writes, "No big surprise: World of Warcraft takes the top spot." But amazingly enough, the list also includes Club Penguin, coming in at number 2, and Runescape, which ranked third. It seems the MMOG market is definitely shifting younger - not only in terms of projects and development plans, or even in terms of numbers, but in terms of profitability as well. The figures also show that the MMOG market in general is continuing to expand at an impressive rate. According to the Screen Digest press release:

"The report entitled 'Subscription MMOGs: Life beyond World of Warcraft' reveals that the subscription-based MMOG market grew by 22% in 2008 and reached consumer spending levels of $1.4 billion in North America and Europe. Screen Digest expects the subscription market to continue growing at a good pace for at least the next five years..."

Of course, the market is still largely defined/dominated by the incomparable success of WoW, which Screen Digest argues is further driving the market by inspiring so many attempts to emulate its popularity/model/playability:

With a 58% share of Western consumer spending on subscription MMOGs and over $2.2 billion in cumulative spending on subscriptions since the beginning of 2005, World of Warcraft remains dominant in the market. However, growth in consumer spending on other subscription titles was robust during 2008 at 27%, confirming continuing adoption of the business model across other games and services as well.

As described by the BBC News Online, the findings also show that MMOGs markets in Europe and North America grew by 22% last year, and are now worth $1.4 billion (USD). They also list "at least 220 active MMOGs," though many of these remain exclusive to South East Asian markets.

In an interview with the BBC, Piers Harding-Rolls, a senior analyst with Screen Digest, claims that MMOG subscribers are surprisingly loyal:

"Once you're a subscriber you're likely to stay a subscriber...Some games are eroding World of Warcraft's (WoW) position - Warhammer Online and Age of Conan being the two most significant - but that's more down to their growth rather than any decline on WoW's part. WoW's market share was 60% in 2007 and 58% in 2008, but in terms of revenue, it went up year-on-year and is still going big guns."

Harding-Rolls describes that the growth is due to several factors, including the release of new titles and introduction of different payment systems, as well as the expansion of MMOGs into new demographic groups...a.k.a. kids and younger teens.

"If you look at the example of RuneScape, this is a game pitched at a teenage audience. You can play it for free or you can pay a premium and get a better service without advertising. It's an effective way to build a subscription base, rather than the traditional routes that involve PR, hype and having a service that has to be almost perfect from day one."

Sounds like the exact opposite scenario from the one described by Pixar covered in yesterday's post - expanding markets, recognition of the need to have an "almost perfect" service from day one, etc. etc. And big kudos to Club Penguin for making it to the number 2 slot (and big kudos to Screen Digest for finally revealing the status of Disney's big investment).

Anyway, here's the complete list - unfortunately devoid of actual $$$ figures.

10 MOST POPULAR SUBSCRIPTION GAMES IN TERMS OF SPENDING
1) World of Warcraft
2) Club Penguin
3) RuneScape
4) Eve Online
5) Final Fantasy XI
6) The Lord of the Rings Online
7) Dofus
8) Age of Conan
9) City of Heroes
10) EverQuest II
Source: Screen Digest

Pixar's Tie-In Games Not (Doing) So Good

Via a recent Gamasutra article written by Leigh Alexander, it seems that Pixar's CG movie tie-in videogames having been doing all that well in recent years. But according to THQ President and CEO Brian Farrell, this has nothing to do with quality or the contents of the games themselves, but rather an overly saturated kids' games market. As Farrell stated in his recent interview with Alexander:

"The kids' business, as you know, has been a huge focus of THQ for many years," said Farrell. "But there has been a trend away from licensed TV and movie games, and it's become much more competitive for all participants."

Citing examples such as the 2007's Ratatouille tie-in game, which "performed disappointingly" (as did the film, which despite becoming a box office hit, nonetheless had one of the worst openings in Disney-Pixar history), and the more recent Wall-E tie-in, which did even worse, Farrell proposes that it's not that the games themselves that are substandard, but rather that the market is more competitive now than it was back in the days of Toy Story and Finding Nemo.

But did Pixar tie-in games really ever do all that well? Apart from the occasional hit with their Gameboy titles, I just can't seem to remember there being a big smash hit Pixar tie-in within the kids' games market (a little help?). Anyway, Farrell also seems to think that the continued failure of their games to attract players also has to do with the fact that just as there are now more CG animated films released every year, there are more CG animated film-based videogames to compete with. And that as a result, the kids market is getting sliced up into smaller and smaller pieces, with less to go around. Hmmmm...that seems...wrong. Do kids really care about CG or not CG? What about CG television titles? And although box office receipts may very well impact the ultimate success of a tie-in game, it isn't THE deciding factor, seeing as the Wall-E game did worse than the Ratatouille game. Besides which, the kids' market is a market that continues to grow, expanding into younger age groups, into girls' culture, and across multiple platforms. Sounds more like a series of excuses than a real explanation.

It also reproduces a lot of old stereotypes about the kids market - for example, that all you need to do to sell a product is stamp a beloved media character on it, and you're all set. Perhaps Farrell and other media giants should take a closer look at the products themselves - Pixar might win yearly Oscars for their films, but they're not exactly winning Game Developer Choice Awards. And reviews of their games consistently point to some serious design flaws...or at least, the lack of child user-friendliness in their game designs. For example, the difficulty levels climb too high too quickly, there's aren't enough save points (a serious problem among an age group where the average gaming session lasts less than 30 minutes), the written on-screen instructions don't match up with the reading skills (and speed!) of younger kids, etc., etc. The industry - and especially the tie-in/cross-media component of it - really does need to start taking kids' game design more seriously. According to some of the comments included under Alexander's article, the games fall short in other ways as well. As Rob Lazenby writes,

There are multiple reasons why THQ has been failing in this genre, and much of it directly translates to why the company overall has had so many problems:
1). Poor media marketing
2). Lack solid tie-ins with movie based titles
3). Low quality games
One can only hope that Mr. Farrell's team can assemble a new talent that will learn from their paast mistakes.
But I doubt it.

And I really like this other comment, posted by Joshua McDonald:

I'm not surprised to see these games making less money. In fact, I've expected it to start for a while. These work because non-gamer parents buy them for their gamer kids. Now, the number of gamer parents is increasing, and these parents know that most of these games are a cheap experience designed to cash in on a big name. [...] With enough parents in the know, it may actually become necessary for movie tie-ins to be good games before they can succeed.

There's no question that "transmedia intertextuality" - tie-ins, cross-promotion, licensing - are an enormous part of kids' media culture. Enormous. And too often, cross-promotion and branding take way too much priority off of the individual products involved. Certainly, licensed or tie-in games for kids have been a key area where the presence of a tie-in film/TV show/book/toy has become a blanket excuse for phoning it in design-wise. It's strange that so few of these games appear to have employed child-centered design practices. Those that do -- such as some of the Harry Potter games -- seem to be so much more successful at addressing the interests and limitations of their target audience.

I've been thinking a little bit about tie-in games lately, their odd position within gaming culture, the successes, the failures, and the larger role these games can play within transmedia/cross-promotion, intertextuality and branding, as well as within kids' own patterns of cultural appropriation. It seems to me that these tie-in games could easily be used to give kids an opportunity to co-create the story and characters, to make changes and to do things differently...to gain a sense of co-ownership over their (shared) cultural texts. There's a lot of potential here - if brand management wasn't such a stifling priority - to enable kids to explore the vast flexibility and fluidity of narrative, to redefine and make sense of their media heroes and cultural icons in original and more personal ways. Sadly, it's a potential that is very rarely realized.

That said, I'm hopeful that some of the newer or emerging standards within children's game design will eventually trickle down to licensed games as well. Particularly since more and more game developers are now expanding their efforts and expertise into the kids market, which until now was dominated primarily by Nintendo (who generally makes pretty excellent kids games) and the children's television, toy and film industries (whose combined record can be generously described as "hit-or-miss"). For instance, one of the designers behind the immensely popular EverQuest is in the process of launching a child-oriented MMOG (entitled Free Realms, which you can read more about here) that's got a lot of gamers and kids' media critics pretty excited. Not to mention the various innovative titles I've highlighted in past posts, and the growing movement within the game industry to raise the overall quality of kids' game design. My advice to Pixar at this point would be to overhaul its strategy and get in on this movement at the ground level...see if they can't earn themselves a bigger piece of that pie.

CCFC Takes On The Good Night Show

The Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) is in the midst of a new initiative, calling attention to PBS Kids Sprout's The Good Night Show, a television show that (despite massive evidence to the contrary) promotes itself as a sleeping aid for toddlers. I posted about this same show last December when they held their Christmas Eve "Snooze-a-thon", and many of the same arguments I outlined then can be directly applied to the regular nightly program as well. Anyway, here's an excerpt from the CCFC press release

The Good Night Show which airs every evening from six to nine on Sprout, consists of popular cartoons like Thomas the Tank Engine and The Berenstain Bears, interspersed with original sleep-themed content. The original segments feature Nina, the host, and a puppet named Star, who take on the role of parent and child respectively. Sprout claims The Good Night Show "helps preschoolers wind down after a busy day."

"Parents trust that programming on PBS and its affiliated networks will be beneficial to children," said CCFC's Director Dr. Susan Linn. "Sprout is exploiting that trust by implying that its programming will ease children into sleep when research suggests that screen time before bed undermines healthy sleep habits."

For children three years and younger, television viewing is associated with irregular sleep patterns. Studies have also found that older children who watched TV at bedtime were more likely to have difficulty sleeping. The Good Night Show may also have the unfortunate consequence of encouraging parents to put televisions in children's bedrooms, a practice which has been linked childhood obesity and poor academic performance. The National Sleep Foundation calls television a "sleep stealer"and urges parents to avoid making television a part of their bedtime routine.

The CCFC also highlights the importance of "bedtime" as a nightly bonding ritual between parents and children, and that television is a poor substitute for the interpersonal contact, storytelling, songs and conversations that would/could otherwise take place while putting children to bed. I especially like the quote they include by Robert Kesten, Executive Director for the Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness, who aptly states: "When television programmers and marketers assume that they know more than doctors and educators about what is best for our nation's children, we all lose." The initiative is just now gaining momentum, but has already received a bit of backlash press coverage (for example, Friedman's MediaPost article uses a sarcastic tone and claims the CCFC is criticizing the show because it "lulls kids to sleep"...talk about missing the point completely, yikes!).

You can get more info about this initiative and other projects over at the CCFC website.

Teen Girls Take On TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras"

By way of Strollerderby, a very cool story about some intrepid Canadian teens who are trying to have Toddlers and Tiaras, a disturbing TLC reality television show about - you guessed it - toddler beauty pageants and the deeply troubling parents and industries involved in putting them on. High school students Karrin Huynh and Lesley Cornelius, of St. Catharines Ontario, were so disturbed by the show and its underlying messages about girls/children they decided to launch a campaign to have it banned from (Canadian? North American?) television, by way of a Facebook group called "Help to ban the show Toddlers and Tiaras". Here's an excerpt from Hannah Tennant-Moore's Strollerderby post:

"The high school seniors started a Facebook campaign to ban the show, arguing that it sexualises children as young as two and encourages paedophilia. The group quickly attracted close to 5,000 members.

TLC has defended the show, saying they are simply depicting—“from an objective and unfiltered perspective”—something that 100,000 kids take place in each year. For someone like me, who watches the show knowing that toddler beauty pageants are disgusting, the show may appear objective in that it succeeds only in making me even more disturbed by them."

Tennant-Moore also provides a link to an actual clip of the show, featured on Jezebel, which is not only disturbing but pretty infuriating. I'm feeling more and more that the UN's needs to broaden and formalize its condemnation of using children for reality television programming, unless strict guidelines are followed in ensuring the shows respect children's rights and dignity. For example, last fall, a UN report on child welfare in the UK warned that the use of "distressed" children in reality shows such as Supernanny could harm their rights, and that these shows "may "constitute an unlawful interference with their privacy" and that the media had to act further to protect children in such shows" (as quoted in the October 4, 2008 edition of The Herald).

A big kudos(!) to Huynh and Cornelius for bringing this show and important issue to public attention.

If you want to learn more about their efforts, you can check out (or join) their Facebook Group, or read some of the original news coverage of the campaign over at the Niagara Falls Review.

Flower and the Rise of Paidia Gaming

A few weeks ago, the PlayStation Network made a new addition to its growing collection of alternative, indie, creation-focused games -- thatgamecompany's innovative, ode to natural beauty, Flower. thatgamecompany, which was co-founded by Jenova Chen (the creator of fl0w) and Kellee Santiago (Chen's co-designer on multi-award winning student game Cloud), is proving itself to be a true pioneer in the current UGC/sandbox/experiential play movement in gaming (which I've discussed in previous posts that you can read here and here), and I'm looking forward to seeing first hand what kind of unique gameplay experience Flower has to offer. So far, the reviews have been incredibly positive. For example, as Ryan Clements writes over at IGN:

"thatgamecompany has depicted something that I never once imagined: what would a flower's dream look like if we could see it? Flower, a PS3 downloadable that comes as a spiritual successor to flOw, is one of the most beautiful games that I've ever played. Not just because the visuals are entirely breathtaking, but also because the experience of playing it offers more enjoyment, emotion and enlightenment than any game I've tried in years."

You'll find a similar celebrations over at Slate. For a more nuanced critique -- aimed primarily at all the surrounding hype and hyperbole -- check out Leigh Alexander's posts over at Sexy Videogameland (or click here and here). I particularly like her comment that the overwhelmingly positive reaction to this game reflects an underlying hope that "As if by lionizing titles with the subtlest signs of promise, we could combat the mainstream's failure to appreciate the dignity of games." Nice.

But I think that whatever the blogosphere's reaction, the game itself represents an important addition to the growing challenge that game designers (esp. indie designers) have posed to the maintream or traditional games market, and against our prevailing ideas and assumptions about digital gaming, and about play more generally. There's a strong and widely accepted notion within Western culture that play should be purposive and rational - structured around rules and parameters, aimed at achieving certain aims and goals, producing points or other measurable outcomes, and resulting in a clearly defined win (or lose). Until quite recently, play and games that didn't meet these criteria tended to be understudied and undervalued, despite their continued presence, prevalence and importance within the play practices of various groups. Today, however, there's a broad and growing interest in things like emergent play, role-play, virtual doll play, etc., which is resulting in an expansion of our understanding(s) and approach(es) to play...particularly within the (programmed/programmable) context of digital games.

So far the most prominent locus for discussions (and observations) of non-rational gameplay has been MMORPGs, where semi-structured role-play unfolds within what are otherwise pretty traditionally-structured game environments. Sandbox games are another example, and I would also predict that quite a few papers at this year's DiGRA are going to look at UGC games like LittleBigPlanet (the call for papers has been extended to April 17th, btw). But games like Flower or PixelJunk's Eden are taking things much further...not only allowing for "non-rational" (experiential, qualitative, non-linear) play to occur within an otherwise rational game structure, but actually making it the central focus of the game itself.

I'm thinking about how we can approach these types of games, and start theorizing on their combined contribution...despite the enormous differences they present in terms of thematic content, levels of player agency, boundaries, etc. My proposal is that if traditional digital games -- and modern, rule-bound games more generally - can be understood or defined using Caillois' concept of "ludus", perhaps a good way to think about these "alternative" models is by using his reverse concept of "paidia". Here's what I mean.

Caillois' theory presents a differentiated conception of play that celebrates the evolution of games into increasingly rational forms of activity, which mirrors modern transformations in terms of play (practice, idealizations, thoughts about...) within modern western societies. He classifies different types of gameplay into four broad categories (agon, alea, mimicry and ilinx), which he then places in a "rank order of progression"...positioning the different types of play along a continuum between two opposite poles. On one end we have paidia, which describes forms of play that feature open-ended fantasy and role-play, free-form diversions and unscripted amusements. On the other end, games with a high degree of ludus are disciplined by rule systems. Because they better reflect the dominant ideology, they are also more likely to be seen and understood as functional, rational and pro-social.

Caillois describes that as a society modernizes, the "frolicsome and impulsive exuberance" of paidia is "almost entirely absorbed or disciplined by a complementary, and in some respects inverse, tendency…to bind it with arbitrary, imperative, and purposely tedious conventions." He argues that in the contemporary era, free-from imaginative play serves a subordinate function to the rational systems of ludus. Caillois describes paidia and ludus in terms of a "natural" progression, reflecting the modern tendency to view structured, rational (i.e. ludus) games as inevitable, desirable and ultimately beneficial...not only in terms of their "civilizing" influence, but also in terms of their ability to produce and reflect modern culture. Needless to say, various play theorists have disputed this idea - reminding us that both paidia and ludus remain important features of contemporary play, and that our privileging of ludus within play studies, within social discourses, and within game design, is socially constructed and hegemonic...a reflection of larger ideas and ideals we have about the role of play in society.

All this to say (whew!), that by putting outdated hierarchies aside and reclaiming the notion and importance of paidia, we can potentially start to theorize and even "name" this new form of innovative, free-form, imaginative game design..and its associated, emerging forms of gameplay. I think that the concept of "paidia gaming" offers an inclusive and timely paradigm. Any thoughts? Is it time to revisit paidia and Caillois?

I've uncovered a few older references applying "paidia" to digital games, a number of which appear to stem from an article by Gonzalo Frasca that appeared in Michael P. Wolf's (ed.) 2003 The Video Game Theory Reader, along with some preliminary "ponderings" by Raph Koster. Frasca uses the term in reference to games like SimCity, which are arguably the likely antecedents of the current crop of open-ended games, albeit still highly structured by rules, parameters and measurable outcomes. I'm not quite sure that these older/previous games really exemplify "paidia" or paidia gaming, which would involve more than simply having "no predesignated goal" or clear winner...although they would contain some of the same qualities, and fall somewhere closer to the "paidia" end of the continuum. It will be interesting to see how this notion has been used over the years and how it's been developed, and to see how my suggestion about this new crop/development in digital gaming fits in with the previous arguments made.

Heads Up! FTC Open Forum on Kids and Advertising Literacy

For those of you in the D.C. area, the FTC will be holding an open forum on March 12, 2009, to gather feedback and input on an upcoming advertising literacy project aimed at tweens. Here are the details:

Ad It Up! Kids in a Commercial World
The Federal Trade Commission staff will host a forum on March 12, 2009 to gather input for its advertising literacy initiative, which will educate and empower tweens to be better informed consumers of information. At the forum, experts on advertising and marketing to kids will discuss a range of issues, including:

* What kids experience in the commercial world;
* What kids understand about their experience; and
* What kids need to know to navigate in this world.

The goal of the campaign is to educate kids to be better informed consumers of information.

The FTC staff invites interested parties to participate by attending in person or via webcast.

The forum will be free and open to the public (and will also be webcast live), and looks like it will at least touch upon some of the existing FTC consumer literacy initiatives, such as You Are Here and OnGuard Online.

Interesting Hook Ups Among the Toy and Media Giants

Two news stories caught my eye this morning, both written by Emily Claire Afan for Kidscreen Daily, and both describing new, somewhat unlikely partnerships between some pretty heavy hitters within the children's (media and toy) industries. The first, an announcement that Disney/Pixar is getting in on the branded Lego action. As Afan writes:

Three Disney and Disney/Pixar properties will be getting the Lego treatment, thanks to a multi-year licensing deal that grants the construction toy company access to develop product for Toy Story, Cars and Prince of Persia.

The plan for now is that all three Disney branded construction sets will be released in 2010. Toy Story-themed construction sets (for kids aged 2 to 12 yrs) featuring themes and characters from the first two films will launch in January 2010. Additional sets will appear in May 2010, coinciding with the big screen release of Toy Story 3, slated to hit screens in June of that same year. The Prince of Persia Lego sets will be released in April 2010, just prior to the cinematic release of the videogame-based film Prince of Persia: Sands of Time in May. And the Cars sets will appear in June 2010, likely somewhere around the same time the Cars MMOG goes live.

The second story involves videogame giant EA and toy manufacturer Toy Island, who are entering into a multi-year deal to produce branded sporting goods for kids. According to Afan:

The multi-year deal will see the toyco developing a new line of branded sports equipment for three demos - three to six, six to nine, and nine to 12 - set to launch this coming fall. It's the first merch deal of its kind for the game label, thanks to its partnership with IMG Licensing, the exclusive worldwide CP and brand licensing agent for EA Sports.

In addition to the obvious associations with EA Sports games, the partnership represents EA's attempt to compete with the Wii in the exergaming arena. As described in the EA/Toy Island joint press release:

"The unique and differentiated EA SPORTS-branded products will bring classic sports activities to life in a whole new way, utilizing infrared, motion and equilibrium sensors. The products, which will serve as a virtual coach as they instruct the user on form and technique, speed and power, and more, are in development for baseball, football, basketball, soccer and hockey. Products will include:

• a line of interactive training tools featuring voice commands and instructional coaching elements designed to take budding stars to the next level;

• a complete game-in-a-box containing all the equipment necessary for kids to practice and play a sport;

• a line of sports toys that will utilize electronics to reward young athletes with cheers when they use proper techniques;

• a basic line of high density-foam balls to help kids develop throwing and kicking motor skills at an early age.

The products will be available for three youth categories: ages 3-6, 6-9 and 9-12. Other sports are expected to follow this year’s launch."