New Article in The Escapist

Be sure to check out this week's issue of The Escapist, which explores the various acronyms associated with gaming and the game industry, under the theme title "Alphabet Soup". Alongside some great articles on MMORPGs, IGDA and TGI (Triangle Game Initiative), is an article I wrote on the ESRB and the many challenges it will need to overcome if it is to remain relevant in a web 2.0, technologically converged, digitally distributed game environment. Here's an excerpt:

Through partnerships with the National PTA and a website overhaul, the ESRB has made real inroads toward helping parents make informed choices for their gamer children. Awareness levels are higher than ever, and current studies show that most parents find the ratings "useful." A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only eight percent of parents list videogames as their main source of "concern about inappropriate content," whereas 32 percent list television.

All signs seem to indicate the ESRB has hit finally its stride, but that's likely not the case. While it's commendable that the ESRB has rectified its past mistakes, here in the present the unaddressed challenges keep on stacking up. Current trends in game technology, design and distribution pose serious threats to the ESRB's newfound relevance. Many of these challenges have already been discussed elsewhere, but when you put them all together you start to appreciate their immensity.

The main challenges I explore in the article include the spread of online content and UGC, converging game formats (though a large section of this portion unfortunately didn't make it to the final version), and new distribution systems. I had also hoped to have enough space to talk about indie gaming, but it ended up as just a tiny footnote, and something that I will definitely need to elaborate on in a separate post or article in the future. Not that I needed more fuel for the fire in this particular piece - it attracted a sizable response on the article's "Comments" forum, as well as the forums of a couple of other sites where the story got picked up, most of which reveal just how controversial and touchy this particular subject still is within the game community.

Unfortunately, much of the feedback I received communicated a fundamental misunderstanding that I was trying to promote an expansion of the current ESRB rating system to online interactions...which couldn't be further from the truth. As I've argued before, the current system does not have the flexibility and responsiveness required to keep up with contemporary trends in gaming, and slapping an E or M onto an online game (or online features os a game) would be pretty pointless (and potentially misleading). But that doesn't mean the ESRB itself couldn't try to come up with some sort of new approach to help parents make informed decisions about the different types of online/chat moderation systems available, the varying levels of freedom afforded by different UGC games, or at the very least enable parents, children and designers to exchange information in a more direct and adaptive way. They do, after all, have the full cooperation of the mainstream game industry, and unique access to mechanisms and programming that are otherwise (supposed to be) off-limits to would-be raters. But anyway, as the title of my article ("Obsolescence Pending") suggests, with all the time and energy that has been spent defending the current framework, it's doubtful that a massive restructuring is likely to occur anytime soon....leaving the door wide open for an alternative service or system to come in and provide something a little more comprehensive and hopefully much more responsive to technological advances, evolution of the player community, etc. Especially as a larger and larger portion of games and game content are not rated by the ESRB, and the ratings are restricted to a shrinking proportion of the overall games market (although as one commentator, SaintPeter, rightly pointed out, as long as there are single-player games there will be a place for the ESRB ratings, which is very true and highlights the technological determinism of my overall argument).

By far one of the most interesting and useful outcomes of the article for me and my own thinking about these issues was the feedback I received that provided preliminary sketches and suggestions about how this alternative system might work. While the article attracted a LOT of disagreement and challenge from the forum communities, I also received some great feedback on additional issues that would need to be included to make my assessment of the ESRB more exhaustive, as well as a number of ideas for alternative systems. For example:

slopeslider:
I have a few Ideas.
For online interactions there could be a new rating category.
Moderated/unmoderated user-generated content.
Moderated/unmoderated player chat
For multiplayer online games maybe a special moderated chat line for kiddies. It would be moderated, but the rules would be soo strict that it wouldn't be a problem moderating 2% of the overall game chat. I know if they had this most people A. dont want to talk to little kids and B. don't like super strict speech guidlines. That means they wouldn't have to moderate 1 million people chatting online at once, more like 10,000.

I agree - even a simple system of moderated/unmoderated would be a great place to start. I know that individual games often include a self-description, but a standardized categorization system would be much more immediately useful to parents. This theme was taken up and elaborated upon by BehattedWanderer:

BehattedWanderer:
That actually doesn't sound like a bad Idea. If they were to display a prominent warning about 'User made un/moderated content', specifically stating that 'users of varying ages can createj online content, which may result in inappropriate content being generated and played before it attracts moderator attention', then it would go a long way towards helping to assess the interactions that they cannot (but probably can hazard a guess) predict.

What they would need to do is put out a psa, or something, a short commercial, to be aired on the big channels--wouldn't have to be long, just a minute or so, alerting parents to the new type of content, and to look at the rating on the box, and that they should use their judgement when purchasing--Games rated T and M might feature more mature subject matter in the online play from both adolescents and adults, which would expose their children to such.

To which I responded:

So clever. What would you think if the system also enabled users to actively submit their content for some sort of peer-reviewed or moderator rating? For instance, if you think your game level should be rated E, you could flag it so that it gets some special (or more immediate) attention - perhaps through some kind of volunteer (or nominated, if the community is large enough) parent-gamer group. Parents could then set up child accounts that can only access content confirmed as appropriate. Or something along those lines.

To which BehattedWanderer replied:

I agree with you up to the point of peer review--that's all well and good, and could work pretty well, as long as there is unbiased review as well--it randomly picks someone from the review board (whom you don't know), and gives you a rating and a review from there, if not a quick chop from the cutting axe for trying to post an overly sexually-themed level in the 'E' category. Each review board is accompanied by one moderator, just to ensure fairness. After two or three of these random and anonymous reviews by the peer review or moderator groups, the rating is affirmed, and put into it's appropriate category.

The part I have a bit of issue with, however, is the latter part--specifically the child accounts. Parental settings are fine and dandy, and work on occasion. But the issue with that is that children are devilish when the want to be, and most can figure out how to either get around the parental controls, or flat out just change the parental control settings so that they have their own access. What's more, for every child account that is created and ahered to, dozens more won't even be created, leaving unfiltered settings for the child to browse. Most parents (I'm talking about those not that familiar with online play, mostly the older parents) wouldn't know to filter the content online, not expecting there to be such content so readily available within the game. It's for that reason I propose the ads--just to draw attention that their children might be accessing this kind of content without their knowledge. It's that age old idiom of "knowing is half the battle"--most aren't even aware there's an issue of unrated and unfiltered content.

Very insightful points and nuanced understanding of the parent-child-technology relationships involved. Another really great recommendation that draws on the idea of crowd-sourcing was provided by Nutcase, who describes:

Nutcase:
In this day and age, you could derive a quite accurate community rating by picking a number of people at random who have bought the game, and asking them to fill a ratings questionnaire. This job would naturally fall to game vendors because they are the only ones who know who has bought what. To increase confidence in the ratings, stores like Amazon could offer this only to people who have bought the game two weeks ago or more. Steam could go further and actually observe that the person has played the game for X amount of time.

Well, this kind of rating might have trouble catching spikes of content that come late in the game (70 hours into a JRPG...) or by random (an unmarked location in a sandbox game you might find or not...) but it would produce good ratings for the great majority of games. One can think of additional mechanisms specifically to deal with these cases.

This system would follow the actual audience attitudes closely without getting "stuck" in the morality of any given group. Also, the system would not need to flatten the results in one rating (though it could also do that for at-a-glance reading). Most of the actual data could remain browsable online with various filters, with only identity-compromising information stripped. The implications of half the audience rating something AO and half rating it T are quite different from everyone rating it M, though dumb averaging would make these two cases look the same. It's also to be expected that ratings vary depending on geographical area; for most people the ratings would be more accurate if they could use ones from their own area instead of all ratings.

Very true - getting the vendors/distributors involved would be key, and since it involves building consumer involvement and potential loyalty, and providing a service to both players and developers, it may not be all that difficult to get them on board. There may be more, I haven't had the time to go through the last batch of comments, but I think there's enough even here to begin envisioning an alternative framework. As Sal Humphreys posted on my Facebook wall:

I also think in the world of user-generated content - which is too vast to monitor - it might be that user-generated ratings have a role to play - if you develop a culture of rating, and have enough people rating, then you have a system that generates the information necessary to make informed choices.

Indeed!

Interestingly, this is all in harmony with a model currently being developed/promoted by independent game designer Daniel Kinney with his TIGRS rating system. I'm sure there are other models out there as well, just waiting to be taken up by the player community and industry. For instance, a number of non-indie developers are also working on incorporating user-based moderation systems and game reviews into online communities/hubs for certain games...an expanded version of these systems that includes more of a focus on tagging content as kid-friendly (or not), in a more systematic way, is another step in the right direction. Even something as simple as the self-rating system that Metaplace is using, which in fact does draw on ESRB-style ratings categories, seems viable as a starting point (no way to rate people/chat, however, as my students were unlucky enough to experience firsthand during a group discussion a few weeks ago). Most of these solutions do leave room for mistakes, of course, but could nonetheless provide an initial bedrock of advice and support for parents to make better informed decisions. What I'm particularly interested in are models that draw on kids and parents as well to provide content ratings and evaluation of ratings...after all, they're the ones actually using the ratings (and not just as a political tool either). This whole experience has given me a lot to think about, sprouting some wiggly little project ideas in the back of my mind.

The Kids' Comic Space

Part of the digital literacies discussions that I've been following of late have centered on the long-discussed (but not always applied) potential associated with using comics for intertextual, heavily visual, narrative formats through which kids can explore cultural themes, literature and learning. It's a fascinating idea that draws on the long history of comics, picture books, and transmedia intertexts within children's culture...while tapping into children's actual leisure practices in a way that transcends the usual boundaries between cultural categories (high/low culture, literature/entertainment, etc.) and gives some serious consideration to the value and possibilities contained within the re-emergence of comics as a literary form.

Not that comics have ever really gone anywhere, but they've certainly resurfaced within the mainstream in a big way these past few years -- a way that hasn't really been seen since, well, i'm not really sure when! (golden age? silver age?). I remember that Scholastic initiated a big push toward graphic novels and comics a number of years ago (e.g., click here to find out more about the launch of their Comix line back in 2005). And certainly, the emerging research on kids' reading habits within digital games and online environments is relevant to this discussion as well (e.g., Jackie Marsh's work on kids reading and writing in virtual worlds). Obviously, there are many more connections between this body of work and the research I'm doing on kids' games, and some cool possibilities of merging the two areas...not just thematically (which has been done before), but "ludic"ally as well. I still have a lot of catching up to do, and until my PhD is "in hand," this is definitely on the back-burner. But as a former comicbook collector and current reader of graphic novels (well, TPBs in my case), this whole realm definitely draws my attention.

Some neat places to start for finding out more about the kids' "comics space," and exploring its increased presence within both educational curriculum and kids' digital culture:

James Bucky Carter's En/Sane World - a repository of info and resources on "Sequential Art Narratives in Education (SANE)". His site includes lots of links and ideas for educators, as well as a variety of sources on "multigenre, multimodal, or otherwise "New" literacies."

The Online Visual Literacy Project - not just about comics, but appears to have some interesting background literature.

A short but sweet archive of comics-related posts on Media Macaroni, which includes a list of comics that the "cool kids" read and a great post about (as well as my first introduction to) Babymouse.

This excellent reading list of kids' comics posted by Jonathan Liu on GeekDad, in which he provides some great "off the beaten path" alternatives to the usual big name titles put out by Marvel and Disney (and yes - it was written in response to their partnership announcement this past summer).

Some of my own favourite kid-friendly titles (which I also posted in the comments section on GeekDad), that I would love to see more of within kids' digital culture:

Ted Naifeh’s Courtney Crumrin (think Harry Potter meets Hellboy meets Angry Little Girls)

Mike Kunkel’s Herobear and the Kid (actually anything by Astonish Factory is unique and all ages)

Jacob Chabot’s The Mighty Skullboy Army

And, although not always for kids, I really like the artwork and concept behind Roy Husada's Opera Manga, which he creates for the Vancouver Opera as a way of communicating/summarizing the storylines of upcoming performances to audiences. Very cool.

Of course, the renewed academic/press interest in comics, visual literacies and interactive storytelling is also in part being driven by kids themselves. For example, according to an article published last August in Publishers Weekly by Ada Price, web comics are being produced/created by younger and younger artists and writers, who are in turn benefiting from online distribution systems and exposure to land publishing deals with traditional book publishers. Again, nothing exceedingly new here...but the increased access (to younger age groups) and viability (in terms of potential for creators to actually generate an income from their artistic labour) are certainly keeping the topic relevant. I wonder how many actual "kids" are getting in on this, and I want to find out where they distribute their UGComics, and what the audience or community is like. I'm glad to see that this topic hasn't faded away and in fact appears to be gaining momentum. More links to come as I find them.

Roller Derby Grabs the Spotlight (and won't let go)

Today, the much-lauded and much-discussed film Whip It finally premieres in theaters across North America. The movie, which was directed by Drew Barrymore and stars Ellen Page, explores the wonderful and bizarre world of all-female roller derby. I had an opportunity to delve into this world a tiny bit last year, after attending a derby bout and then writing an article about where and how this particular breed of roller derby fits in (or doesn't) with the larger entertainment sports culture, women's pop culture, feminism, and above all play. In honour of the Whip It premiere, I've decided to repost the link to the article itself, which you can find in full over at The Escapist. Here's an excerpt to give you a sense of the general tone and topic:

Entertainment sports are often described as "spectacle sports" because they rely so much on the theatrical and stylistic elements that surround them. The hyperbolic displays of aggression, elaborate props and staged interpersonal conflicts all become part of the "bigger picture" of how viewers experience and understand the event.

The athletes (or performers) play a key role in creating the spectacle. They are the main characters in an open-ended drama, the bodies upon which the story plays out. But not all spectacle sports are as heavily staged as others. Many unfold like any other sporting competition, without a predetermined script or outcome. In these sports, players toe an incredibly fine line between athleticism and roleplay, between adhering to the game's rules and conforming to the over-arching narrative.

Roller derby exemplifies this delicate balancing act. Recently resurrected by grassroots, all-female leagues in the U.S., roller derby is an unmatched display of female aggression, parody and subversion. Beneath its hot pink "riot grrrl" exterior, however, roller derby is also a high-speed, full-contact team sport. For the women who participate, roller derby provides a unique opportunity to dress up, ham it up and play rough. Really rough.

If you're interested in finding out more about this very unique, and by all accounts incredibly fun, phenomenon, this weekend is a good time to try. Roller derby leagues everywhere are planning events to commemorate the wide release of Barrymore's film, including a free derby at Robson Square in Vancouver hosted by the Terminal City Roller Girls. (A number of similar events have been taking place all week, for e.g. in Manhattan and Montreal, as well as in Toronto during the film's TIFF screening). Since so much of the culture is already the byproduct of media depictions (the Rollergirls reality television series is an oft-cited source of inspiration for current leagues), we might want to anticipate a bit of a roller derby explosion (or more specifically Tipping Point) after this, and maybe a trickle down into younger age groups.

Child Gamer Paper Published

I'm very pleased to announce the recent publication of an article I co-authored with Neil Narine, which appears in the latest issue of Communication, Culture and Critique. The article, entitled "The Turbulent Rise of the "Child Gamer": Public Fears and Corporate Promises in Cinematic and Promotional Depictions of Children's Digital Play," explores the ways in which child gamers have been depicted and mobilized within popular and public discourses since the introduction of home gaming systems in the late 1970s. We focus specifically on the ways in which moral panics and celebratory discourses about kids and gaming (which are inherently linked to discourses about kids and information technologies) resurface again and again within various cultural texts, from television ads, to magazine covers, to Hollywood film. Here's the abstract:

This paper examines depictions of the "cyberchild," and the child at risk in Hollywood films and television advertisements portraying children's digital gaming. We examine fears of digital play and adjoining hopes for its conversion into a "productive" and educational practice. We find evidence of a stiflingly polarized conflict over children's digital gaming: young gamers are either delinquent and violent, or naturally adept "cyberchildren" with bright futures as information workers. We propose three reasons why this polarity remains unresolved, detail how issues of gender and class are sidelined, and suggest that cinematic and promotional depictions have both helped shape and reflect grossly exaggerated characterizations of the child gamer.

The project started out as a conference paper, which we presented at the PCA and CSA back in 2006, and which we then elaborated and refined in response to some of the great feedback we received from conference attendees, colleagues (a special thanks in that regard to Helen Kennedy and Graeme Kirkpatrick for their early support and comments), and peer reviewers. An enormous thanks to Karen Ross, Jane Wynn and Jane Anderson at Communication, Culture and Critique for agreeing to publish this piece and for making the entire process such a pleasant and expedient experience.

Full citation for the piece is: Narine, N and S.M. Grimes (2009) "The Turbulent Rise of the "Child Gamer": Public Fears and Corporate Promises in Cinematic and Promotional Depictions of Children's Digital Play." Communication, Culture & Critique, Volume 2 Issue 3, pp. 319-338.

Grimlie's World on Metaplace

Exploring theoretical concepts and course materials beyond simply writing about them can be a challenging prospect. This semester, in lieu of the standard class presentations, I'm asking my cmns 455 Women and New Information Technology students to explore the theories, terms and ideas discussed in seminar through social networking tools. Since technology is best approached as a form of practice, embedded in culture, relationships and social institutions, what better way to think through the debates, challenges and opportunities that ITs provide than to experience firsthand how these tools can be used to produce critical analysis.

Of course, these types of projects can be easier said (or assigned) than done, so I've decided to join my students in this endeavor by constructing a virtual world component to my lectures. The world will serve as a compliment to course materials and resources, and will function as an immersive and more interactive version of the course website. It will also provide a virtual space for group discussions, if students are willing to give it a try.

For this project, I'm using Metaplace, a user-friendly WYSIWYG (a.k.a. what you see is what you get) virtual world building tool that is free and open to the public. I first heard about Metaplace at this summer's State of Play 6, via Raph Koster's (Metaplace founder and all-star game designer) keynote. I was immediately excited to give it a try, and am even more excited about it now that I've had a chance to give it a whirl. Here's a screenshot of my work-in-progress, "Grimlie's World":



I've attempted to design a virtual environment that reflects some of the ways in which I make sense of issues surrounding women/girls and technology, particularly in terms of how they relate to my own research on children's digital games and play technologies. Here's the excerpt from my "Design Principles" statement, which as I mention above is posted on the course website as well as on the Intro page of the world itself:

In addition to being what I know best and therefore most available for thinking through theoretical issues, I find the realm of children's culture (digital and analog) a fascinating and highly useful way of exploring gender and technology. Very few areas of society are as overtly and openly gendered as children's toys and media - just visit to a nearby Toys "R" Us (pink aisles vs. blue aisles) or watch a few hours of Saturday morning cartoons for some immediate examples.

While counter-examples exist, the dominant discourse is one of extreme divisiveness with a rarely contested emphasis on hyper-femininity and hyper-masculinity, and hyper-hegemonic ideals (e.g. middle-class "family values") and politics (heteronormative, conservative, etc.). This emphasis is reflected in the design and implementation of children's cultural and technological artifacts - from porcelain dolls to Easy-Bake Ovens, to Batman action figures.

Within the specific area of digital games, which have long been typecast as "toys for boys" (a problematic title for many reasons), these issues are at the centre of an ongoing debate, which we will be exploring in seminar and through our readings of Kafai et al's Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat. We will spend time discussing the whole concept of "girls games" - the argument that getting more girls into gaming will translate into more women in the game and other IT industries, the various issues of representation that are involved, the often overlooked question of leisure politics in contemporary society, as well as market and industry concerns about gendered design and the movement toward gender-inclusive design.

Throughout this discussion, however, we'll see that most games "for girls" continue to feature very gendered themes and imagery, not to mention colour palettes, and inexplicably limited design affordances. But if all games, and many technologies, are gendered to begin with, as well as predominantly gendered as "masculine", could the explicit display of "feminine" technologies not also be seen as a direct challenge, a re-appropriation and source of potential empowerment? The phenomenon is complicated - it raises so many interesting questions about the social construction of gender and technology, and hits right at the heart of some of the key divisions among feminist technology theorists.

I'm hoping to use the space as a way of depicting, and possibly eventually challenging, some of these paradoxes. My first iteration has been pretty straightforward - basically a suburban playground with different themed areas filled with objects that link up to external website, videos, etc. But I'm hoping that as I become more familiar with the space, I can start using it to engage with the theories and concepts at a more experiential level.

The most exciting thing about this is that my students are along for the ride as well, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how their projects evolve and develop over the course of the semester. You can find out more about the projects and the course on the cmns455 website, or come and see my progress in Metaplace. If you do, please share any thoughts or feedback - as a work in progress, helpful suggestions and comments are welcome and deeply appreciated. Here are a couple of additional screenshots FYI:

Some of the themed areas, reflecting dominant themes found in commercial girls' games, including "Sweets & Treats" (think Candyland or Strawberry Shortcake)


The town square, where you can transport to a separate "Classroom" are where course materials can be downloaded:


And lastly, the Classroom:

Canadian Copyright Reform

I wish I had gotten around to this sooner, but alas! There are only a few hours left to have your voices heard in the Government of Canada Copyright Consultation. The hard-working people over at Fair Copyright for Canada have made submitting a response as easy as signing a form letter, so there's still time to add your name to the long (but perhaps not long enough) list of people dissatisfied with the way copyright reform in this country is headed. If you haven't done so already, hop on over to Fair Copyright's "Copyright Consultation Made Easy" page, follow their advice, and send off an email asap. They've also provided a form letter to petition elected representatives to take up the cause - which you can personalize or simply sign and send through an online form...they'll print off a hard copy and send it along to the appropriate offices this week.

There's lots of info on the Fair Copyright website explaining why this is important, including placing much needed limits on corporate-centric (and US-driven) copyright laws, protecting consumer rights and artists' rights, fostering research, innovation, creativity and education, maintaining individual control over our technologies, etc., as well as a ton of background info. You can also find out more about the consultation, analysis of the submissions and proposals at www.speakoutoncopyright.ca. Here's a really brief excerpt from the Fair Copyright site:

Last year, Canadians across the country rose up in protest when our government proposed to change copyright in ways that many found harmful and unfair. Due to mounting opposition, the proposed law (Bill C-61) was delayed and ultimately dropped. The government promises to once again introduce a new copyright law. This time we
can help them get it right. From now until September 13th, 2009, the Government of Canada will be holding a consultation on copyright. In just minutes, you can tell the government what matters most to you.

Having waited 'till the last minute myself on this, I can attest to how easy it really is to write up a quick submission. Here's a copy of the email I sent in to info@copyrightconsultation.gc.ca earlier today:

I am writing in response to the solicitation for feedback on the Government of Canada Copyright Consultations. I am a PhD candidate in communication, which involves a significant amount of media research and analysis. The quality of my research, as well as that of my teaching, relies on copyright laws that allow for fair dealing, particularly as it applies to educational purposes. Canada is already far behind other developed nations when it comes to fair dealing allowances. For instance, although Canadian academics are currently allowed exemptions to copyright for study and analysis, we do not have the same exemptions for classroom use as found in the US and in various EU countries. As a university instructor, copyright restricts the materials and analysis that I can show in class, which greatly impedes my ability to deliver to the students a thorough education in media criticism and analysis. This is particularly the case with newer copyrighted materials. As libraries everywhere struggle with diminishing budgets and rising copyright/licensing costs, their ability to secure the rights to new films, games and other media materials in a comprehensive and timely manner has been enormously reduced. My hope is that the new copyright law will include a more comprehensive and flexible articulation of fair dealing for academic and educational purposes. More flexible fair dealing could enhance education, while enabling better research on key and emerging aspects of our highly (and ever increasingly) mediated society.

Conversely, if fair dealing exemptions are not adequately protected under the new law, I worry about the detrimental impact this would have not only on academics, but also on artists, students, and everyday users of digital technologies and media. It is hugely important that we, as citizens, have access to the core components of our shared culture. This access should not merely include the right to purchase or consume the media, but the right to engage with it as well. Engagement is not passive -- it includes criticism, discussion, appropriation, and re-contextualization. We do this as part of our struggle to make meaning out of a complex, and often contradictory, global mass culture. Occasionally, engagement can lead to creative transformations, which provide invaluable stepping stones between the past and the present, the center and the periphery, the traditional and the new. While it is of course extremely important that artists and producers maintain some control over their creations, this control needs to be balanced with the audience's own right to participate in the shaping of their cultural experience. Copyright exemptions such as fair dealing for criticism, parody and transformative creativity are crucial if we are to ensure continued access to these rights. Given that copyright itself has extended so rapidly in the past few decades, a similar expansion of consumer or user rights would be most in keeping with our democratic ideal of a nation with plural but also shared cultural experiences...Not the elimination of these rights.

I'm well aware that it's far from perfect. And that a longer, more detailed (and thorough!) submission would have been great. But nonetheless, given the huge outcry last year and the momentum that the movement has gained over the past few months, I think that enough fingers pointing in the right direction just might end up being enough to send GovCan down a better path than it's barreled down so far.

Delicious Summer Leftovers, Part 1

Once again, I've allowed my blog to slowly wind down as my intended posts list has piled up out of control. Now that the new semester is imminent, and I'll once again be managing two sites, I figured the best thing to do is another one of those long summary posts that briefly hits on a good assortment of "items of interest". I have so many, I predict another similar post will be in order in the very near future. For now, however, please enjoy some leftover - but still fresh and relevant - posts from the past few weeks that slipped through the cracks of my over-scheduled calendar.



Storybird Revolutionizes Collaborative Storytelling
This post was intended to be a preview of a wonderful new online resource for kids, families, friends, artists, writers and anyone else who's always dreamed of creating their own storybook. Since Storybird actually launched (or "hatched") earlier today, however, instead you can go on over and see for yourself how beautiful and intuitive their collaborative storytelling tools really are. I have high hopes for this site - it's a wonderful idea for families, a great resource for artists, and exactly the kind of responsive, user-centered cultural outlets that media literacy types are calling for. I've been exploring the site for a couple of weeks in Beta, and love what I see so far. I haven't created a Storybird myself, but have some ideas floating around that I'll surely put into e-print soon.

Sign up and start designing your own storybooks over at Storybird, and check out their Storybird Blog for more info about the site and some sense of the founding principles behind it.




Using Strawberry to Sell Strawberries
Via Emily Claire Afan over at Kidscreen, news that earlier this week American Greetings Properties and Cookie Jar Entertainment - co-producers of the Strawberry Shortcake property - are teaming up with the "Produce for Better Health Foundation" to use their iconic red-haired good girl to promote fruits and veggies. Here's an excerpt:

It's Fruits & Veggies - More Matters month in the US and the year-long partnership will see Strawberry Shortcake and friends making healthy eating fun for kids. PBH is working with US retailers to disseminate nutritional information about fruits and vegetables that features Strawberry, including columns for in-store newsletters and magazines, ad circulars, recipe cards, signage in produce and frozen foods departments and activity booklets. There will also be a free Strawberry e-card at www.americangreetings.com [AND] PBH's websites are featuring new Strawberry images over the course of the year and Strawberry-themed kid-friendly, healthy recipes are part of the "get kids involved" section of www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org and www.foodchamps.org.

This might seem like such a no-brainer, but it also finally remedies something that has frustrated me about Strawberry Shortcake ever since her relaunch a couple of years ago. Here, we have a perfect little group of ambassadors for better eating - characters based on fruit-based pastries that could easily be "updated" to focus on fruit instead of baked goods, but for some reason never have been. I've never met a kid who didn't love berries (though I'm sure they exist), and am encouraged by how easy it would be to promote all kinds of wonderfully healthy foods by a simple addition of blueberries or strawberry slices. The fruits themselves are jam packed with vitamins, and set a great precedent for fruit and veggie eating of all kinds. Great move on the part of both American Greetings and Cookie Jar. Now all we have to do is drop the "Shortcake" and maybe see a few episodes that don't offer "baking delicious cakes" as the only way to save the day ;)




Sesame Street Revamp
Lots of news this week about the end of Reading Rainbow, but throughout the summer the focus has been on another PBS fave, Sesame Street. The series is entering into its 40th season with all the fanfare one would expect, including a new set of Emmys to add to their collection along with a special lifetime achievement award. The Sesame muppets are currently featured in an editorial spread in Harper's Bazaar, and everyone's all abuzz about their upcoming Mad Men parody. Much less attention has been paid to the news that the show will be changing its format - for the first time in...hmmm....ever? - to a segmentized, hosted format that sounds a tiny bit like The Muppet Show. Here's the excerpt, drawn from Joel Keller's TVSquadarticle:

Miranda Barry of the Sesame Workshop...appeared here with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, who is in charge of the show's curriculum. They talked about the show's landmark season and what kids and their parents should expect to see. A new segmentized format, a new host, Murray Muppet, who will take kids through the various segments of the show, and a new segment featuring Abby Cadabby that's the program's first foray into CGI. The curriculum will emphasize science and nature along with the usual cornerstones this year.

Should be an interesting shift, and a move away from the "television flow" template the show has followed since its inception. It will also be interesting to see how the CGI component goes, and if/how it fits in with other Sesame CGI initiatives, for example Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures.




Treasure World: Nintendo's new DS/ARG hybrid
Via Springwise, short and sweet coverage of a game that I find totally and utterly fascinating, Aspyr Media's Treasure World for the Nintendo DS. I've actually written quite a bit about this game, but I'm saving it for a longer article on ARG/digital game hybrids and how they relate to the "free range kids" movement. Through the article, I also found out about Hidden Park, an indie game/app for the iPhone that has similarly captivating features, massive potential, and will be shortly releasing tools that will allow people to create their own real-world/digital world hybrid games. Nice. For now, here's an excerpt of the article description...see if you can figure out why I'm so enthralled:

Treasure World is a game for the Nintendo DS that converts real-world wifi signals into online treasures. The story focuses on Starsweep, a space traveller who journeys through space in his ship called Haley. In the game, however, Haley has broken down and needs more stardust to get going again. A quirky robot named Wishfinder helps players find not just stardust but also treasure during their adventure by tapping the wealth of wifi hotspots available around the world. More than 2,500 in-game items and treasures such as trees, flowers, candy and clothes can be unlocked as players access the more than 200 million wifi treasure spots worldwide that are registered within the game, and those items can be used to decorate in-game environments. Some feature musical qualities; others can be used to dress up the player's unique character. Either way, the stardust uncovered helps move the spaceship along. Only some items are available at each hotspot, however, meaning that the more kids move around, the more they'll find.

Find out more and watch the trailer at the official Club Treasure World website, and be sure to check out The Hidden Park as well. After three decades of dismantling playgrounds and effacing green spaces in our urban and suburban centers, a little digital re-enchantment might be just what we need.




Fat Princess
This summer, a well-reviewed, interesting looking, tongue-in-cheek game attracted the objections of some feminists and a bit of bad media, but for the most part the Fat Princess "controversy" (if it even DID qualify as one) seems to have died down. The capture-the-flag based game plays on the whole "Save the Princess" theme that has pervaded digital games (and films, cartoons, comics and fairytales) since the early Nintendo years ("Sorry Mario..." and all that). The game graphics are cartoony, quirky, violent, and silly...but is the theme of fattening up your princess so that the enemy will have more trouble carrying her away to kidnap her really offensive or sexist? The debate unfolded over a period of several days (preceded by a few months of negative and reactionary speculation) - which you can read all about over at Game Politics and Joystiq. Two gender-politics-inclusive reviews that I particularly appreciated took somewhat oppositional stances, though both reviews were quite tempered and overall positive. The first was posted over at Feminist Gamers and included the following analysis:

Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry. Oh, but that’s not as “cute” as cake and fat chicks. Right.

The second, and by far my fave, was written by Winda Benedetti, official "Citizen Gamer" for MSNBC, and falls more on the side of supporting the game's originality:

"I’m a pro-woman kinda woman (Go women!) who would happily pay the dues to join Club Feminist (we do pay dues, right?) And yet, there’s not a single pro-woman bone in my body that is offended by this game. (Does this mean my membership application is going to be rejected?)

As video games go, “Fat Princess” is fun, funny and well-crafted. It’s done in a playful style and has a wicked sense of humor about almost everything. And while it does star two adorable and, yes, sometimes chubby cartoon princesses and does feature buckets of cartoon blood, I can’t say that it seems particularly hurtful or harmful to anyone."

I'll have to play through the game and think about this a little more before making a firm decision, but am currently exploring the idea that the game's themes are actually quite progressive. I mean, the fact that the princess is rotund doesn't make the armies desire her any less...and we already complain so much about the limited portrayals (+stereotypes) used in representations of women in games...I feel I'm leaning toward a Bakhtinian reading, but we'll have to see.




Shaping Youth Takes on Privacy Issues
Child advocacy maven Amy Jussel has been writing up a storm over at Shaping Youth, and has some comprehensive and thoughtful things to say on the whole kids + online privacy discourse that has re-emerged this summer (in no small part because of Maine's Act to Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices Against Minors). In particular, her two recent posts on "keeping kid safe from...marketers" includes a plethora of links and resources useful to anyone interested in helping kids and parents protect their data while protecting their rights to information and freedom of expression. I highly recommend checking out Amy's toolkit/overview in Part 1 here, and her interview with Privo Privacy Vault Executive Denise Tayloe included in Part 2 here.




Kids' Virtual Worlds Continue to Mushroom
With SOE's Free Realms claiming 5 million players, Club Penguin raging on into its 4th year of operations, and new titles announced and/or launched almost weekly, it's no surprise that market analysts have recorded some massive spikes in the popularity of virtual worlds this summer. According to an article published in Virtual Worlds News this past July (2009), vw consultant K Zero estimates that the "total number of registered accounts in the virtual worlds sector totaled 579,000,000 in the April-June quarter, 2009. That's an increase of 38.6 percent from the prior quarter when the tally was 417,000,000."

Perhaps more surprising (though not to us kids' media types) is the finding that the average age of the virtual world user is now 14. As Virtual Worlds News reports:

A breakout by age bar chart...shows the bulk of users -- 334,000,000 accounts, or nearly 60 percent of all virtual world users -- are between the ages of 10-15. The second largest group are users in the 5-10 age group [WOW!!!!], followed closely by those between the ages of 15 and 25, with a steep drop-off in the over-25 age group.

The article also gives some numbers to go with the stats, which is great (remembering that these are estimates based on averages). According to K Zero there are current 114 million vw players between the ages of 5 and 10yrs, and 334 million between the ages of 10 and 15 years. Incredible. They also provide some details about where these kids are playing, listing the sites with the biggest gains in registered users this past spring:

Nicktropolis which increased registered users by 3.1 million, Moshi Monsters' jump of 3 million registered users, Stardoll which increased registered users by 8 million, Club Penguin's additional 6 million registered users, Spineworld's more than doubling of its number of registered users -- going from 1 million last quarter to 2.8 million this quarter, and Poptropica's additional 36 million registered users, according to K Zero.

Phew! That's all for now. More to come soon, including some thoughts on Disney+Mattel and driving media literacy (and media education) through comics, some resources for studying player-generated content, and some thoughts on Treasure World.

What Movie Monsters Can Teach Us About Fair Use

Last week's edition of Ip Osgoode features an excellent blog post by Patricia Aufderheide, Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, about a recent US ruling that's added some extra oomph to fair use. The ruling in question came out of the recent case of Warren Publishing Co. v. Spurlock. The details of the case are described most aptly by Rodney Perkins over at Film Esq., portions of which I've reproduced here:

"Warren Publishing...the company behind such classic horror magazines like Creepy, Eerie, and Famous Monsters of Filmland...was on the losing end of a copyright dispute involving covers from some of its magazines.

The artwork of Basil Gogos appeared on the cover of at least 50 issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland as well as covers of a few issues of Eerie and Creepy. David Spurlock and Vanguard Productions published a book entitled Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos that reproduced 24 of these covers, 10 of which were portrayed as covers, and 14 of which appeared without any Warren magazine text.

In response...Warren brought an action for copyright and trademark infringement. Spurlock successfully presented a fair use defense to the Warren's copyright. Of great significance was the court's reasoning ...[which related to] the purpose and character of the work. Here, the judge found that Spurlock's uses of the covers was transformative since the the Gogos book presented the images for an entirely different purpose than the Warren magazines"

In her post, Aufderheide goes into further detail about why the ruling is significant, particularly in terms of the judge's discussion of the importance of the transformative element. She writes:

"The judge emphasized, as have judges consistently in the last 15 years, the importance of the transformative element (without ruling out non-transformative fair uses), and therefore the related importance of the third factor of amount. He found the uses fully transformative; after all, the magazine was describing trends in monster movies, and the book was describing the career trajectory of an artist. He found the amount entirely appropriate. This use accords with previous U.S. decisions over the last 15 years, quite consistently. The transformative defense, allied with appropriate amount, appears to be in the “safe haven” area of fair use. This makes a huge difference to creators of all kinds, from mashup artists to documentary filmmakers to museum programmers."

My favourite part of the article is this extremely quotable line where Aufderheide specifies that: "when fair use is used, it becomes more useable"

What is perhaps most useful to those of us coming at this from outside of legal studies is that Aufderheide's post then shifts to describe some of the great work coming out of the American University's Center for Social Media, which has been working closely with both the AU Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (in particular professor Peter Jaszi), as well as various creator and user groups, to produce a free, online repository of fair use best practices codes. Because fair use is such a broad and context-specific doctrine, they have adopted a context-responsive approach, creating a best practice code that is specific to each user/producer/prosumer group, detailing how they can apply the logic of fair use to specific situations. Here are some of the examples that Aufderheide describes in her post:

For instance, documentary filmmakers often capture copyrighted material incidentally in their work; their code helps them evaluate when fair use applies to the moment when the family bursts into a round of the (copyrighted) song “Happy Birthday.” Media literacy teachers often bring current advertisements into the classroom, and they also want to develop a database of such ads to draw upon over time; their code helps them apply fair use to that situation. Online video makers often combine music, photography and video to make a tribute to the Jonas Brothers or to recut “Star Trek” episodes into a gay fantasy or to make a political critique of a presidential speech. Their code helps them understand the logic of fair use governing their choices to make new work composed-often entirely-of existing work."

To date, the impact of these 'best practices' codes has been extremely positive and promising to say the least. You can check out the Center for Social Media website for a full chronicle of their successes, which include the transformation of the documentary filmmakers' code into a tool for insurers to accept fair use claims, and examples of school boards adopting media literacy teachers' codes within their own regulations.

You can access the full range of tools on the site. In particular, I recommend their resources on Fair Use Teaching Tools, Fair Use in Online Video, Recut, Reframe, Recycle, and a report on what creators of user-generated video think about copyright called The Good, Bad and Confusing.

Although I didn't see anything specific to child-generated content or how kids might understand, learn and incorporate fair use logic in their own online creations, there's certainly a lot of potential for something child-specific in the future. In addition to providing some alternative material to all the anti-copyright violation curriculum out there (which is often sponsored by the MPAA and RIAA), it would be a great asset in the advancement and practice of children's authorship rights. As Aufderheide says "when fair use is used, it becomes more useable," so no time like the present to establish some parameters and possible exceptions for a child-specific code of best practices.

**************************
Update Aug. 25, 2009: Potential Starting Points:
Fair Use Remix Institute
Remix Austin!
Shaping Youth post on Fair Use and Youth
I should note, however, that even these (great) sources mostly deal with "youth" not necessarily minors, let alone young children. A particularly notable exception, however, is Remix Austin's Kids Make TV Camp, which includes programs for kids 10yrs + and collaborations with the Girl Scouts. Neat-o!.

Radio Interview with Healthy Media Choices

Just a heads up to everyone that I will be on the air tomorrow, Tuesday August 18th, at 1pm EDT (10am PDT), being interviewed on The Healthy Media Choices Hour by Mary Rothchild. The show is associated with Healthy Media Choices, a nonprofit organization based in Vermont and New York, that aims to help "parents, caregivers and teachers of young children use their own insights to come to terms with media influence" (as per their own description on the org website). The organization's mission is to provide non-judgmental, research-based information about kids' media, kids and media, media literacy and a range of other topics, all in the hopes of building a comprehensive toolset for dealing with the growing role(s) of media in the lives of young children. Mary will be asking me about my research on kids' games and virtual worlds, regulatory opportunities, where digital play might fit into the free play debate, and various other (related) issues I'm sure. You can listen to the broadcast live on Brattleboro Community Radio WVEW-lp 107.7 fm (based in Brattleboro, Vermont), which is conveniently (and freely) available through iTunes.

Also, be sure to check out the Healthy Media Choices website and blog, and sign up for Mary's very useful #kidsmedia updates on Twitter.

Spore's Player-Generated Galactic Adventures

The quickest of quick posts today, I'm afraid, just to make sure everyone has seen these new stats on Spore Galactic Adventures. Courtesy of IGN, news that EA's recent Spore expansion has enabled and inspired over 100,000 user-created adventures in its very first month of operations. Great news for Spore fans, and a great development for UGC gaming.

Here's an excerpt from the IGN article that describes the new expansion:

Expanding on the original Spore game, the Spore Galactic Adventures expansion pack gets your creature out of its spaceship and exploring colorful and wacky new planets. Players can turn their creatures into space captains, battle epic monsters in intergalactic arenas and engage in intense planet-side races. In each mission, players earn experience to rank up their captain and earn game-changing items such as the Plasma Pulser and Swarm Magnet. In addition to the adventures in the box, players can download 10 all-new adventures created by the writers of the outrageously funny, pop-culture parody TV show, Robot Chicken.

And from the Spore Galactic Adventures website:

Get out of your starship and turn your Spore creatures into legendary Space Captains. For the first time, beam down with your allies to take on action-packed, planetside adventures. Complete quests, collect rewards, and even create and share your own missions. [...] PLAY a variety of Maxis-created missions as you explore planets all over the galaxy! LEVEL UP your Space Captain and earn more than 30 powerful new accessories! CREATE your own missions with the all-new Adventure Creator, then share them online!

You can check out some of the "adventures" over at the game's official Sporepedia, and/or follow all the latest Spore-related developments through the game's community Youtube channel and Twitter account.

Two things that interest me in particular about this (apart from the obvious UGC angle) are: 1) my staple question of whether kids are getting involved in the content creation (they sure do seem to like Spore), and 2) how does the Adventure Creator editor compare with Microsoft's Kodu?

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!