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Brenda Laurel
You may know that I founded a company called Purple Moon to make computer games for little girls. I've been in the computer game business for about 22 years. I think I got into doing games for girls because I was so tired of seeing things explode. At Purple Moon we played with various structures for interactive narrative and we tried to do positive work for girls in the context of popular culture. I took a lot of heat from some people who call themselves feminists for portraying girl characters who cared about things like appearance, popularity, belonging, betrayal, and all the other sturm and drang of preadolescent friendship. Some people thought that I shoudn't do that because girls shouldn't be like that. But they are, you see. And who they become depends a great deal on how they manage their transit through the narrows of girlhood. As a parent of girls, what one hopes for most is that they discover their own personal power in this time of their lives. Our heroine, Rockett Movado, was unique in her ability to see the possibilities open to her and to make conscious choices about what to do next. Our products allowed girls to try this skill and to see how things might turn out differently depending on what moods, attitudes, or choices we bring into the next moment. From: Brenda Laurel, "I Hate Barbie", talk delivered at the Interactive Frictions Conference, Los Angeles, 1999, to be published in in Women in New Media, MIT Press, in press. Responses:
From: Anna Couey Brenda, if I remember right, you did a lot of research before creating the Purple Moon products. Did the research shed any light on whether girls are like that because they just are (ie., born that way) or because they are brought up to be like that? I don't mean overtly -- my mother was a computer programmer and took great care to raise my brother and me equally. And yet my brother was really fascinated by airplanes and became an aeronautical engineer, and I became an artist, interested in communications technology as a social art medium (more than technical interest). So I wonder how much the subtle social messages impact our development (along with peer pressure).
From: Ann Powers Hurray for Purple Moon!, may be directed at girls, but there's lots of space for great non-violent games for everyone. I've observed a lot of interaction with games. Are boys more task driven? They seem endlessly patient with getting killed again and again until they get it "right". I've observed similar behavior in boys with sports specific balls and hoops or mitts, shooting the target over and over ...
From: Jim Rogers Last weekend, my daughter was using "Purple Moon" on her Mac, borrowed from a friend. The essential elements were social conflict but conflict nonetheless. I don't think it's a matter of violence but of solving a problem, either in a team or on one's own. Whether it's SCiFi & saving the world from from Bug Eyed Monsters or a virus or techno-drones, or a more social encounter like Purple Moon, in which girls face a dilemma & solve it with persuasion, the key is conflict. The Greeks had it right: Thesis, Antithesis & Synthesis. My daughter works on Pokemon Snap, in which the player hunts for Pokemon, which are hiding in various digital locations. She learns how to "Snap" fotos grade them & find tools to uncover other species. She keeps returning to this game to increase her species count, find new venues hidden within the quest's subplots and improve her standings. She's mastered it & is looking for more. On the other hand, she now finds Super Smash Brothers boring & no fun; both were purchased last month. It seems to me that structuring the violence out of games is not the answer. Yeah, boys play something over & over until they get it right, but they'll continue until they feel they've mastered the technique; it then becomes part of the repertoire. Baseball is the same; they demonstrate infinite patience in perfecting their swing and none for social interaction. The parents must step up & enhance strengths while upgrading weaknesses. A kid w/o manners has no excuse.
From: Nancy Paterson
We have just begun to scratch the surface of gaming. Just
as Science Fiction writing was downplayed by English literature
departments at Universities and only gradually (recently)
accepted as part of the program of study, after a name change
to 'speculative fiction.'
Gaming is evolving. Violent games for boys, finally something
for girls - games centred on social interaction. Pretty soon
they'll have tupperware games for mom.
From: Teresa W-- Email:
teresa@pdc.kth.se
Hi Brenda,
From: Christy Sheffield Sanford For Brenda, Bravo for developing new games for girls! Lately, I've been enthralled by women's sports--the WNBA (which, by the way, has one of the best commercial sites on the web www.wnba.com and the World Cup matches. The prominence of women athletes in ads, on TV and on the playing field has moved and exited me. I think is is so great to have alternative role models for kids. Good luck in your work.
From: Brenda Laurel I don't know where Mattel is selling it now. I guess I'd try eToys. I'll ask around.
From: Carolyn Guertin It was a sad day for me this past winter when I learned of Mattels buy-out of Purple Moon. (All of this talk of Laurel's Purple Moon in the present tense has had me wishing, Say it aint so...). Perhaps you could tell us a bit about the events surrounding the changeover and whether you have been kept on staff, or if this has opened into new paths for you. Surely this raises issues of the extreme expense involved in market research, game and other software development, marketing (or resulting problems connected with market saturation if the marketing budget isnt high enough), the problems women in particular have in raising capital for their ventures, etc...
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