Gender and Technology Spring 2009

I’ve been gaming from the moment that my tiny four-year old hands could grasp around the controller of a now ancient and obsolete NES. Second Life or The Sims or anything else where the game does not have any point except for being an alternate avatar life for the player I have avoided. They seem like wastes of time that aren’t even fun like the arcade/fighting/story-mode/rpg games I know and love. The challenge I made for myself was to play something I normally would not play.

So I chose to challenge myself by continuing the Second Life game I began for class. This game is so complicated and I couldn’t find my way at all in the first few days of playing. In my first attempt to find Bryn Mawr (following Hillary’s instructions to the best of my abilities) I found a wonderful person who took pity on my inexperience. She not only taught me how to search and teleport, she taught me how to instant message, and gave me her file of different hairstyles from her inventory as a gift! (Though I ended up just making my own hair)

It took me a while, but I found freebie markets and managed to compile a great look for me which suits my style! And once I felt comfortable with my image I visited Bryn Mawr:) It looks great and I got to pose as Athena.

I then just started sight-seeing. Starting with an exhibit called “You Are What You Eat” where Antoine Lancaster took photographs of every single meal he ate over the course of a year. Then I went to Rome, The Isle of Lesbos, Bucharest (where there was a really scary guy named Twiggy growled at me every time I walked past him. I started flying over him for “fear” of my safety!), and the University of Edinburgh (as my friend was in the room with me and she wanted to “see” the campus before she got there for study abroad). I went skydiving in Edinburgh!!!!

In one of my final actions this weekend, I visited EMH motors to look at really awesome cars.

I posed in a few of them and I was satisfied with that because I don’t have any Linden dollars (the currency in SL). And then I saw the most amazing thing ever. EMH was giving away cars for free! So I got a box of cars and started to learn how to drive in Bryn Mawr. Unfortunately, my lesson did not last very long as it is apparently banned to drive on the Teaching 3 island.

While I found the explorations entertaining and the people fascinating, I do not think that I will ever return to this game. I had a lot of trouble finding things and while there were many people who wouldn’t mind having a friendly chat with me, I mostly found this second life of mine to be very isolated. Though I did start getting attached to my avatar. I felt that I had to protect her. When my friend, we’ll call her “Ralph” (just for a random The L Word reference, hehe), took over the controls and started doing crazy things like having sex in a gay bar I felt embarrassed. Ralph’s behavior with my avatar was playful but my own association with my avatar is more personal because I made her and she’s too young to be having sex with random people! She should be older (at least 15 days old) before she gets involved in that drama:)

My other main problem was getting money, a goal which I have sadly still not accomplished. I don’t want to pay real money to get fake money. So I looked for jobs and teleported to four job agencies. ALL of them told me that to get a job one must be at least 30 days old to apply. Not only that, but that the jobs that would be available to me would be dancer, escort, cleaner, hostess, surveyor or security. And one help wanted ad for a dancer read as follows, “Do you like dancing? Do you have a hot body? Like showing it off? Then come dance for us!” And most of the ads had a similar theme. Let’s just say that I will not be playing this game after this.

So, gaming! I spent a good 8 hours on Thursday, and an additional 5 hours today playing an MMORPG called Rohan with my roommate. And then, on Friday I spent 5 hours playing a Japanese dating sim called Tokimeki Memorial. Between the two, I feel like I got quite different gaming experiences.

read more…

This is a bit late, because the game about which I am blogging temporarily destroyed my computer. Ah, cruel irony.

I’ve never had any kind of gaming console, save a Game Boy Color when I was 11 that belonged to my cousin. I hated it so much I gave it back, so any games I played were always on the computer. I was never really that into it, and would play in short month-long bursts with things like SimFarm or this weird Star Trek game that a friend seemed to think I’d like (not so much), and then forget about it for another 4 months. When I switched to the devil Vista last semester, most of my computer programs wouldn’t work anymore. The exception is Black & White, a game where you are a god and control a creature of your choosing, and said creature acts for you on earth to take over various towns and peoples. The first version was pretty cool, with fun tasks and logic games to play. You could even give your creature a tattoo, which I found hilarious and awesome. The second one, which I have now, isn’t nearly as much fun and focuses much more on warfare and destroying various armies. There are two consciences with you: an evil, rotund devil-looking figure with an American voice who reminds me a bit of Danny DeVito, and a good, sandal-wearing white-bearded English one. And they’re both guys. Your creature is also male; even though it has no discernable gender, it’s always referred to as “he” by the consciences. As you move through the worlds, you can control it with different leashes to alter its personality (in the first version) or its task (in the second one). Different citizens of the land have tasks attached to them which you must complete, and they are hilariously gender stereotyped. Men need to pass their beer from one island to the next, build their ship, or track down their daughter who has potentially wandered off to a man’s house. The women (of which there are few) have either lost their children or are the suspected daughter. Unless you happen across the random female land-dweller, every character is a man, with one exception: the person who gives you your creature for all of 5 minutes at the beginning of the game is a woman. But only in the first version; in the second, her character is eliminated. I got so fed up with this game that I bailed after a little while (hmm, this seems to be a pattern with me).

I wanted to go looking for a game that had a female character, but didn’t want to spend any money in the process or download any funky programs, so I decided to hit up flash games. Then I happened across MissBimbo and my jaw dropped. It would take an entire paper to describe the game in full, but I’ll give you the gist of it. Basically, you start with a base Bimbo, or female character that looks kind of like a paper doll. She has a starting weight of 127 lbs, some money, a hunger and thirst level, and an attitude level. You have to complete certain goals to increase her level, all while keeping her weight around 127 and increasing her attitude. The very first goal is to change her hair from brown to blonde pigtails. Later on, you have to find a boyfriend who gives you money each day, only to have to break up with him a few levels later (this action costs 300 dollars; since when do you have to pay to break up with someone??). Once you break up with him, your weight balloons and you have to lose it all again. Once you get to level 9, the goals become more expensive to complete and include things like face lifts, breast implants, and therapy sessions, as well as becoming a secretary or a hair stylist. You get attitude from various games like “French Kiss” and “Sort out your Bag.” It’s hard to accurately explain it, but I can definitely say I’ve never seen anything like it before…

Alright. So I just spent two and a half hours of my homework time attempting to maneuver in Second Life again. I spent too much of my time getting my view caught outside of the dressing tent in a freebie mall place. Way too much of my time for my last two tries has also had my character bald since I couldn’t figure out how to get off the assigned hair originally and then I managed to lose it all together. My one and only conversation in Second Life with another player was this: “Hey, Ciara, what happened to your hair?” My only response was “Working on it.” But apparently that’s not a satisfactory answer so they gave me some places where I could get some hair. I wasn’t intending to be bald, but what’s so wrong with it anyways? I spent a good portion of my first hour or two on Second Life as a weird conglomeration of a crippled looking person with random bulgy parts of something that may have been a dragon bursting out of my thighs and neck. But nobody commented on that. There weren’t any  “Hey Ciara, what happened to your body?” Perhaps I scared away everyone with my lagging internet speed and terrible skills at dressing.

Well, anyways, that’s what happened last time. This time I finally managed to get appropriately dressed and set off to teleport to interesting worlds through random key words and clicking. I found some weird places, but never found any people. This has got to be the most empty video game I have ever seen. Eventually I returned to Bryn Mawr just to feel more at ease with myself and my character. Somehow it just seemed safer than the place with giant mushrooms that was through the crazy kaleidoscope portal.

Some screenshots for your enjoyment:

I know Anne and Laura encouraged us to play video games that encorporate avatars or some form of human contact.  But I ended up playing this game DeepLeap, which is nothing like that kind of game.  It’s an online word game, and you play by yourself.  I think we should think about these kinds of games too, because they’re also out there and available, not just the high level intricate games.  I mean, how does gender come into play here?  It didn’t feel very gendered to me: just a bunch of blocks and points.  I’d be interested to know whether these kinds of games appeal more to women or men or other people (this “other” group is one we haven’t been exploring too much in the context of gaming and their perception of it).  What does the interface (plain boxes, simple interface) have to do with what kinds of people like it?  What about the content — what kinds of people are attracted to word games?  Are different genders attracted more to playing games online or on the computer rather than “live” or with friends?  Finally, what about the context — you’re not playing with other people, in some sense you’re only competing against yourself… this could be perceived as lonely, boring, liberating, and I’m sure plenty of other things.

There’s also this other game I’ve played before (and played this weekend to remind myself), the Google Image Labeler.  It’s a game where you try to read more…

well, after that whole Second Life debacle, I decided to switch to something I understand better.

very much a win for me.

read more…

It’s a somewhat lesser-known MMORPG that I’ve been sporadically playing on for about three years or so, and what I’ve found is that it reflects a similar sort of dual-purpose as Second Life does.  Sometimes, the game seems to parallel reality, allowing you to live out a “second life” that feels surprisingly realistic considering the fact that you’re a miniature noseless animation.  Other times, it allows you to explore your imagination and do things you wouldn’t be able to do in real life.

After you download the client and register for an account, the first thing you see when you log in is a screen with three empty character slots on it.  You have the option of creating your own character if you haven’t used up all your slots, or play on an already existing one if you already have characters.  This should sound familiar to anyone who’s ever played an MMO.

Similar to other MMOs, what you do with this personal space is entirely your call.  Most of my friends on this game have what you could call “mini-me”s, while others based their characters on books, movies or even celebrities… and yet others picked a cool-sounding name to go with a cool-looking appearance and just went with it.  A lot of roleplaying takes place in this game, but oddly enough, it usually has little to do with what the characters themselves are based on, and more to do with pirates.  My friend Deathismygft dresses and kind of looks like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but talks like a pirate.  It’s pretty amusing if you think about it.

Even though the puzzling is pretty rigorous and competitive, I definitely think that Puzzle Pirates is a social game.  The server that I play on has less than a thousand active people, and many of us have been around for awhile.  Strangely enough, the game has a certain small-town feel to it, which I guess isn’t really that far off.  We’re kind of a miniature society, really.  We’ve got social expectations, cliques, infamous rivalries, celebrities, fake money, status symbols, and a social hierarchy that’s probably more distinct than what you’d expect in an online community.  It kind of makes me think that regardless of what our intentions are in coming into an MMORPG (to have fun, to relax, to make friends, etc), we, as human beings, when thrown together into a community, can’t help but recreate society as we know it in spirit.

Fortunately, I was home for the weekend, so I got to draw on my siblings’ resources for playing a video game this weekend. I thought it would be fun to play Wii Fit, since it diverges from some of the traditional aspects of the video game, particularly the relationship between the avatar and the player.

When you get a Wii, you have to design a “Mii,” a very cartoony avatar. I made mine look somewhat like me. The avatars show up in games. The Wii is an interested example of how there isn’t a huge divide between the person and the avatar- you move, and your avatar moves. In the Wii Fit, it goes an extra step: you weigh yourself on the balance board, and if your BMI is considered overweight or obese, it makes your Mii chubby, and if your BMI is underweight, it makes your Mii skinnier. There’s an assumption that a BMI of 22 is the healthiet, and that reminded me too of the article we read, which measured the health of female and male gamers using BMI.

The most interesting thing to me is that, though you use an avatar in the game to box, ski, do step aerobics, yoga, etc., the effects on your body are very real. Maybe it makes exersize easier, to have it one step removed from what you consider “you” by your avatar. It also helps to have the challenge and the push from the two trainers you can choose between. (Interestingly, one is male and one is female, though I can’t really tell a difference between the two beyond what they look like.)

a cartoon concerning business and women…

I’m a big fan of PC gaming. (yes, this is different from console gaming). I used to spend hours playing “Command and Conquer” as Tatanya (the only Russian I knew… aside from, the thick accent on Tatanya herself). I also enjoyed “Sim Ant” (which is Sooooooooooo boring to me now), “The Sims”, “Neopets”, and “Kingdom of Loathing”. I also knew of actual online RPG/MMORPG games, but never really wanted to play games where I wasn’t the god of the simulated creatures’ world. (Mmmmm. Fond, FOND memories of “Sim Life”).

This changed when I found WOW. WOW, AKA World of Warcraft, is a MMORPG. MADE OF WIN! *ahem*, sorry. It’s just very exciting. I ended up playing in WOW a lot (not only for thesis, but also for this class! Whoo! Double reason to be gaming, what?) this weekend. I often find myself applying things that we learned in class, so it’s kind of fun ^_^.

I found a few crazy names, and a character dressed like a pirate… I wasn’t even on an Role Playing server!

Meh, not sure where the rest of this post was going anyways. Normally I’d talk more about WOW, but I think after rapid-fire posting three things today I’m done.

Thanks to Kalyn, I was able to put down my old-school Game Boy color that I had loyally brought from home and try my hand at some more modern forms of gaming technology, namely the PSP and the Nintendo DS. Kalyn had told me that women tended to gravitate towards the rhythm and music type games which at once made me want to gravitate away from it, and try something different……except, that didn’t happen.

Since I don’t like many fighting games (Soul Calibur being an exception!) and an RPG would take too long, I wasn’t left with many other interesting choices, so I ended up playing a rhythm and music type game (that I have forgotten the title of…EDIT: “Elite Beat Agents”) for the DS. Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the game very much and I did pretty badly once I got out of tutorial mode, so I called it quits early on and tried a different game.

And then i struck gold with…Parappa The Rapper! Okay, yeah I was pretty skeptical when Kalyn explained that the game was about a little dog who rapped. It just sounded kind of strange. But I decided to go along with it anyway, cause It couldn’t (in theory) be worse than the last game I played anyway, and also I wanted to try the PSP. read more…

Here’s a rough history of my gameplay in pictures.  I started with Pong and moved up to playing Quake with an all women’s team. I skipped a whole generation of games–the Nintendo games mostly.  I jumped back in with a PS2, playing Lara Croft.  About the same time, I played Quake online with a bunch of women.  It was a great stress relief.  Once my kids got old enough to play seriously, I mostly played with them–racing games of various kinds mostly.  But I also really enjoyed The SIMS and Civilization as well.  But WoW is the most fun for me, because it’s not *just* about playing a game, but also about socializing.  That was the draw for Quake as well.  I enjoyed hanging out with people in such an interesting context and with a common goal.

read more…

This weekend I spent a while watching some people in my dorm play Guitar Hero. It was kind of fun for a while, and I even joined in. Most people picked the avatars they thought were the hottest, and I tried to find one who was closest to the kind of person I’d want to look like if I was in an all-girl band in the early 90s. But, inevitably, I would start thinking about all the more interesting time wasters I have in my life. Things like blogs, and books, and WordTwist on facebook, and records, and trying on seven different outfits before going out. And I kind of realized, that I just don’t get it.

I’ve had a few different experiences of Guitar Hero. In one scenario, I’m at home hanging out with some friends. The girls in the group want to chill and talk, but the guys commandeer the TV and start playing Guitar Hero. This lasts three hours. I am bored out of my mind. In another scenario, I’m at home and it’s just me and my girl friends. They play for a while, I try to play and fail miserably, and am really annoyed at the watered down versions of classic rock that are an integral part of the game. I convince my friends to stop playing and watch a movie or go somewhere, or just hang out. The day is saved.

Guitar Hero is, admittedly, a little better than other video games I’ve experienced in my life. At least it involves culture…ish. And it’s active…ish. And you play it with other people, in real life, so it’s kind of like playing a board game but with computer animation. But my general annoyance and overwhelming experience with being made to wait around while guys play Mario Party 4 or James Bond for six hours has kind of ruined them for me forever. It’s not just the male-centric attitude, either. I tried Sorority Life on facebook and World of Warcraft, and various online games this weekend, but I always just ended feeling kind of tired. Outside of the ridiculous breasts on the female characters, the complete useless quality of Princess Peach (who I always insisted on playing anyways, even though her skirt caught on fire during Hot Rope Jump), the extreme offensiveness of how obviously Sorority Life is just a money ploy- I just find it all kind of boring.

This weekend I played two videogames on my ipod touch. One called Crash Kart and the other was pac man. I must say the pac man one on the itouch is frustrating, if you are used to playing the old arcade version.  Crash Kart however, was really fun. Actually it was addictive. All I wanted to do was race and win every game. I had fun with both games. Perhaps, it was because I was not an avatar this time that I enjoyed them. Second Life was a little too complex for me. I like the simpler video games better, where you know the objective. I don’t know if this means I am just not a gamer or whether identity is a real factor. We’ve talked about in class the argument that online personas are an extension of the self. These online avatars are just another facet to a individual’s personality. Well, on the assumption that this is true, I would like to know what it means, if you don’t have an online avatar. This doesn’t mean that you lack other aspects to your personality that people don’t see, right? In other words, does this mean that non-gamers are more grounded in reality, or have less technological computer knowledge? Perhaps, they lie some where in between? I don’t necessarily argree with either statement, but I am trying to understand what draws some people to games like second life and others to simpler videogames or no video/computer games at all. To what extent is identity a factor?

 

 

 

 

 

I used to be obsessed with computer games once upon a time, spending hours playing every single day. Then one day I woke up and didn’t feel like playing anymore. It was really random, but that obsession over computer games never came back and I’m not sure why. Thus, while the idea of playing games for homework sounded exciting, I wasn’t sure what to play – I am not up-to-date with the gaming world. So I decided to watch my friend play Prince of Persia. I used to play the old 2D version of that game back in the day. The newer version, called Prince of Persia: The Sands of time, is in 3D, has better graphics and audio.

What I found most interesting is not in the way that my friend was playing the game, but just how the audio and interactions were built in the game. The prince goes and rescues a princess/companion, and together they go on their adventures. The princess is thin and can go through cracks in the wall (!) and open doors. They have built-in interactions/conversations at certain points in the game. A lot of those conversations really stood out for me. They were about how she was less powerful and needed his help. For example, when the prince jumps to go from one broken cliff to another, she says, “I can’t do that!” The prince has to find levers to bring floors or stairs closer together for her. At those points, she says “I can reach this one!” and jumps then. The princess can’t jump or reach the things that the prince can. Did anyone else see patterns like this in their weekend or general gaming experiences? Does that bother them?

This weekend I played Katamari Damacy, a Playstation 2 game my brother had for a while but I had never tried. It’s probably the strangest game of any kind I’ve ever seen…ever…I like it a lot, though, and it’s definitely addictive. The story is that the King of the Cosmos has accidentally knocked all the stars out of the sky, and you as the prince his son have to go to the planet Earth and roll around a katamari, picking up completely random objects into an everything-snowball. Your goal starts at 10cm, with matches and tacks and sushi, etc. etc., and becomes progressively larger, until you’re rolling up skyscrapers and whales. The katamaris then become stars in the sky. My little sister is much better at it than I am; she’s playing it right now and just got a cat, while I could only succeed in grabbing the mice with much difficulty. The interspersed story pieces are reminiscent of Monty Python or Yellow Submarine animation 🙂

Thinking about gender expectations, I’m surprised that you can only be a prince, not a princess, since the game seems more feminine than most other video games I’ve seen or played. The prince is a cute little green character, there’s no violence, and there are lots of bright colors and rainbows. But on its own, not in comparison to other games, I would say it’s marketed to a gender-neutral audience.

Maybe this is because it’s kid-friendly?  Sometimes games for younger players like this are more accessible to both genders (another game I used to play, Spyro the Dragon, was not especially male or female-oriented, either), but then again some other games for kids are very much marketed towards one gender and not the other:  princesses vs. trucks, for example.  I think an interesting angle from which we could look at these games is, for which gender are they intended?  How does marketing create gender roles?