The search for the elusive girl gamer.

End Game (Entry 10)

2009-06-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

The quarter is almost over, what have I learned?
I feel like I've only scratched the surface of game development. I've stuck my toes in and actually worked on game play, collaborated with players on design and come out excited by the possibilities. I think we'll take the Vampire principle game and try to run it this summer, and work on developing more ideas. I'm also going to invite other friends in for collaboration to see what kind of creative ideas we can get.

I learned I don't hate World of Warcraft, and that I will lose a lot of my free time if I indulge in playing. I can look beyond the hype and see value in the design. I can see the asset of the infrastructure

I fell head over heels for free browser game that changed all my expectations for free games. No ads, not aimed at kids, and real time based actions. I'm running 6 games on the site now, pillaging towns and taking no prisoners.

I'm still fascinated by MMOs and virtual lives. I want to get deeper and dig into the pschology of Second Life. I want to understand peoples action, the ability to disassociate yourself from your identity while still dwelling on real life attritbutes.

I'm eying the game industry more closely, wondering what part I could play. Could I turn my interest into game development? Could I find a role in project management? could my next career path be tied to the work of play?

On Designing a Game (Entry 9)

2009-06-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

Games are hard, let's go shopping. While I consider myself a gamer and have toyed with the idea of creating a board came at one time or another, I never really appreciated the amount of work that goes into actual game creation. The two weeks put into our super secret project showed the complexity involved. With our initial product we chose to not to create original intellectual property, and instead focused on marketing and product differentiation.

With this second product, the experience is completely different. We developed our own product line, a storyline that fit one product, and filled in the game play in between. And much like birthing a baby we felt ownership over it. This was our project, our pet.

Distancing myself from the process, I see two paths, one where you work on many projects, with some succeeding and some failing, or you put all your creative process into one project and are devastated when it fails. I can see how developers and designers might get to close to their products that they can't see their flaws. It's a balance though, there has to be ownership and enthusiasm but also some distance. Moving ahead I think I would cultivate a couple of great ideas, diversifying my options and funneling my enthusiasm into a couple of great projects, that way if one failed it would be less heartbreaking.

Chocolatier as a Girl Game. (Entry 8)

2009-05-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

As I've discussed in the
past, I enjoy a variety of games. While I am quick to name the big games, I'm not always quick to name the smaller games that suck up my time in smaller doses. Last summer I bought a play pass membership and dove in head first.
I quickly learned the allure of time management games. Farm Frenzy and Chocolatier rose to the top as favorites with Chocolatier 2 quickly joining them.

Analyzing Chocolatier as a property, I can see the carefully constructed storyline. An image has been built for the Baumesiter family. It is a stately family, a little stodgy , but close to each other. The basic storyline is that the business has run into some trouble. They need someone to step in and assist them in innovating/renovating/restoring the business, and thats you.

In the game the characters refer to you in the first person, and a fair number of the characters you interact with are women. It occurs to me now, that the female quotient and being addressed so directly with my name and having my "persona' integrated into the play are what make it appealing. And while the game wasn't customized to make it girly, it still held a special gender appeal for me. I wonder if it is because of the type of game, the character interaction , or something else. Or maybe girls just like chocolate?
I'm going to see if I can get one of the guys at home to try it out to see what they like.

( Entry 7 )The human element.

2009-05-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

I gave up. I deleted EVE online .

I'll give it another try at some point. Maybe over the summer when I have more time to play around. I never got out of the tutorial. Two things frustrated me. One, I never got out of the tutorial. Perhaps if I had put more time in, it would have happened, but when I switched characters to try a different one out I had to start from scratch again.

Second was the lack of human element.And I can even compare the experience to my first walk on in Ultima Online. I got in, figured out what I was doing and then felt like I was in a void. I didnt know anyone who played, I didn't know how to meet people, and just felt lost.

I began thinking of other game/community experiences and what engaged me and what didn't. In the end for non puzzle games it's the human element that ensnares me and keeps me playing. I can pinpoint when this happened in Second Life. In Sims Online I came in with friends premade, In There I had difficulty with this connection.

I suppose it all comes down to the purpose of the game. With sim games and empire builders I'm happy to do my own thing. In games where there is interaction between players, even through characters, I want to be part of the community.

We did a lot of community building at the vines, welcoming committees, messages, newbie groups etc. I wonder what kind of retention rate those activities get. If I'd been contacted by a member of the corporation or bloodline when I first started Eve? Not an automated request

(Entry 6) Separation of Character and Player.

2009-05-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

Separation of Character and Player.

In the past I've had difficulty keeping character and player seperate.In fact one of my earlier relationships was largely based on the character roleplay, that fell apart when I realized the player was an asshole who could wear the face of a good guy. Funny that.

I've gotten better though, and now strive to keep my game playing and personal life in separate boxes. To facilitate that when I joined Second Life I didnt tell my friends who I was. I wanted a pure character playing experience. Catherine was her own person, joined clubs in second life, participated in parties, even had the random one night stand. Then she developed a "relationship" It was someone she met early in the game, who decided she was innocence embodied. He too had strict rules on the person/character barrier, so it seemed like a good fit.

Somewhere the relationship crossed the line. It became pretty clear that the player on the other end was no longer "playing" and had become attached to the character I created. I explained some vauge rl constraints. "I'm busy." "I am a student and my available time varies greatly" Finally after fall quarter I did what any other passive aggressive Pacific Northwesterner would do. I dropped off the grid.

For an entire quarter I stayed out of Second Life. I still had email forwarding on, and the emails kept coming. "Where are you?" "Why did you leave me?" "I bet you were a man"
I gave it another chance. I logged back in at the beginning of spring break, and attempted to recconect with firm boundries in place. I explained that I was a student, and class work came first. Particularly spring quarter where I'm logging game time for one of my classes. He never let up though. And a few weeks ago I began the progress of deactivating that avatar completely.

-----
Passive aggressive approach? Sure. But how do you tell someone "Your attachment to this character I created is smothering me. "

Relating it back to my experience in The Vines (A lot of my character experience ties to this time in my life. ) I can't help but wonder how much of the character development that happened after becoming involved with Mike was designed to please him. Much like the creation of the original Catherine in New York Qunn Stuyvesant had approached me, in another avatar "Come to New York " he said. "We can rule this colonial oupost and have great adventures"
Instead of turning the character to another destiny I created a new character that was ultimatly shaped by the realm that I played in and the characters that played with me. For the ambassador she was a hostage, for the pirate king she was a buccaneer, for Quinn she was a loyal bureaucrat. In real life we do learn and grow from our interactions with others, in a virtual character it may mirror it, but the challenge is to not let others feed overwhelm the character.

Anyway I I feel bad for the player behind the character but I've moved on.

Entry 5 (I'm just not into it : A game report

2009-04-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

When I started the gaming class I decided I would try out a few new games to see what they are like. So far I've fallen head over heels with Ikariam, I'm spending time in Second Life again . I decided to wait on Eve Online until I was near payday so that I could reup when the time came.

I've got five days left and I havent even made it out of the sandbox. I've been playing casually swapping between the three avatars I created, trying to get my bearings, learning to fly a ship. Starting over from the beginning of the tutorial when I tried out a different character.I can't seem to get the camera controls right, I'm having a hard time shooting and wonder if i should have an actual controller for something like this.
Now my trials almost up and I'm not sure its for me. And we don't want to have another Ultima Online incident **And maybe it's not for me. I'm not sure it is going to catch my interest enough for me to tackle the learning curve.
And I'm not the only girl to not get Eve Online .

In some ways this makes me feel like a lame player. The games I seem to connect with seem to be "gamer lite" at this point. It's not that I dont want an immersive gaming experience to rock my socks off, its just that I havent found one. I want the costumizabiity of second life with more community. I'm not sure that outright questing appeals to me. So the question is , what do I want out of a game? I'll admit I loved the idea of blood lines int he game. Different corporations and different polticis inspriing political moves. To groom a character to fit her blood line. Maybe there is hope for me, perhaps there is a game i just havent tried yet, a game that hasn't been made yet.

So what am I looking for?
I don't know the answer yet, its going to take some more looking.

**I paid for Ultima online for 6 months before I canceled. Total game time logged? 30 minutes.

(Entry 4) Gender Roles

2009-04-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've never played a male character.
There I've said it. Even though I've had the ultimate freedom of internet anonymity, I've never taken that step to create a character of the opposite gender Talking with Scott about this, I tried to dig down a little deeper.
Much of what I do is not gaming. I engage in virtual worlds, explore online communities, and some times play simulation games. Talking with a fellow SL player, I was discussing my gender issue. This friend expresses himself in SL as both a male and a female avatar, and often finds it easier to express himself as his female avatar. When approaching an avatar for the first time, I think about the purpose of the avatar. In something like Neopets the name of my avatar means little. Little interaction happens between players so I don't feel like much of a connection to the created character. I don't feel that I have to take on a role, and that I don't have to create a plasusible character.
In other arenas like SL, I've been able to create multiple characters, but feel ackward creating a male character. The characters I create are always an extension of myself, different parts of me that I explore. Perhaps its the social interaction that something like SL has/is. I've never felt the need to explore my masculinity through a game character. I don't know if I could adaquetly play a male character. Yet if the game doesnt have a social interaction why does it make a difference? If it is goal oriented, and the character is secondary would it make a difference if I rolled a different gender?
I'm not sure where I stand, I just know that it is difficult for me to play a different gender.

(Entry 3) Girl Game Sterotypes

2009-04-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

"Girls require a female Villain" Was the gist of the comment of one of our guest speakers.
Verbally I questioned this, and still in my mind can't bring myself to reconcile with it. You see, the gender gap in gaming bothers me. I wonder if girls were raised on the same games as boys if they would be more technologically engaged as they grow up.

After spending a quarter thinking about online identity and the roles we take, I'm not interested in how the "roles" we take, even in casual games, affect our outside life and who we are. More interestingly how does who we are online affect our development. How does this differ depending on age? How could this be studied in a meaningful manner that would not be dated when they are completed?

I've checked out both of Sherry Turkle's books, the Second Self and Life on the Screen, and the first thing that I noted was that both of these are fairly dated. The Second Self is 25 years old now, and I question as I read it how dated it seems. Likely the question is deeper then the age of the technology on the surface, and perhaps so is my question of girl gamer stereotypes. Its been 25 years since I was a "girl" perhaps thats coloring my view too much?

(Entry 2) Game flow and the user experience.

2009-04-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

I've never really thought about game flow, until this week. Miss Bit, my 7 year old, has an edutainment game system, a Leap frog Didji. I insisted we get it for her, to help her along with her school work in an interactive manner.
I snagged the unit when I took her on the bus, and watched her play. She dug into Sonic the Hedgehog , sending him dashing after golden rings to earn points.
*sigh*
The audible sigh came from her as the game switched over to the spelling portion of it. I watched as she continued to play. She would enter a focused concentration during the actual gaming portion, then get jolted out as soon as the spelling words came on.
We'd had a problem recently with another game with her skipping over the questions and just playing and now I can see why. Perhaps an edutainment device isn't the best ideal, if it doesn't serve both purposes well. The education portion should be fun, and as engaging to play as the game itself, if not integrated into the game itself. If the game disturbs the flow of play, then is it a good game at all?

This has me wondering further about the kinds of fun you build into a children's game. How do you ensure the game is challenging, but engaging. Easy enough to enthrall and include a sense of accomplishment, but hard enough to keep you playing. Even further what should the life span of a game be? With an edutainment game do you want the game to grow old so it needs replacement? Or do you sell upgrades to increase enjoyment? Perhaps thats a deeper question. How do you produce a game that not only hits the "fun" and "flow" but also generates the income you need?

My history as a gamer, part 2

2009-04-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Computer free....
But not for long-When I married Rob gaming came back into my life in a big way. Rob worked for a game company for a time , and spent time betatesting pen and paper games. He also had a PS1 and a computer. When FF7 I quickly learned what game addiction looked like, as Rob spent every waking moment on the game system. That was ok, because he sold his Amiga to pick up a little money, upgraded his computer system and gave me the old one. I didn’t pick up gaming right away. Eventually I picked up FF7 and became engaged. The majority of my time was spent exploring a new site called “Ancient Sites” a site created in support of SPQR an online game.
Ancient Sites was more then just a forum in support of a game. It was a series of different world with individual groups themed around a particular ancient (or colonial ) site. Within these worlds you found a variety of activies including web design, research, and roleplay.

Immersion begins: It was the proposal that did it. I was dinkering around on a group in Ancient Athens called “The Royal Court of Crete” The court was a gathering of different personalities with some inspiration taken from Zelazny’s Amber novels. The court engaged in quests , parties, and just general wackiness. There was an amount of duplicity in the characters because at least 3 male and 3 females were run by the same two people. One character decided to “marry” my character (Callias Chabrias was her name). The ensuing celebration and involvement with the court left me addicted. I also created my second character at this point, picking a different world to “originate” from. This character (Tangwystl MacRoth) allowed for more exploration while the initial character stayed rooted in the court. I would have conversations with myself in chatrooms furthering my story along. Yes indeed I spent time in chat rooms talking to myself.

Character building. Neither of these characters were particularly strong. Mind you they did have some differences but looking at them now, I would say they were just slight variations of each other. The request from New York changed things again, drawing me in deeper to this world. Tangwystl was known as a free spirit. Somehow she caught the eye of a player who had a character in New York, the only non ancient city on the site. Quinn suggested that political favor could be gained by teaming up together in the city. Unwilling to move my Celtic character to the colonial city, I fired up character creation again. This created Catherine Jones. In her tenure Catherine was the Assistant Governor, a pirate and an icon for her city. One particular storyline we ran consisted of people rescuing me , over and over and over. The pirate phase also caught New York, and we had a great time playing pirates long before Pirates of the Caribbean came out.

Beyond the virtual world: This is the era of my internet addiction. I also grew connected to some of the players behind the characters. One of my oldest net friends comes from this era. I developed an intimate relationship with one of the player characters that resulted in him moving in with me. Another character’s player went to Vegas with me for the weekend. Other character relationships stayed little more then character deep. Callias’ husband disappeared early in the game. Quinn and I maintained a professional relationship. At the height of my addiction the company behind the worlds contacted me through a different site (The ReadersVine) and asked me to work for them on a freelance basis. This gave me a $400 incentive each month to indulge in my addiction.

Welcome to Seattle: We moved to Seattle in 2000. This was part of the trigger that ended my addiction. The worlds were changing pretty quickly with cybersites trying to find a model that made them money, and I was spending more time at my new job. My gaming quickly shifted back to the console or Sims. Up to this point I had a moratorium in the house on MMORPGS. I knew that they were addictive. I wasn’t willing to run the risk of either Rob or I falling into an online game addiction. Then I decided I was interested in Ultima Online. We bought it, I installed it. I tried to play it. I played for 15 minutes? Then paid for the subscription for 6 months before I cancelled it. MMORPGS have not appealed to me since. Rob on the other hand started in on MMORPGS with a passion.

Beta testing- In 2001/2002 I was part of a wave of beta testers for Sims Online, and then shortly after that I beta tested There.com. Neither really stuck with me. Sims Online was not worth paying for. I spent too much of my time working tools to make money and not enough time in interaction with other players. Even though I played with friends it still didn’t hold my interest. There.com wasn’t much better. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just didn’t appeal to me.

From There to the present: I still play a variety of console games. When we had the Wii it was Mercury Madness, Mario Kart and Wii Sports. On the PS2 its been Sponge Bob, Gex, Spyro. On the PC I like time management games, simulation games and casual games.. Chocolatier, Diner Dash, Bejeweled, Zuma, Neopets, and the Sims have all been in the rotation.
I’m also playing Second Life, though I find it boring half the time. It’s not really a game, more of a virtual chat room on crack, and those things are always hit or miss.
The future:

With this gaming class I’m trying to expand more. I’m going to be expected to play World of Warcraft. I’m looking at Eve online, and am trying a handful of free games . Who knows where I will go from here, but what a fun journey it has been.

My History as a Gamer... Part 1

2009-04-09T20:33:00.000-07:00

My history as a gamer.
During our first class we went around the room and listed the games we played. First game and platform, current game and platform. It was a fun conversation as we went around the room one by one trying to out do each other with our geeky selves. The prevailing effort was to call yourself out as a geek and a dedicated gamer. Of course not everyone fell into this category, but the majority seemed engaged in this effort.
I went early in the group and admitted to playing the Atari, as well as Oregon Trail on the PC.

My history as a gamer is more complex then that. I figured it would be fun to explore more in depth the games I’ve played.
1980’s Atari at home- My parents got the Atari when I was around the age of five. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have it. My favorite game was a snake game called surround. One of the settings was simply drawing on the screen with a pixilated snake. My parents also had an “adult” game. I’m not sure what it was, but I know that they made us kids go play outside when they had friends over so they could play.

Paper Roleplaying games -When I was 8 or 9 my brother started to play campaign D &D. It was new to him, a chance to play with the boys. I elbowed my way into his games occasionally. The most notable event was when he let me go into the next cave all alone, and I was eaten by a dragon. I’ve never played D&D since.

Computerized Roleplaying? -It was around this time that we were playing some sort of dungeon quest game on the Atari at my dads. (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, maybe. )
My first computer- It was also around then that I got my first computer, a commodore 64. I’d learned some very very basic graphics programming in school, and this continued on with programming in Basic.

The Nintendo- We of course got a Nintendo, with light gun, Mario and Duck hunt. Games beyond that? Baseball,Bubble Bobble, a fishing game that was my favorite, and we of course followed the Mario series.

Game system as therapy. When my mom had her stroke we upgraded our game system as a way of improving her motor control. The game system really was hers, and the games centered around Mario.

Computers in general. I was using computers at school and the public library at this point but had abandoned my commodore long before and had no hope of replacing it with anything else. I understood the value, and the potential of a computer, but it never really went beyond that.

Magic the addiction: why Deb is not allowed to buy magic cards or why Deb got evicted from her first real apartment. When I moved in with my highschool sweetheart/fiancé in 1994 we were actively playing CCGs. I played Magic and collected the cards with him. I also played the were wolf game and strove to play a game by Edward Beard because I enjoyed the premise, but never found enough of the cards. Unfortunatly we prioritized buying Magic cards over paying rent and paying for the car. The car was repo’d , we were evicted. When that relationship ended, I swore off CCGs.

(Entry 1) What am I doing here?

2009-04-06T06:23:00.000-07:00

Why take a class on gaming and what do I hope to get out of it.

I'm fascinated by gender roles, and identity assumptions that occur within games. While I play a variety of puzzle, time management and simulation games it is the social roleplaying games that drives me to addiction. The ability to step in and interact in a world, to be the character, to change who I am virtually and engage in relationships is what keeps me up till 3 in the morning.

In 1998-2000 I suffered an Internet addiction driven by a simple suite of online forums called "The Vines". Originally created to support SPQR, a game by Cybersites , the forums themselves took a life of their own, a ground for roleplay in particular. There an identity was taken, explored, a new life lived. It was where I could be a pirate based in old New York, or a Greek historian in the isle of Crete. While enriching, the experience took over my life. It was the community within the forums that kept me so attached. Through chats, public forum threads and private forums and instant messages I was jacked in so tightly that my real life fell away as less important. My attachment only grew when one of the sites, The ReadersVine, employed me.

I rebounded in 2000. I moved to Seattle, broke away from the sites , and began interacting with the real world again. I still continued with non Internet games, the Sims, Black and White, Final Fantasy 7 and others. Eventually I relented, trying Ultima Online, beta testing the Sims Online (2002) and beta testing There.com. In the past 9 years my gaming has continued on a variety of platforms in a variety of games. No experience has been able to mirror the interaction given by The Vines. A blessing perhaps?

What brings me here is my fascination with the community interactions with games, and role assumption. What makes a game successful? What draws people in? What keeps them playing? Does it require a common goal? Must it be quest based? Can games allow ultimate freedom and still cultivate a following and an integrated community. And how does gender play in all of that?

I hope to get a better understanding of game development out of this class. I want to see how the process works, how game ideas go from napkin idea to full fledged concept, and how audiences are targeted for these games. What sort of surveys are done? Studies? How large should an audience be for a game ? How do you address diversity while ensuring a large enough market share. (And how large does a market share need to be for game development to be worthwhile.)

So many questions, and only 10 weeks to explore. This should be fun. Next up? My experience in The Vines in detail, and compared to my interactions in There.com, Sims Online, and Second Life.