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Designing Empowerment in a Pervasive Game

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Designing Empowerment in a Pervasive Game “We are two strong women” – Designing Empowerment in a Pervasive Game Jon Back Mobile Life @ Stockholm University Mobile Life Centre c/o SICS, Box 1263 SE-164 29 Kista, SWEDEN +46 (0)708 – 32 71 43 [email protected] Annika Waern Uppsala University Box 513 751 20 Uppsala, SWEDEN +46 (0)18 – 471 5145 [email protected] ABSTRACT Gender-aware design is important in computer games in general, and perhaps even more so in the design of pervasive games, as these are played in the ordinary world. As pervasive games blur the distinction between game and non-game situations, they influence the everyday lives of their players. We discuss the design process for the game ‘Codename Heroes’ from a gender-aware perspective. The focus is on how players reacted to the experience of playing the game during a sequence of design workshops. We found that playing the game made people less sensitive to ‘fear of the outside’. The participants were aware they ‘should’ feel unsafe in unknown neighbourhoods, but mostly did not. Furthermore, a combination of collaboration with internal competition fostered a sense of empowerment. Finally, we could confirm what previous researchers have seen, that women participants tended to blame themselves, rather than the technology or the situation, for errors. Keywords gender aware, pervasive game, design for young women INTRODUCTION Computer game design has a deeply gendered design history (Cassell and Jenkins 2000; Jenson and De Castell 2010). Even today, when most game genres attract a fairly gender- balanced audience, computer games are still, by and large, designed and developed by men (Ray 2004). Games designed in an environment where men dominate and set the agenda tend to reflect and reinforce values that are normative for a male-dominated society. Hence, it is important to develop an understanding of what could constitute gender-aware design. Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies. © 2013 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author. Gender-aware design becomes even more important in the design of pervasive games (Montola et al. 2009), as they are played in the ordinary world, and not confined to the computer screen. Through blurring the distinction between game and non-game situations, pervasive games influence the everyday of their players. Unless designed in a gender-aware manner, pervasive games run the risk of imposing limiting gender coded values upon the everyday life of women. We report on our experiences with designing a gender-aware pervasive game targeting young women in particular, more precisely girls in their lower teens. GENDER-AWARE GAME DESIGN Issues related to gender and gaming has been central to the debate for more than a decade. Although the debate existed before Casell and Jenkins published ’From Barbie to Mortal Kombat’ (2000), that book contributed with an in-depth analysis of the deeply gendered genre that is computer games. More recently, Kafai et al. (2008) have followed up on the debate to reflect on the more recent developments, as the percentage of women gamers is growing. The aim of this section is to situate our design approach in the context of this debate. Let us start by the observation that the gaming community remains strongly male-coded. Most recently, this has been visible in the discussion on harassment against women online (such as the violent reaction to the ‘Tropes vs Women in Video Games’ initiative1). These structures lead to male-coded games being the norm; games that are designed to attract women gamers remain the exception. This male-coded design norm is something that every gender-aware designer must take into account, and both research-driven and commercial games have struggled to find strategies to do so. Already Cassell and Jenkins identified the ‘pink2 design’ strategy, which uses themes and graphically ‘cute’ designs deliberately aimed towards girls. Examples are games about shopping or being a fashion model. An early example of the genre was the Barbie game, succinctly analysed by Subramahayan and Greenfield (2000) to show how it both in style and gameplay fit into girls’ ordinary play behaviour. A problem with the ‘pink’ approach is that it does not succeed to challenge the normative valuation of female coded activities. Boys (correctly) identify these games as ‘girly’ and as a consequence run a risk of being stigmatized by playing them. As grown-ups, we react somewhat similarly: just as we do not want our girls to dress up in pink ruffles, we do not like to see them playing games about fashion and make-up. A similar but less stigmatized route to creating games for girls is to tap into girls’ expressed interests in a less stereotypical way. Kafai et al. call this genre ‘purple games’ in honour of Brenda Laurel’s company ‘Purple Moon’ that created several such games based on extensive research with girl gamers. Feminist researchers have criticised pink and purple game design on similar grounds, in that they install a limited picture of what it means to be a girl (Cassell 2002). Both genres originate in viewing being a girl as the defining property of their players. Here, queer theory has opened up for the perspective of gender play, performed by both sexes and allowing a mix (Butler 1990). Brunner (2008) proposes a continuum of expressions ranging from ‘butch’ to ‘femme’, all expressions available to girls and boys alike. Brunner relates design elements that appeal to ‘femme’ players: Narrative themes that involve intimate and personal themes rather than epic struggles. -- 2 -- • Narrative themes involving groups of equals working together, rather than the ‘lone hero’. • Gameplay mechanics that focus on figuring out how a tool is to be used, rather than on collecting an array of powerful tools. • Focus on indulging in complex problem solving (what is done in the moment) rather than on the achievement so far. • Storylines that result in positive resolution, rather than winning. As all player classification models, the ‘butch’ versus ‘femme’ model opens itself to the criticism that is an overgeneralization, and all players are different. The individual player may prefer some but not all of these design elements, and players may well enjoy these elements in one game but not in another. To add, Brunner’s classification model is problematic in the same way as a classic ‘male’ versus ‘female’ classification: it relates the players’ gaming preferences to ubiquitous personality traits. This can be contrasted with e.g. Bartle’s model of multiplayer game players, which is solely related to their gaming preferences. However, Brunner’s model identifies more abstract design elements than the ‘pink’ and ‘purple’ design approaches, and by doing so avoids those that are very strongly female-coded. Hence, a boy could play a ‘femme’ game without running the risk of stigmatization by his peers. Another approach we may label as ‘gender agnostic’: these are games where the player can choose to play a male or female character, and non-player characters can be female or male in any role irrespective of gender. The ‘gender agnostic’ approach is well illustrated by World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004), in which story characters can be male or female irrespective of their function or role in the fictional society. The same goes for the player, who is free to select the gender of his or her character completely independently of all other character functions and abilities. The ‘gender agnostic’ model is often considered to be empowering for women players, as it allows them to play a badass warrior sharing their own gender. But the values ingrained in gender-agnostic games are still typically male-coded. In single-player games, the sole heroine role available is typically that of a tomboy with no female traits apart from the (typically hypersexualised) body (Waern et al 2005). When multiple roles are available, the risk is great that these still are gender- coded. Bergstrom et al (2012) show how the ’Warrior’ and ’Priest’ character types in World of Warcraft are perceived as male and female-gendered, by players and developers alike. The games maintain the normative valuation of functional roles and activities, and challenge very little of heteronormative values3. GENDER-AWARENESS IN PERVASIVE GAME DESIGN Pervasive games are played in the ordinary world (Montola et al. 2009); they are not confined to the computer screen or to playing fields. Many studies of such games (Benford et al. 2005, 2006) show that players particularly appreciate the mixing of real life and game activity. Since the commercial break-through of GPS technology on mobile phones, there has been a surge of location-based pervasive games, played by moving around in the real world interacting with mobile devices. While computer games typically are played as a break from ordinary life, pervasive gameplay will often be part of ordinary life. Hence, if you aim to design a pervasive game for a particular audience, you have to be careful to understand it’s everyday practices in a -- 3 -- way that is not necessary for computer games. In our case, this means that we need to build on a good understanding of the daily lives’ of young women. We started our project by a literature overview on sociological and ethnographic work studying the lifestyle of young women (Back et al. 2012). We limited the review to studies that have been performed in a Western context, but within this scope we did not filter for other factors such as class or country. We summarise this literature below, roughly condensed into three main areas, which we can summarise as ‘what girls face’. How can we use this information in design? The fact that these issues show up in lifestyle studies do not necessarily mean that all, or even any, of our players will experience them.
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