gewgaw

I have been working towards a milestone lately. As part of that work I’m constantly pulling ref art from the web. One of the things that you realize, doing this, is that almost any phrase put into Google Images is bound to return, within a few pages, pictures of scantily clad (or just plain topless) women.

In some cases, this is particularly distressing (as with anything combination of “punk”, “guitar”, and “girl”… which ok maybe I should have expected). But even without “girl” it happens. Elegant dress? Overalls? ARTIST? In that last case, we’re straying into furry territory – SO not work safe!!!

This is a strange time we live in.

Congratulations to the PC, PS2, PSP, Mobile, GC, DS and GBA teams for shipping a pet-licious expansion to the Sims2 base game!

Bonus for you movie makers out there: A special Sim appearance by Hilary Duff and her favorite pooch Woof! Woof!

Seems like everyone is experiencing a Lumines letdown on Live. Pricing, completion, controls – what a bummer!!! I can’t imagine the pressure Q is getting to defend the decisions made here.

Boo.

When feminism and product marketing collide – the results are good for branding…

“A 2006 Super Bowl commercial showing how narrow images of beauty can be damaging to girls was a surprise hit. So were sales. “We went from single-digit growth to double-digit growth,” says Philippe Harousseau, Dove’s U.S. marketing director. ”

But looking past the face of it – things are still pretty confusing! Are you beautiful enough not to apply beauty cream? Dove doesn’t seem to think so. And yet – the dialog is out there now, about what these products are supposed to do (and if we really want that in the first place).

Interesting. I’m glad I don’t have a daughter yet.

Ok this is an official, resounding shout-out to the folks at Red Octane! First, for the utterly awesome 10-song Guitar Hero II demo disc. Rigorous play-testing whet the appetite of many a friend and co-worker – we’ll be holding the lighters up for the full game!!

Second – it came wrapped in a fantastic girl-sized tee!! My GHI tour shirt is really great – but it’s also cut for a bigger clientele. Girls wanna rock too – and now (JT – I’m looking at you!!) I’m one step closer. Still can’t kill that STP song on Expert… but I’ve been getting tips from the O’Dwyer clan.

Way to make our weekend!!

These Wii experience videos are a fantastic idea.

Just really smart.

Just back at the hotel after my first day at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and I’m so glad I took the time to come down here! There is nothing like being at a banquet of 1000 people – 99.5% of them female and into CS. Seeing colleagues from Northwestern, meeting women from across the tech industry… talking to students about opportunities in gaming… it’s just been phenomenal.

Key learnings from today’s lectures:

• Enrollment: 60% drop in the last 5 years across the board. While the physical and biological sciences will achieve gender parity in PhDs by 2020, CS will trail behind to at least 2088 – and that’s if we don’t lose any more people!
• Stereotype Fear: When faced with the potential of fulfilling negative stereotypes, the stereotyped perform more poorly. It’s easier for the under-represented to believe they are part of the problem. Chicken – the egg is on line one!
• Childcare: We lose a significant percentage of potential female hires for tenure track positions in the time between the award of a PhD and the first job application…”during prime childbearing years”. If we fail to provide childcare and address the two-body problem (many women in CS have spouses who work – often in the same field!) we’re screwed.
• Perceived ROI : By the time they get to college, many students are far too concerned with career potential to “waste” a year (or even a semester) on a CS course “just to see what it’s like”. The fear of a bad grade (and not really knowing what to expect) scare away prospectives. Middle school programs that insist on CS education (or summer classes where there is no real grade involved) are a good way to combat these fears and perceptions.

In the end, what we’re facing is a branding issue. In a world where the potential afforded by a CS major, the lifestyle of computer scientists, and the impact of computing-aided careers are so poorly understood, we are bound to be disappointed in our numbers. If we want to appeal to a broader audience, we’ll need to start by engaging their passions (technological, creative, community or otherwise) and supporting them through strong mentoring relationships.

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I was particularly taken with a late afternoon discussion about how to engage people in new approaches to CS. Talking about Georgia Tech’s Contextual CS program (Computational Media course much like Ian’s Animate Arts initiative) and “Female Friendly Computer Science”, it became clear that dialogs about CS branding must address some of the fundamental issues we have in our curriculums and attitudes about science learning in general. >

My question: Instead of changing the name or branding of CS in particular, why not promote a “Liberal Sciences” approach to all science curriculum? Reposition the field via introductory courses in K-12, and support exploratory science learning early in college. Give people back the right to “dabble” in a science or two. Perhaps by re-envisioning the role of Sciences in our education system, we can address a wider variety of access and appeal issues… and help improve parity at the same time!

This generated some interesting discussion – including a show of hands in which 90% of the talk’s attendees expressed their dislike of the term “Female Friendly CS”. Further discussion lead to the idea that the problem isn’t “female”… it’s “friendly” (which reads as “easy” or “watered down”). Why make things friendlier when you can make them more accessible and appealing?

In the closing statements at the banquet, one speaker made the following suggestions about how each of us can improve the parity in CS:

• Generate Balanced Lists: For every man you suggest for a position, suggest a woman of equal talent. We will get to parity in hiring from parity in our lists.
• Take Leadership: Someone has to be in charge of the task in front of you – and it might as well be you. Look for opportunities to be a leader.
• Take Credit: No need to be a glory hound, no need to be a wallflower. If you worked hard to achieve your goals – celebrate! Be willing to stand up for applause.
• Just Be Yourself: No need to think of yourself as a “Female Computer Scientist” or “The Female Director of X” – just be what you are without the gendered label. Others will see you as you see (and refer to) yourself.
• Include Others: CS, Engineering, Business and Government all need diversity. It’s a fundamental issue for us all. Be willing to include others – the more the merrier!

Sally Ride gives the keynote address tomorrow – can’t wait! (photos here)

Jane mentioned Jonathan Mann’s awesome Wii tribute project to me last night at the IGDA meeting – holy moly! The interview with his girlfriend in episode #2 is especially brilliant.

It will make you smile! Go watch it!

Jane and I went to see the the Telltale folks talk about CSI at the SF IGDA chapter, and it led to a couple of interesting discussions which I wanted to post here.

The first revolved around notions of “casual gamers”. In discussing their design goals and production process, the CSI team focused on three player experience goals:

• Authenticity to The Show
• Good Storytelling
• Simple (really simple) UI.

The idea is that in order to satisfy their non-traditional (mostly female, mostly over 35) audience, they made most of their decisions based on these goals – and as a result, sold 2 million units of the franchise, worldwide.

Comparing this to the Sims, I decided that the main PC franchise has three very different player experience goals:

• Authenticity to Humans
• Customized Characters and Locations
• Self-directed storytelling/sandboxing

Obviously, the first goal is a bit of a fudge. The Sims themselves are a little more like toy people than humans – but they read as humans, in the large. This (and the fact that we are focused on content that the player can design for themselves) eliminates the first two CSI experience goals out of hand. Most importantly, self-directed storytelling seems to demand CSI’s exact opposite in terms of UI… or at the very least, UI that would fail to meet their percieved usibility targets. Yet the Sims franchise has sold over 60 million units worldwide – to an audience that includes the same segment of players.

This led me to wonder: Is the CSI audience really a “casual” audience? Or is it a newly-formed niche audience of budding adventure gamers? Can they move from the simple point-and-click 2D and 3D games provided by this franchise to much more involved horror, mystery and conspiracy experiences (on the order of Silent Hill or Deus Ex)?

Our over-general use of the term “casual” in discussions like this one seems to obscure questions about player goals, experiences, and design. This troubles me.

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The second discussion revolved around user interface goals. There was a lot of talk about “not getting stuck” and how most games really fail to embrace this principle. While this may be true, games like WOW certainly embrace the design philosophy of continual accessiblity and achievement.

WOW in particular does a lot to reinforce its desired player experience (gambling, essentially) within its UI. Players invest some time in going to a particular place in the world, then invest more time in fighting there, whereupon they get loot. Those goodies (hopefully some of them very “valuable”) can be placed on the character or in the customizable UI so that they are constantly in view. Sparkly and new fun things to look at and use! Yay!

How does CSI reinforce it’s experience goal with the UI? Turns out that the show and game (which I am only passingly familiar with) both revolve around a “Trifecta” of data – information which connects the culprit to the crime. And in the interest of building interactivity into this feature, the developers designed a UI by which the player could arrange collected data in varying combinations in order to link the suspect, location and time in this Trifecta. However – it tested poorly.

Why? Turns out the show is not really about secret viewer expertise (knowing whodunit before the folks on the show do – as is the case with some night-time soaps). Instead, the viewer is in Sherlock Holmes mode: consistently amazed by the brilliance of the investigators, who solve crimes in spite of many twists, turns and red herrings.

In this way – the show does not really train players how to *be a CSI* – so asking them to arrange facts themselves is actually *counter* to the stated experience goals. It takes them out of the story, pulls focus away from the main characters, and makes players feel ignorant! As such, it’s much better for the game to manage collected bits of info and let the player enjoy those reveals in dialog and cut scenes. And so it does.

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Is that the end of it, then? CSI is a really perplexing design challenge: making an interactive property from a license that survives because it leads its viewers around by the nose. On some level, I find it amazing that there is a niche of players who would *even expect* a game to succeed at this, let alone go to a store to purchase that game.

Can they be trained to do more than just tag along for the ride? Is the very focus on delivering a super-simple adventure game interface keeping the developers from pushing in a different direction with the gameplay? Or are they right about what the “casual” market really wants?

I’m still not sure I know – but it is fun to think about.

We picked up the last of the Bit Generations games while in Tokyo – and Soundvoyager is pretty great. Unlike other audio-play games (such as The Pit, which I mentioned in the spring), this has some great visuals for those who can see. But it’s accessible to the blind, thanks to audio feedback at most all of the menus… and that’s just awesome.

I don’t know how well the Bit Generations games are doing overall, but I sure do like them a whole lot. I hope Nintendo continues to support these experiments and take them live with the Wii, in the long run.