Net Family Newsletter

Dear Subscribers:

This is a continuation of our 6/21/02 piece "Where are the girls in the games?" with subscriber/reviewer Gen Katz's comments on new games for girls she found at the May 21-24 "E3" (Electronic Entertainment Expo)....

"The annual computer game trade show - E3, held in LA last month - is a preview of games that will be out for the coming holiday season. This show is not a female-friendly environment, but I go anyway. I start by looking for female heroes, then female tag-a-longs and then, finally, just females in games. This year's games continued to push women and girls to accommodate the offerings of the game industry rather than the game industry catering to women. Preteen girls still do pretty well because games for their age group, with few exceptions, include boy and girl characters or genderless animals.

"The Learning Company is one of the few companies producing educational and fun games for kids, and they are one of the small number of companies still producing games for Macintosh computers. Their "Clue Finders" series for grades 3-6, with boy/girl teams of detectives, holds up well, and each game now comes with a bonus disk full of additional puzzles. The company has come out with an inventive new series, "Star Flyer," featuring Katie, a spunky girl. She's a dreamer, an inventor, and with her friends surmounts challenges to save the universe. The game will bring praises from mothers and daughters and will make up for the lack of new "Freddy Fish" and "Pajama Sam" games. The games fall into the "edutainment" category, but the Leaning Company has managed to make them as interesting as any puzzles I have seen. The age range is 5-8, but when the games are good, players tell me that they keep them around and play them for years.

[Here's where the newsletter left off]: "For the older kids (8 and up) the new Zoombini title is "Science Journey," focusing on scientific thinking - a valuable life skill to acquire. And finally, there is a game activity that combines civics, history, and journalism. "Liberty's Kids" is the story of Sarah and James, two young reporters working for Ben Franklin. They report on and gain insight into the motivations behind the American Revolution. If this concept works, it could be a beginning of a "you are there" series.

"Vivendi's Mattel Girls division is coming out with two new PC titles. "What's Her Face" on the PC lets girls choose not only face but clothes, location, and adventure for their character. "Barbie Sparkling Ice" involves the player in creating figure skating routines and costumes. "Secret Agent Barbie," last year's PC title, is out on the Game Boy Advance, and "Barbie Treasures In Time" is a PlayStation 2 title for which time travel and exotic lands are the theme. Vivendi is trying to evolve Barbie into a stronger character, i.e. "Secret Agent" and the backpacking, sneaker-wearing explorer in "Treasures." But I sense Vivendi is not wholeheartedly behind the Barbie franchise - if they were, the graphics would be better. "What's Her Face" is their attempt to add another character besides Barbie. I always get requests to review Barbie games (you know, the age range for the games starts at five, although they're played by older girls).

"There are new releases of familiar characters Nancy Drew, Buffy the Vampire Killer, Mary Kate and Ashley, Sabrina, Brittney, and Scooby and his multi-gendered gang - and old releases on new platforms. With the exception of "Nancy Drew," which has a lot of game play, the others rely upon the branded identity to carry the game and so are very predictable.

"As you've probably guessed, the trend - for boys, girls, and adults - is individual games issued on multiple platforms (PC, PlayStation, Game Boy, etc.), the game experience changing significantly with the platform. "Nancy Drew and the Haunted Mansion," in spite of its creators' good effort, is not the same game on the Game Boy Advance as it is on the PC. The PC allows for more breadth in story and character. Recently, to get the desired quality of animation, a 3D graphic card has been required for the PC - not something you'd expect for kid games. The Game Boy provides an introductory back story and is counting on the player's imagination to flesh out the character's image, but the games are basically twitching-finger exercises. Both the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube fall somewhere between PC and Game Boy - good graphics and some semblance story while making use of the buttons on the controller to manipulate the character - with the GameCube market being mostly the younger set.

[The rest was in the newsletter:] "As for women in games, this year they are equal-opportunity assassins and secret agents, all of them dressed in black. What looks to be an exception is Syberia from Dreamcatcher. Moody and mysterious, it features lawyer Kate Walker, who has to find the elusive and maybe mad heir of an old robotic toy factory in order to negotiate its takeover. It was made in Canada and has a unique sensibility quite different from adventures made in the US. The Web site alone is enough to keep you entranced for hours.

"While there are other games that girls will enjoy playing - sports, racing and anything from Hogwarts - games that have role-model female characters are still not plentiful enough to prevent girls from being the shadow player. I want the industry to bring back Orley, and Smarty and Madeline. As for me personally, I want a game with Allison Janney as the main character. She's smart, lippy, elegant, and articulate - and she holds down a good job, as press secretary to the President (in "The West Wing").

"You can get a sense of some of the above games at their Web sites:

Katie Cadet and friends' interplanetary problem-solving at StarFlyersWorld.com

The girl-boy team of "ClueFinders" for elementary and middle schoolers

Barbie games at Barbie.com."