Abstract
This paper provides an overview of creating games for change from within an academic context, focusing specifically on the development of educational computer games for middle school girls. The essay addresses larger issues such as the cultural importance of computer games, the difficulty in categorizing a diverse user group such as “girls,” and the ways in which one could design game goals to promote diverse play and learning styles. Through such alternate design strategies, both media makers and students can incorporate significant social intervention into media work.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The figures in this paper and the cultural trends discussed are focused on the United States. However similar trends (the popularity of games, the growth of the industry, and the non-participation by women) are tendencies in many other nations.
In contrast, the film industry ticket sales were just 7.7 million in 2000 (AP 2001).
Thus some artistic intervention takes the form of performance, parody, simulation, game, activist, and “hactivist” strategies. For over a century, artists with strong ideologies have utilized the “manifesto” to communicate a group goal (such as the futurists, with Marinetti 1909, or the surrealists, with Breton 1924, 1971). A number of artists have used interventionist strategies, especially women artists. Women artists have functioned as outsiders in both overall culture and The work of Dada artists such as the radical street performer Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (Hjartarson and Spettigue 1992; Gammel 2003), and Hannah Hoch (Kimmelman 1997; Ollman 1998); Surrealist artists Maya Deren, Djuna Barnes, and Claude Cahun (Martyniuk 1998; Rice 1999); Gutai artist Atsuko Tanaka (Munroe 1994; Tanaka and Kanayama 2004); and Fluxus artists Yoko Ono (2000), Jenny Holzer (1998), Suzanne Lacy (Fisher 1997), and collectives such as Paper Tiger TV all activated social, public spaces, intervening in contemporary art venues and the street to change them. Intervention was a popular strategy historically with street performers and activists: feminists reworked theatre practices and turned to street theatre for intervention (Goodman 1993).
These types of players like to decorate homes in The Sims and play games like Solitaire.
I look at this type of play as a kind of philosophical subversion, extending the term from other feminists who use Raymond Williams and Antonio Gramsci’s notion of subversion as those behaviors which work against the monolithic structures of “culture” and “state” dominance through hegemony. The feminist work of Kenway (2001) on Gramsci is especially important, for she argues that notions of hegemony can be applied to technology culture; while many postmodernist theorists (Hebdige (1979), for example) have given up on the possibility of anything but an ironic position on the idea of subversion; this stance is in keeping with Jameson’s description of late capitalism and power systems co-opting change into its own matrix so that subversion is simply not possible. Theorists such as Negri (1989), however, and his postmodern Marxism, bolster the possibility of subversion by insisting that there are alternative modes of perceiving and producing social forms and culture. This is a useful proposition when designing activist games.
References
AAUW (2000) Tech-savvy: educating girls in the new computer age. American Association of University Women Education Foundation, New York
Associated Press (2001) Video game industry reports growth. The Times of India, 1 May 2001 [Online]. [Accessed 9 May 2004]. Available online: http://www.timesofindia.com/ 020501/02info6.htm
Breton A (1924, 1971) First surrealist manifesto. In: Waldberg P (ed) Surrealism. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp 66–75
Carter J, Jenkins T (1999) Gender and programming: what’s going on? In: Manaris B (ed) Proceedings of the 4th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE conference on innovation and technology in computer science education (ITiCSE’99). ACM SIGCSE/SIGCUE 1–4 June 1999
Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development (CAWMSET). (Sept 2000) Land of plenty: diversity as america’s competitive edge in science, engineering and technology. Available online at http://www.nsf.gov/od/cawmset/report.htm
Chmielewski DC (2004) “Kids turning to instant messaging.” Knight Ridder, (http://www.azcentral.com/families/articles/0225faminstantmessage.html.)
Dept. Office of Educational Research and Improvement (DOERI) (1997) National Center for Education Statistics. Findings from the condition of education #2, Women in mathematics and science education. Education department publication NCES, pp 97–98
ESA (2005) Essential facts about the computer and video game industry: 2005 sales, demographics, and usage. ESA Website. Online. [Accessed 25 May 2005]. Available Online: http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf
Fisher J (1997) Interperformance: the live tableaux of Suzanne Lacy, Janine Antoni and Marina Abramovic. Art J Winter 56(4):28–33
Furger R (1998) Does Jane compute? Preserving our daughters’ place in the cyber revolution. Time Warner, New York
Gammel I (2003) Elsa: gender, dada, and everyday modernity. A cultural biography. The MIT Press, Cambridge
Goodman L (1993) Contemporary feminist theatres: to each her own. Routledge, London
Grinter R, Palen L (2002) Instant messaging in teen life. In: Proceedings of 2002 computer supported cooperative work (CSCW ‘02), New Orleans, LA pp 21–30
Hafner K (2004) “What do women game designers want?” The New York Times. Technology, pp E1
Hebdige D (1979) Subculture: the meaning of style. Methuen, London
Hermida, Alfred (2005) Call for radical rethink of games. BBC News, Technology Section. 19 May 2005 online. [Accessed 25 May 2005]. Available online: http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4561771.stm
Hjartarson P, Spettigue DO (eds) (1992) Baroness Elsa: The autobiography of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Oberon, Ottawa
Holzer J (1998) Jenny Holzer. Phaidon Press, New York
Honey M, Moeller B, Brunner C, Bennett D, Clements P, Hawkins J (2002) Girls and design: exploring the question of technological imagination The Jossey-Bass reader on gender in education. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp 329–344
Hughes T (2004) Human-built world: how to think about technology and culture. University of Chicago, Chicago
Inkpen K, Booth KS, Klawe M, Upitis R (1995) Playing together beats playing apart, especially for girls. In: Proceeding of computer support for collaborative learning, pp 177–181
Jenkins H (1998) “‘Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Playspace. In: Cassel J, Jenkins H (eds) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: gender and computer games. The MIT Press, Cambridge
Kafai YB (1998) Video game designs by girls and boys: variability and consistency of gender differences. In: Cassel J, Jenkins H (eds) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: gender and computer games. The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 90–114
Kenway J (2001) Remembering and regenerating Gramsci. In: Weiler K (ed) Feminist engagements: reading, resisting, and revisioning male theorists in education and cultural studies. Routledge, New York
Kimmelman M (1997) Dada dearest: artist alone with her calling: exhibit of photomontages by Hannah Hoch. The New York Times 146:C1
Latour B (1992) Where are the missing masses? the sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In: Bijker W, Law J (eds) Shaping technology/building society. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 225–258
Laurel B (2001) The utopian entrepreneur. MIT press, Cambridge
MacKenzie D, Wajcman J (1985) The social shaping of technology. Open University Press, Milton Keynes
Marinetti FT (1909) Fondazione e manifesto del futurismo. Le Figaro
Margolis J, Fisher A (2001) Unlocking the clubhouse: women in computing. The MIT Press, Cambridge
Martyniuk I (1998) Troubling the “master’s voice”: Djuna Barnes’s pictorial strategies. Winnipeg, MB, Mosaic, 31(3):61–82
McLester S (1998) Girls and technology: What’s the story? Technol Learn 19(3)
Munroe A (1994) Japanese art after 1945. Harry Abrams, New York
Orenstein P (1995) Schoolgirls: young women, self-esteem, and the confidence gap. Doubleday & Company, New York
Negri A (1989) The politics of subversion: a manifesto for the 21st century. Trans James Newell. Polity Press, Cambridge
Ollman L (1998) The Lives of Hannah Höch: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Art Am 86(4):100–106
Ono Y et al (2000) Y E S Yoko Ono. Harry N. Abrams, New York
Pearl A, Pollock M, Riskin E, Thomas B, Wolf E, Wu A (1990) Becoming a computer scientist. Commun ACM 33(11):47–57
Poole S (2000) Trigger happy. 4th Estate, London
Rice S (1999) Inverted odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman. The MIT Press, Cambridge
Quittner J (2001) The new, new national pastime 6(4):11
Sandler C (1993) The Game of life: why we play games and the impacts of computer games. PC World 11(8):89–91
Sutton Smith, Brian (2003). Interview with Eric Zimmerman from DiGRA 2003 via videoconference. Digital Games Research Association, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Tanaka A, Kanayama A (2004) Electrifying art lecture. The Japan Society, New York, New York
Taulbee Survey, Computing Research Association (2002) [online]. [Accessed 12th September 2004]. Available online: http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may04/taulbee.html.
Wark M (1995) Suck on this, planet of noise. In: Penny S (ed) Critical issues in electronic media. State University of New York Press, Albany, pp 7–26
Wilson BC, Shrock S (2001) Contributing to success in an introductory computer science course: a Study of twelve factors. ACM SIGCSE bulletin, In: Proceedings of the thirty second SIGCSE technical symposium on computer science education 33(1):184–188
Winner L (1986) The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology: do artifacts have politics? University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 19–39
Wyatt V (1993) The science book for girls and other intelligent beings. Kids Can Press, Toronto
Acknowledgements
There are far too many scholars, designers, technologists, teachers, artists, and children involved in both the RAPUNSEL and Values in Design projects to thank them individually; we must extend gratitude to those who are working with us by grappling with value issues, and encourage efforts for larger social change through both theory and practice. I would particularly like to thank each and every member of the RAPUNSEL team for their dedicated work on the project, especially the students team members, the design partners, and Co-PIs Perlin and Hollingshead. The warmest thanks to Helen Nissenbaum for our productive work on values research in game systems. RAPUNSEL is supported by NSF’s Program Research on Gender in Science and Engineering, HRD0332898. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0332898.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Flanagan, M. Making games for social change. AI & Soc 20, 493–505 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-006-0048-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-006-0048-3