Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
JESYCA DURCHIN'S ADVICE
Jesyca Durchin owns the consulting company Nena Media (
www.nenamedia.com),
which
creates media content for young girls, and she is a former executive producer for Mattel.
At the 2000 Game Developers' Conference, she gave an extremely useful summary
(Durchin, 2000) of what she had learned about how girls in this age group play games:
Girls Have a Wide Variety of Interests.
It is
vital
to identify what type of girl is interested in your type of game. Girls are much
more fragmented in their interests than boys. Girls change more rapidly, and their emo-
tional and intellectual growth happens differently. A girl has different needs in her playtime
almost every year of her childhood
—
loosely defined as being between ages 4 and 14.
Hinge Interactivity on Proven Play Patterns.
A play pattern is a traditional and almost instinctual way a child approaches an object or
an activity to entertain herself. Girls traditionally value the following:
•
Fashion play
•
Glamour play
•
Nurture play
•
Adventure play
•
Action/twitch play
•
Collection play
•
Communication/social play
As well as exercising their own imaginations, girls like to reproduce daily life in play.
Barbie is a vehicle for projecting adult activities into a child's world. Don't be afraid of
open-ended or non-goal-oriented play.
Here are a few more observations:
•
Girls like
stuff
.
Stuff is what the girl can collect, display, or take away from the
product. It is incredibly important for the girl to feel there is a reason for her to play. In
some ways, collecting stuff replaces the concept of scoring in traditional boy's software.
Collecting each one of a variety of shells, for example, is more interesting than trying to
achieve a high, but abstract, numerical score.
•
Create environments that are attractive to girls.
Girls like environments that are
reality-based but either are beautiful or make sense to the storyline. Symmetry and color
coherency are important to girls. Not everything has to be pink, purple, and pretty, but
each environment should give the girl the feeling of being in another place. Girls (and
boys) are highly imaginative, and they create alternative storylines in their own heads.
Be aware that the girl's imagination influences her view of your environment.
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