Design Heuristics - Computers as Theatre - page 175

Once Upon a Time, I Was a Little Girl
I was born in 1950, and I was a little girl until about 1962. By the time we were doing
Purple Moon, I had three young daughters. I thought I knew everything about being
a little girl.
When we began to design the PM game series, we decided to do two se-
ries of games with the same characters but from different perspectives—“social
life” and “inner life.” The Secret Paths series was all about inner lives and fantasies.
Our fi rst Secret Paths title was Secret Paths in the Forest . I knew this forest, and
I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had read The Secret Garden over and over as
a little girl. I had all those feelings for nurturing of plants and animals, just as the
stereotype would have predicted. I even took care of snakes, much to my mother's
chagrin. Sometimes I took care of the Faeries, too.
One of our research activities involved sending slightly ambiguous cutouts to
our research subjects with a request to prepare a story with them that they could
tell us at their interviews. The cutouts for Secret Paths were things such as trees, fl ow-
ers, Faeries, birds, a lion, or a unicorn. At our fi rst storytelling interview, I sensed that
I had missed something. The girls were reluctant to go into the forest together; they
wanted to go alone. And the story was
one of being taken care of by the plants,
animals, and Faeries. This pattern showed
up again and again in our research. “I
want to go there to be myself, to dream,
to be taken care of.” When asked if they
would like to be able to share their forest
with friends, the answer was usually am-
bivalent. “Well, maybe . If it's a really good
friend. And only when I say.”
That's how I really learned the les-
son that even if you think you are or were
your audience, you need to check your
understanding. Be prepared for surprises.

Me and one of my snakes, 1958