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It is how the game plays you

 

In the spring of last year, an unusual group of people came together to solve the mysterious murder of Evan Chan. Unusual enough in itself, but this was no ordinary murder and no ordinary mystery; Evan Chan was murdered in 2142. Yet somehow there were websites about him and his life. You could see where he worked, meet his friends, and (if you were sharp enough to guess his password) read his email. Along the way, you learned that houses could communicate and robots wanted rights. Though not a single site mentioned it, this was the massive marketing campaign for the movie A.I. - a campaign that has won awards and made many take notice of the power of the internet.

The campaign immersed its followers in vast world filled with puzzles and an amazing cast of characters.  This was not just a marketing campaign, not just a game, and not just an experience. It was a community. A community of over 7000 people in our time creating and enjoying this new experience. Meeting in chat and communicating through a Yahoo! Group, they worked tirelessly on the mystery. This community is Cloudmakers and they refer to the experience as ‘the Beast’.  

In The Beast, one person made a breakthrough, but the next level was shared by all. ~Bronwen Liggitt

Many of the women involved stated to me emphatically  that they are not ‘gamers’ in the traditional sense, yet this was a game. It had puzzles that encouraged them to stretch their minds. Many responded to the joy of rereading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the fascination of breaking through cryptic codes, the excitement of watching the team solve a puzzle and the community moving forward.  

As fascinated as they were by the puzzles, it was the story and the characters that kept them involved. They related to Laia, felt sympathy for Venus, and were intrigued by Diane. They were interested in Martin, charmed by Brutus, and supported Mike Royal (I'm told he’ll be running for President in 2144). The fluid design of the plot allowed them to see that they had a direct bearing on the characters. More, it showed them that they were a character in a way themselves. After all, they received emails, phone calls and faxes - a reader or viewer would never experience such a thing. This was real in a way television, cinema or books are not; this blurred the lines of fantasy and reality and they were fascinated.

Without the intensity and Saturday-morning-serial quality of the story, I'm not sure I really would have hung on for the whole game. Real life is a serious concern once you're out of college... but the characters always called me back.  ~Cat Devereaux

This is perhaps part of the answer to a question that game developers have long been asking. In our stereotypical fashion, games have long been considered ‘boy toys’ despite the fact that a majority of gamers are adults and about half of them are, indeed, female. As girls and women have discovered that the computer world is as much theirs as it is the guys’, their involvement in games of all genres has increased. Yet, it seems the (predominantly male) game developers have had a difficult time understanding the female market.

Contrary to popular opinion, girls have found Quake and other similar games, yet their experience is often marred by gender discrimination. One gamer recently told me some of her humorous, yet sad, experiences in encountering males in the game. She has been purposely killed so that the guys didn’t have to deal with a ‘chick on their team’, asked to change her avatar skin to a nude one, and dealt with numerous propositions for cybersex. Despite all of that, she continues to play and to chalk it up to ‘boys will be boys’. Unfortunately, that is not an experience that many would like to have.

On the other extreme are games marketed for girls. These games frequently cater to traditional female stereotypes of girls caring solely about fashion and finding a date to the prom. The action and excitement levels are little to none, yet the games sell well because there is such a thirst for ‘girl-friendly’ games. Unfortunately for us, they tend to set the girl-friendly games back as the high sales encourage game developers to stick with the genre.

So, what’s a girl supposed to do? Continue to enjoy the games you are playing now and remain hopeful that an experience similar to the beast will emerge. The Cloudmakers anxiously await the possibility to come together once again to solve puzzles, to meet new characters, and to show that it is not whether you win or lose, but how the game plays you.  Are you ready to be played?