Mattel’s Approach

1ESYCA 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 emo­tional 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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1ESYCA DURCHIN’S ADVICE

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• Girls appreciate sensual interfaces. Girls tend to respond more positively to what is sometimes referred to as the sensual interface. They need colorful, sound-driven inter­faces that “feel” good. The interface needs to feel magical and needs to have what I call the brrrring factor. Don't give girls a group of identical gray pushbuttons, no matter how logically organized they may be; give them buttons that ring and change shape and color.

• Extend the play from existing toys or media into software. Branding is becoming more and more important in the business of software. It is doubly important in the girl's software business because girls are still just getting involved in viewing the computer as an entertainment tool. Branding is important to rising above all the muck.

• Don’t be ashamed of your work. If you're embarrassed by what you're doing, it will show. Do it wholeheartedly or don't do it at all. Girls can tell if you're ashamed of making games for them. If you're uncomfortable using terms like “hair play” or “relationship games,” don't bother.

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