作者：Hemi Kim

根据统计，超过30岁的女性比其他群体更喜欢玩手机游戏。有一些专门针对年轻用户群体制作游戏的公司，如Crowdstar首席执行官Peter Relan便表示，他们的目标用户是“年轻女性用户”。Crowdstar新游戏《Top Girl》在2011年发布短短10天内便获得了100多万的下载量。

而众博客主和游戏玩家又是如何看待这款新游戏？一个评论者表示，这是“世界上最糟糕的一款具有性别偏见的游戏。”其他来自The Border House（游戏邦注：游戏玩家博客）的玩家认为《It Girl》（Facebook版本）：“从女权主义者的角度来看，这真的就是款垃圾游戏。”“而问题就在于，如果当从机制来看，这本来是款优秀的社交游戏。”

到底是有趣，吸引人还是性别歧视？

top girl(from benevolentmedia)

《Top Girl》的玩家将沉浸在整个粉色的游戏空间中，刚开始需要为自己的角色选择皮肤颜色和平面发型，并创造出如芭比娃娃般的脚，贝兹娃娃般的眼睛以及纤瘦版的Judy Jetson或贝蒂娃娃。每个玩家在游戏中都是时装模特，经历着五个等级的职业明星之路，不断收集游戏货币并在有钱或“有能力的”男朋友帮助下维持自己的收入。玩家需要通过购买红酒或装扮自己去吸引男友。模特的衣橱里有非常多衣服，包括迷你裙，连衣裙，高跟鞋，休闲裤，或者一些可爱的牛仔打底裤，以及长筒靴等。而游戏为了活跃模特与男友之间的关系还设置了对话泡泡，让他们能够在此甜言蜜语。

Crowdstar工作室副总裁Blair Ethington表示，他们首先需要做的便是预测哪些用户会喜欢自己的游戏，并且据她估计有九成以上都是女性玩家。Crowdstar的Facebook用户主要分布于美国和东欧地，但目前尚无法得知其Android和iOS用户情况。Ethington说道：“我们以小时为单位观察玩家数量的变化。”

她还说道，开发者需要根据玩家类型，游戏时间以及他们所挑选的衣服调整游戏。Ethington解释，像当季服饰，礼物以及特定日期等是可以立即改变的内容并不需要更新游戏代码。除此之外，定向测试参数也很重要。到目前为止该款游戏的主要用户反馈主要是关于“想要获得更多衣服。”

据Ethington所称，Crowdstar的女性员工多于其他游戏公司。她还高度赞扬了美术设计师的高品位，并夸奖了产品经理能够编写出他们所期望的“有趣，吸引人且幽默的”情侣对话。

所以《Top Girl》的成功主要是归因于Crowdstar对于用户的研究与了解。Ethington表示这是一款门槛很低的游戏，她说道，对于手机应用来说，如果用户愿意给予游戏100%的关注，那就意味着“游戏能够让玩家在一开始的几分钟时间里便获得成就感。”在进行公司内部的游戏测试后，Crowdstar先在一些小国家，如加拿大发行这款游戏，并最终将其推向美国市场。

Ethington说道：“我们的目标是为了满足用户。但是这是一款针对特定目标群体的游戏，所以并不可能同时满足各种类型的玩家。”

严肃游戏

在乔治梅森大学的游戏设计课程中，Seth Hudson教授表示他总是教育学生们应该正视留言功能，吸收各种负面反馈，并以此“为玩家提供有帮助的信息……”他还表示学生们总是会讨论关于性别定型的内容，并思考自己的作品对于别人的影响等。

位于华盛顿的严肃游戏团队Meetup营销顾问兼组织者Limor Schafman说道，精明的游戏公司会更加重视游戏社区的批评意见，并愿意适时对其做出回应。“严肃游戏”是指那些能够满足教育或社交目的的游戏。

主张社会正义的在线游戏玩家总是会支持Games for Change（G4C）等网站上那些与他们“志趣相投”的开发者。

血汗工厂(from articles.businessinsider.com)

值得注意的是，通过观察G4C数据库，我发现《Top Girl》最强劲的竞争对手是Littleloud于去年7月发行的《血汗工厂》。这款“黑色幽默”游戏让玩家能够从实习经理的角度去俯瞰服装制造厂的运作情况。在向更大的工厂前进过程中，实习经理必须听从狂躁，好色，具有年龄歧视且喜欢剥削员工的老板的指示。反过来，该老板也必须对时尚界中阔绰的买家唯命是从。在每个工作区间都会有一个棕色皮肤的大眼睛童工出来抗诉工厂的残酷剥削。尽管带有卡通风格，但游戏中的对话内容却非常具有沉浸性。

该游玩法强迫玩家必须做出许多无奈的选择，如雇佣童工以及准许工人上厕所等。而玩家在游戏中的目标是在规定时间内完成衣服，帽子钱包以及其它配件的组装，并且要确保没有一名员工会因为劳累过度而死亡。游戏还会以插页文本的形式呈现工作人运动胜利或者员工血泪史等内容。

《血汗工厂》通过以服装业剥削员工为题材进一步提高人们对于工人合法权利的认知。除此之外它也在讲述年轻工人向上层攀升的奋斗史。但是这款游戏却缺少《Top Girl》所带来的兴奋感，例如玩家获得一件非常好看的衣服，将自己装扮得非常华丽，或者能够过上无忧无虑的浪漫生活等过程中所感受到的愉悦情绪。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Games for Girls: Social or Sexist?

by Hemi Kim

Of all demographics, women over age 30 consistently show more interest in mobile gaming than any others. Of course, there are some companies that specifically target younger users. Crowdstar, the fourth largest social gaming company in the world, focuses on the “younger female demographic,” according to its CEO Peter Relan. One of its latest games, Top Girl, ranked as the 57th most-downloaded free iTunes app in the last week of 2011, passing one million downloads in just 10 days. “Even to our surprise, it became the world’s top-grossing game on the iPhone, over Zynga’s poker games and existing brands like Angry Birds,” Relan said.

But how are bloggers and gamers reacting to this hot new app? Not one to mince words, one reviewer said it is “the worst kind of gender-biased tripe on the world.” Other players at The Border House and fbomb provide mixed reviews of It Girl (the original Facebook version of the app): “From a feminist standpoint, it’s pretty much trash,” one reviewer writes. “The problem is, it’s a good social game as far as the mechanics goes.”

FUN, ENGAGING AND SEXIST?

Doused in the hottest of pink, Top Girl users first customize the skin tone and hair style of a 2D, Barbie doll-footed, Bratz-eyed, thinner version of Judy Jetson/Betty Rubble. Each user is a fashion model who works her way through five levels of career stardom, earning coins and eking out dollars that accumulate over time, with the help of a moneyed or “energetic” boyfriend. She wins him over by purchasing wine and by dressing “hotter” than his own “manliness.” The model amasses a wardrobe of clothing, including miniskirts, dresses, high heels and the occasional pants, or, even cuter, jeggings that fit into career-boosting brown leather high-heeled boots. To keep the relationship alive, the model and boyfriend share corny one-liners that the user reads via speech bubbles.

Crowdstar’s Vice-President of Studios Blair Ethington said that the company’s priority is to anticipate the needs of its users, whom she estimates are more than 90 percent female. Crowdstar’s Facebook users are mostly located in the United States and Eastern Europe, while geographic stats for Android and iOS users were unavailable. “We monitor our numbers on an hourly basis,” Ethington said.

She said the developers adapt the game according to who is playing, for how long, and what clothing they wear, barring any personally identifiable information. Seasonal clothing, gifts and dates are examples of immediate changes that do not need a code update, she explained. Qualitative metrics also matter. So far, user feedback has mostly been about “getting more clothes,” Ethington added.

The California-based firm employs more females than most gaming companies, according to Ethington. She praised the in-house art designers who have an eye for fashion and credited the product managers for writing for what they hope are “fun, engaging, light and humorous” boyfriend dialogues.

Critical to Top Girl’s success is Crowdstar’s seeming dedication to studying its audience. Ethington described its threshold for pursuing a game as the moment when every team member is “sitting in a meeting room, pounding our firsts on the table saying, I want to play it.” She said that for the mobile app, users give “100 percent of their attention,” which means that the “sense of accomplishment has to happen in a couple of minutes of very intense play.” After play-testing the game internally, Crowdstar then releases a game in a smaller country, such as Canada, before releasing it to the United States.

“Our goal is to satisfy users,” Ethington said. “It is a very targeted game, so it’s not going to satisfy everyone.”

GETTING SERIOUS

At George Mason University’s game design program, professor Seth Hudson said he trains students in the practice of “stripping down message boards” to ingest critiques that may be disagreeable, and to be “able to give useful information that isn’t just a reaction via your opinion and pointed phrasing.”  He also said his students often discuss gender stereotyping and the need to consider the impact of their art on others.

Smart game companies pay attention to community critiques and are responding when they can, said Limor Schafman, marketing consultant and organizer for Washington, D.C.’s Meetup group for serious gamers. “Serious games” are games that meet educational or socially beneficial goals.

Online gamers with social justice interests can cavort with like-minded developers at websites like Games for Change (G4C).

It’s worth noting that the closest contender to Top Girl that I found in G4C’s database was Sweatshop, by Littleloud, released last July. The “dark and comedic” sweatshop game provides a bird’s eye view of a clothing manufacturing factory from the perspective of a trainee manager. When progressing to bigger factories, the trainee manager reads extensive speech bubbles from an angry, sexually harassing, ageist, exploitative boss. The boss, in turn, fears the wrath of a glamorous buyer in a fancy city. Before each work session, a brown-skinned, wide-eyed child worker sneaks in to tell the user how the plant’s poor practices made his and other workers’ lives more difficult. The character dialogue is engaging, though sometimes cartoonish.

The gameplay offers the user many forced choices that include employing child workers and giving access to a toilet. The goal is to assemble shirts, hats, purses and other gear in a certain amount of time, without any workers dying. Facts about labor movement victories and ongoing issues are presented in interstitial text.

Sweatshop uses an infamous aspect of the fashion industry to raise awareness about the overall rights of workers. It also tells a story of the leadership potential of young workers. However, the sweatshop game lacks the thrills of Top Girl, like getting new pretty things and creating a dazzling spectacle (with death-free promotions) and having a carefree romantic life (in a world without obesity.)

One Saturday night in Fairfax, Va., I found myself stuck on Level 17 of a Sweatshop factory. My eyes ached from staring at an assembly line for an hour. I twitched my mouse with no signs of advancement…

People who seek a fun and socially conscious dress-up game on a touchscreen can send their proposed content and other feedback to info@crowdstar.com. Ethington welcomes the idea of fans sending one-liners that could be featured in Top Girl’s speech bubbles, for example.

Tell us what you would want Top Girl’s avatars to say in the comments below. Or, how would you want Crowdstar or Littleloud to improve their games?(source:benevolentmedia)