作者：Patricia Hernandez

几周前我打电话给我那15岁的妹妹，想要问她关于一款游戏的一些事。

“嘿，你是否玩过Kim Kardashian的游戏？”

“哪一款”

“不止一款吗？”

通过电话我可以听到她的牙齿发出了啧啧的声音，我甚至可以想象电话那端的她正在对我翻白眼。

“你是指《Hollywood》那款吗？那是我几周前玩的。”

“哦。那你现在还在玩那款游戏吗？”

“是吧。它有点烦人，因为它会让你快速用尽能量。”

“你是否想和我一起去看看表演，顺便跟我说说那款游戏？”

她似乎有点怀疑我的意图，但还是答应了。实际上这是我为了了解青少年对于游戏的看法的策略。但说实话，我玩了游戏好几周，但却仍然是E-Lister。另外一个事实是：我很惊讶于我的妹妹会批评那样的游戏。按照网上人们对于这些游戏的讨论，你可能会得到一些游戏用户扭曲的看法。这时候你将不能再将他们当成普通人，而是认为他们是一些容易被引导的僵尸。这便是他们为何会玩这些游戏并在游戏中花钱的原因，对吧？

我让妹妹在我面前玩这款游戏并跟我讲讲她的游戏体验。也许我能够学到一些自己亲自游戏学不到的东西。所以她便拿出了自己的白色iPhone（她告诉我这是新的），并给我看了她的角色。她向我描述了她的角色的装扮—-包括高跟鞋，化妆，佩戴的珠宝等等，这与人们呈现给你他们在《暗黑破坏神》或《魔兽世界》中的角色的方式一样。

在过去两周时间里，似乎所有人都在谈论《Kim Kardashian: Hollywood》（游戏邦注：一款明星养成游戏。在游戏中,你将体验这位名媛的生活,走上成名之路!游戏中,你将创建自己的明星,包括外观和风格）。甚至连我们的非电子游戏姐妹网站也出现了关于它的文章。Jezebel认为这是非常有趣的。Gawker也着迷于其中。最终我也下载了这款游戏，因为我的好友总是不断地发tweet跟我说这款游戏并在网上发相关图片。

典型的《Kim Kardashian: Hollywood》画面是这样的：

参加聚会！拍照！约会！环游世界！《Kim Kardashian》让你能够变成一线明星并做各种事。这是一种很容易遭到批评的无趣目标，但后来我想起我也很关心自己拥有多少Twitter粉丝，或者非常想成为最受关注的作者这些事实。

对于《Hollywood》存在许多不同的理解。有些人认为它的设计难以揣测，其开发商并未隐藏游戏是一个能够引导你花钱的斯金纳箱这一事实。还有一种理解是：游戏设计是刻意的，它将传达成为名人所伴随着的疏远与无聊。

但是我对于大多数“知识分子”对游戏的理解并不感兴趣。他们似乎并未考虑到那些真正喜欢玩这款游戏的人的看法。我并不认为任何受欢迎的内容都不具有任何优点。我也不认同那些只是因为游戏与Kim Kardashian有关系而贬低它的人。

这也是我为何会在几周前联系我的妹妹的原因。

2011年，我们全家搬到了Richmond。这次搬家对于我和妹妹来说有不同含义；我刚好遇到大学放暑假，而她那时才13岁，仍然对成人生活充满幻想。

那时候我非常暴躁，因为在大学和新家之间，我找不到一个让我觉得像“家”的地方。在整个暑假期间我都拒绝整理行李，或者承认我所拥有的这一空间。我认为Richmond只是前往Berkeley的旅程中一个不错的停靠点，但却不是一个适合生活的地方。

我的妹妹也不喜欢这座城市，但是她能做些什么呢？她才13岁。她只能选择住在父母所选择的地方。所以她选择了随遇而安，在自己的房间里贴满了One Direction和Justin Bieber的海报，并花了大量时间去玩那些我并不感兴趣的手机游戏。

那是一个漫长的夏天，我之所以记得如此清楚便是因为我妹妹。没有什么比和妹妹一起走在街上，并听到一些流氓对着她尖叫更奇怪的事了。现在的她也是个有胸的少女了。在我离开大学这段期间她飞速成长着。

似乎她所感兴趣的一切都是那么不合理。当我从大学回到家里时，她所做的第一件事便是炫耀自己拥有最新的iPhone，最新的Jordans。当我们出门时，她会一直发短信，自拍并刷instagram。每当我尝试着与她聊天时，我总觉得她是在迁就我。我所感兴趣的一切对她来说都是一周前已经在网上了解到的内容。最重要的是，她变得很安静，而我却非常好奇她到底在想些什么。

回首过去，我觉得自己对她太不公平了。

在我打电话给妹妹的那一天，我们最终一起看了Kim的真人秀。之前我从未看过，但却蛮好奇的。我很惊讶它竟然这么有趣—-这虽然违背了世界上最巧妙的设定，但是制作人却知道如何有限地呈现表演。我也因此被Kim Kardashian所吸引了。她似乎非常有名，但是我对这个人却不是很了解。我并不认为通过电视屏幕就能够了解一个名人，他们仍表现出特定的行为和性格。而Kim却是不同的。这是关于她的秀，但是看了几集后我对于她还是一无所知。

我问妹妹：“你知道她为什么会这么有名吗？”

“当然。”

“因为性爱录像带吗？”

“是啊。”

“那你不在乎吗？”

“并不是很在乎。”

这是一个可怕的问题。我不知道自己期待的答案是怎样的—-我的妹妹可能比我更了解网络，所以她当然知道Kim Kardashian为何如此有名。某种程度上我认为这就像陷阱一样—-你是否知道你所崇拜的这个女人是做什么的？如果我们未观看她是如何避免性爱录像带摧毁自己的节目，那么那款游戏是否还会那么有趣？

每个人都声称Kardashian是“因为有名而有名”。但就像Samantha Allen在《The Daily Dot》（游戏邦注：第一份描写互联网虚拟国度的报纸）所写的那样，“并不是说Kardashian不能工作，而是她的工作在一个性别歧视的世界（认为女性文化和生活方式是不值得注意的无聊追求）中是不正当的。”

Gita Jackson在《Paste》中写道：“她不能选择自己是否该接受审核。她只能选择性爱录像带的发行时间—-永远被当成一个发行过性爱录像带的女人或尝试着控制情况。她不能再‘摆脱时间的束缚’。当Kardashian West女士醒来时，她便开始工作。当她前往杂货店购物时，她是在工作。当她与家人待在一起时，她也是在工作。她所说的每一个字，她所穿的每一件衣物，她所做的每个决定都将被记录下来并进行分析。”

我的妹妹说道：“我的意思是，我认为她是个很漂亮的人。我喜欢她。所以我认为她肯定会出名的。”

我的妹妹一边熟悉地略过游戏中一些花花公子般的对话一边说着：“在这款游戏中，饥渴的男孩总是会尝试着接近你。我根本就不在乎。”我禁不住笑了出来。

在游戏中为了获得额外的货币找到一个垃圾桶时，她解释道：“所以如果你轻敲背景中的某些东西，有时候它们便会给你钱。”我想到《生化奇兵：无限》和《辐射》拥有比人们想象中更多的与《Kim Kardashian》的相似点。

她继续呈现给我她的公寓以及她未花任何钱所获得的所有东西。她还责备我怎么会还是E-lister—-因为她已经是拥有数百万粉丝的A-lister。对于所有的一切我都非常不理解。然后她便停了下来看着我。

她说道：“我不认为自己想要变得有名或怎样。我只是觉得这款游戏有趣。我看了一个关YouTuber如何在获得许多粉丝后惨遭滑铁卢的故事。所以我觉得自己并不在乎名气，但我在Instagram上的确拥有者3000名粉丝。”

我笑着说：“永远不要改变这一想法。”

以下是在app store中12岁的Katherine Pollock对《Kim Kardashian: Hollywood》所作出的评论：

在我阅读该评论前，关于《Kim Kardashian: Hollywood》的概念只会让我翻白眼。这只是一款关于名人的手机游戏？关于所有名人中的Kim Kardashian？

但在阅读了Katherine的评论后，我想起大多数在社交媒体上写下关于这款游戏的正面评论的用户似乎都是年轻女孩。初中生和高中生。根据在Twitter和Instagram上的调查，似乎她们已经玩了好长时间的游戏了。

社会一直在努力告诉女孩们，她们的兴趣是愚蠢，无趣且不值得尊重的。年轻的女孩们被告知，你想要成为Arya Stark（游戏邦注：《冰与火之歌》中的人物，书中主要的POV角色之一。临冬城公爵艾德·史塔克的次女，是个典型的“假小子”，活泼好动，喜欢舞刀弄剑），而不是Sansa Stark（《冰与火之歌》中虚构的人物，是书中的POV角色之一。是临冬城公爵艾德·史塔克的长女），尽管这两个女孩都知道强大意味着什么。

这是一款关于名人，并邀请人们去装扮并致力于拍照与聚会的游戏？忘记这些吧。论点不再是关于游戏是否有趣或得到授权，而是《Hollywood》在一开始是否作为一款游戏？我们讨论了它的操作以及它是如何通过设计去诱导玩家花钱。而在此之前就曾出现过这样的游戏，如《模拟人生》，《FarmVille》和《Candy Crush Saga》。

尽管网络上的成人们一直在争论Kim Kardashian及其游戏的优点，但是世界各地的青少年女孩们却继续开心地敲打着自己的屏幕，无视我们的争议与看法。因为她们正忙于感受游戏的乐趣。

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

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

Patricia Hernandez

A couple of weeks ago, I called up my 15-year-old sister. I wanted to ask her about a certain celebrity.

“Hey…are you playing that Kim Kardashian game?”

“Which one?”

“There’s more than one?”

I could hear her suck her teeth through the phone, I could practically picture her rolling her eyes at me.

“You mean the Hollywood one? I was playing that WEEKS AGO.”

“Oh, uh. Are you still playing it?”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s kind of annoying because it makes you run out of energy really quickly…”

“Do you wanna hang out and watch the show maybe? You can tell me about the game?”

She sounded suspicious of my intentions, but she said yes. Partially, the entire thing was a ploy for me to gain some insight as to what R E A L T E E N S think of the game. But truthfully, part of it was that I’d been playing the game for weeks and was still a fucking E-Lister. Another truth: I was surprised to hear my sister criticize the game like that. The way people talk about these games online, you get this warped perception of the game’s audience. You stop considering them as people, and instead think of them more like mindless, easily seduced zombies who don’t know any better. That’s why they must be playing games like this and spending money on them, right?

I asked my sister to play the game in front of me and tell me about it. Maybe I’d learn something I couldn’t by playing it on my own, I figured. So she pulled out her white iPhone—which she informed me was brand new—and she showed me her character. She made sure to tell me about the specific things the character was wearing—the heels, the make-up, the jewelry—much in the same way someone might show you their character in Diablo or World or Warcraft.

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

For the last two weeks, it has seemed like everyone is talking about Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Even our non-video-game sister sites have had been writing about it. Jezebel thinks it’s hilarious. Gawker is fascinated by it. I ended up downloading it, since my friends couldn’t seem to stop Tweeting about it or posting pictures of it online.

A typical Kim Kardashian: Hollywood screen looks a little like this:

Go to a party! Do a photoshoot! Go on a date! Travel the world! Kim Kardashian lets you do lots of things in the name of becoming an A-list celebrity. It’s a vapid goal that is easy to criticize, until I remember how self-aware I am about things like how many Twitter followers I have, or my constant concern over being a widely-read author.

There are a lot of different interpretations of Hollywood. Some people say its design is sinister, and that the developers don’t even try to hide the fact the game is a skinner box that can suck all your money away. Another interpretation: the game’s design is intentional, and is meant to communicate the alienation and boredom that come with being a celebrity. (Okay, maybe that one’s a stretch.)

But, eh. I’m not interested in most “intellectual” interpretations of the game. They seem completely divorced from the actual people who are enjoying playing it. I don’t like the knee-jerk idea that anything popular has nothing of merit. And I’m definitely not interested in anyone who puts this game down simply because it’s attached to Kim Kardashian.

That’s how I ended up calling my sister a couple of weeks ago.

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

In 2011, my family relocated to Richmond, across the bay from San Francisco. The move meant different things for me and for my sister; I was home from college for the summer, and she was thirteen, still living at the whim of the adults in her life.

At the time I was angry that, between college and the new house, I no longer had a place that felt like “home.” I refused to really unpack during the summer, or do much to acknowledge the space as my own. In my mind, Richmond was a place you wound up if you fell asleep on the BART train on the way to Berkeley or something, not a place where anyone would want to grow old.

My sister didn’t like it either, but what could she do, really? She was thirteen. She had to live wherever her parents wanted her to. So, she made the best of it and plastered her room with One Direction and Justin Bieber posters, and she spent most of her time playing games on her phone, games that I didn’t have the reflexes for.

It was a slow summer, but I remember it vividly because of my sister. There’s nothing weirder than walking down the street with your sister, only to have some sleaze catcall her and realize, oh, yeah, she has breasts now, huh? But, more than that—it was like she became a real person in the years I was off in college. I didn’t actually know who that person was, though. 1

It seemed like everything she was interested in was so…inconsequential. When I got back from college, the first thing she did was rub in my face the fact she had the newest iPhone, the newest Jordans. When we went out, she seemed to spend a lot of time texting, or taking pictures of herself and putting them on Instagram. And any time I tried talking to her about those things, there was always this feeling that she was humoring me. Whatever I was interested in was something she had already read about online a week beforehand. (A week is a year in teen time!) Mostly, though, she was silent, and I was left wondering what in the world went on in her head.

Looking back, I think I was pretty unfair to her.

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

After I called my sister for our Kardashian-date, we ended up watching a few episodes of Kim’s reality show. I’d never seen it before and I was curious. I was surprised by how entertaining it was—it’s not, like, the most intellectual thing in the world, but the producers sure know how to play up the drama. Mostly, though, I was fascinated by Kim Kardashian. She seemed to be everywhere, and yet I knew so little about as a person. It’s not that I think anyone can actually get a sense of a celebrity through a TV screen, but they still put on specific acts, personalities. With Kim, it was different. The show is about her and yet, based on the episodes I watched, she remained an enigma.

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

“Do you know why she got famous?” I asked my sister.

“Yeah.”

“The sex tape…”

“Yeah…”

“And you don’t care?”

“Not really.”

It was an awful question. I don’t know what I was expecting—my sister is probably more web-savvy than I am, of course she fucking knows why Kim Kardashian got famous. I think, on some level, I was expecting it to be something like a gotcha—this woman you look up to, do you know what she did? As if we weren’t watching a show about how she didn’t let the sex tape ruin her, as if the game couldn’t be interpreted as a testament to the fact that Kim Kardashian, even while living the life, technically never stops working.

Everyone likes to assert that Kardashian is “famous for being famous.” But as Samantha Allen writes over at The Daily Dot, “It’s not that Kardashian doesn’t work; it’s that her work is not recognized as legitimate within a sexist world that sees feminine culture and lifestyle as frivolous pursuits undeserving of any serious attention.”234567

“She doesn’t have a choice on whether or not she is scrutinized,” Gita Jackson writes over at Paste. “She had a choice when her sex tape was released—be forever known as a woman who had a sex tape, or try and take control of that situation. She no longer gets to have “off the clock.” When Mrs. Kardashian West wakes up, she is working. When she goes grocery shopping, she is working. When she is with her family, she is working. Every word she speaks and outfit she puts on and decision she makes must be made in respect to the fact that it will be recorded and analyzed.”

“I mean…I think she’s a nice person,” my sister says. “I like her. I think she would have gotten famous anyway.”

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

“UGH. THIRSTY-ASS BOYS ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO GET AT YOU IN THIS GAME. I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOOOU,” my sister yelled as she skipped some dude’s dialogue without reading it in the game. I couldn’t help but laugh. This was a girl that, up until this point, I was convinced was actually boy-crazy.

“So if you tap on things in the background, sometimes they give you money,” she explained as she dug through a trashcan in the game for extra coins. I thought about how games like BioShock: Infinite and Fallout have more in common with the Kim Kardashian game than people realize.

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian
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She went on to show me her apartment, and all the other things she earned in the game without actually spending any money. She also chided me for still being an E-lister—she was an A-Lister with millions of fans. I felt weirdly emasculated about the whole thing. Then she stopped and looked up at me.

“I don’t think I want to be famous or anything. I’m just having fun with this game. I saw a story about how this YouTuber broke down after he got too many followers. I think I’m fine being a nobody…but I do have three thousand followers on Instagram,” she said.

“Never change,” I chuckled.

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian

You don’t have to dig far into the reviews tab of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood in the app store to find something written by Katherine Pollock. Katherine Polluck is twelve years old. This is her review:8

Teen Girls Don’t Care What We Think of Kim Kardashian
9

Before I read that review, the mere concept of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood made me roll my eyes. A mobile game about a celebrity? About Kim Kardashian, of all celebrities? Yeah, okay. I’m sure that’ll be a great game and not just a total cash-in.

But after reading Katherine’s review, I recalled that most folk on social media writing positively about the game—be it on Instagram or Twitter—seemed to be young girls. Middle-school girls. High school girls. Based on a Twitter and Instagram survey, it looked like they’d been playing Hollywood way before the rest of the world found out about it.

Society works hard to tell girls that their interests are stupid, vapid, and not worthy of respect. You want to be Arya Stark, not Sansa Stark, young women are told, even though in truth, both girls know what it means to be strong.

A mobile game about celebrity, a game that invites people to play dress-up and attend to photoshoots and parties? Forget it. The argument stops being about whether the game is fun (it is!) or empowering, and becomes about whether Hollywood is a game in the first place. Or, we talk about how manipulative it is, how it’s designed to get you to spend money. We’ve been here before: It’s The Sims, it’s FarmVille, it’s Candy Crush Saga. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is everything wrong with modern gaming, and you can download it for free on the app store.

While the adults of the internet argue about the merits of Kim Kardashian and her game, teen girls everywhere continue to gleefully tap on their screens, unaware of our debates and our thinkpieces. They’re too busy having fun.(source:kotaku)