http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/imagine-babyz/
Apparently this has sparked some interesting controversy and some polarized arguments. Thought it might be interesting to see the view points on this. Seriously, this is a real game, and I'm just going to let the image speak for itself to get a quick reaction.
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3 comments:
I don't see much sexist thought by the developers in this title. Personally, I think this game when through the development chain a little differently:
Step 1: Marketing guy sees survey that says girls like babies.
Step 2: Marketing tells his boss.
Step 3: They farm out the work to some assembly line developers.
Step 4: Ubi Soft seizes opportunity to make quick money and publishes game.
Step 5: Collective soul of gamer culture dies a little
Yes, title spelling aside, this game is probably bad in many ways. The target market is not self-aware, educated, 32 year old women. The target audience is 7-12 year old half-humans who still have many years before they metamorphose into adults, who can then turn around and hate this game too.
This title has faults, but at least it made a few little girls happy. Whoever can argue against making girls happy probably kicks puppies and salts slugs.
Actually, I believe the exact target demographic is 4 year-old girls. 7 year-olds start to grow out of this sort of thing. Although, for those of you that haven't seen VGcats recently, it was mentioned on the cover of THIS magazine:
http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/01/30/girl-gamer-magazine-thinks-its-still-the-1950s/
I mostly just had to look it up wondering what the hell this game was. Personally, I also think a lot more's being read into, but the primary feminist argument seems to be not that some don't want to have babies but that it's really the only choice and that this only reinforces gender stereotypes. I wonder how people would react to "Imagine: Shoving a Firecracker into GI JOE and watching him explode. I think it'd sell.
To verify. My statement on the demographic actually comes from a marketing announcement linked in one of the comments on the page.
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