Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Girls and Games
Yasmin Kafai gave an interesting speech on the history of designing games for girls, providing us with three named categories for these design endeavors:
- Games for girls only
- Games for social change
- Games for expression
Kafai conducts her research in a teen virtual worlds where the percentage of female players are higher than that of males (Yes, they exist). She gave a fascinating overview of her work where she had analyzed logs of play from 6 months, and could see patterns in behaviors and very diverse playing styles. I don’t think anyone would believe that all girls play the same way just because they are girls, but if there is anyone out there assuming this Kafai’s work has solid proof of the contrary.
