Sparklier Worlds: Understanding Games for Girls as Style Intervention

This paper examines audiovisual style and play principles of successful mid-1990s games for girls titles including Barbie Fashion Designer (Mattel Media, 1996), Chop Suey (Magnet Interactive, 1995), Rockett's New School (Purple Moon, 1997), Secret Paths to the Forest (Purple Moon, 1997), and related titles. These games, developed for an audience of tween girl consumers, demonstrate a distinct style informed by the affordances of the then-emergent CD-ROM medium, by established play patterns, and by emerging research on girls’ desire for and discomfort with emerging technologies. This paper, combining methods from historical and media studies research, utilizes artifact analysis, archival research, and original and historical interviews with game developers, argues that the media-rich, multi-media design practices deployed in games for girls titles have broad utility in story-based games and for non-expert users. By using playful media cues integrated into the game's visual and narrative environment, this approach offers users subtle scaffolding, avoiding the pitfalls of overt pedagogical strategies and embedding moments of surprise and delight in sometimes unexpected places.