Thursday, December 13, 2007

Final Term Paper


Title: Video game culture: Exploring the different features between the video games- Cooking Mama and Winning Eleven, and find out why they attract different gender.


Video game culture
is a form of
new media culture t
hat has been influenced by video games.[1] It is stated that 800 millions of people from all over the world are regular players of video games[2], so it is a common place to see people holding video game players in their hands no matter they are at work, at home, in restaurant or even on transportation. The video game culture is getting close to us. In this day and age, the kind of video game players is numerous, such as PlayStation Portable (PSP), Nintendo DS (NDS),Wii, Gameboy, etc. In June 2006, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS Lite, which is a slimmer and lighter version of the Nintendo DS, and it starts to attract many female players. Cooking Mama is a game of NDS, which is popular among female players. [3] On the other hand, PSP is a popular video game player among male and the most famous game that male like to play is Winning Eleven. This paper would focus on analysis the different features between these two games and state out why female like Cooking Mama but not Winning Eleven, and why male like Winning Eleven than Cooking Mama. It would finally find out the gender issues between these two games.

To begin with, Cooking Mama is a game that is tasked with cooking several dishes by using the Nintendo DS's touch screen. The players need to follow the on-screen instructions of the cooking character, Cooking Mama, and perform various tasks such as chopping vegetables or mixing ingredients in order to finish a delicious dish.[4] On the other hand, Winning Eleven is game that is tasked with controlling the football players in participating in the football competitions. The players need to select the football team and think of the policy to win the match.
In Cooking Mama, the main character, Cooking Mama, is a woman, the player does the task by cooking various meal. From this image, it is noticed that woman is already symbolized to the belief that cooking is the responsibility of a woman. According to the functionalist perspective in sociology, men and women act different roles. Women take expressive role. They are supposed to provide warmth and emotional support to the children and show love and understanding to the husband. In contrast, men take the instrumental role, and they are task-oriented. They need to work and earn money for the family. In Cooking Mama, Mama already indicates that woman‘s place is at home. While in Winning Eleven, the football characters are more outgoing. The football players are the jobs of the athletics. Participating in the competition is the responsibilities of the football players.

Besides, in biological points of view, latest research reveals that the female brain operates significantly differently to the male brain. Richard J. Haier and colleagues at the universities of New Mexico and California (Irvine) found, using brain mapping, that men have more than six times the amount of grey matter related to general intelligence than women. Gray matter is used for information processing.[5] Female focus more on using right- brain, while male focus on left-brain more. As a result, female is more emotional, caring, artistic and creative while male is more logical, aggressive, good in analysis.

In Cooking Mama, the player needs to prepare food dishes according to Mama’s orders. From this, it implicated that why Cooking Mama is so popular among girls. As mentioned in the biological difference between male and female, female is less logical and they need more caring, cooking mama gives them instruction to do the tasks, so the girls player can think less and just follow the order without any complicated analysis. In the game, food dishes are made in steps. Each step is a sort of cooking mini-game where the players only need to perform tasks like cutting, mixing, kneading, chopping, etc. When the player chooses the specific food to make, a timer would appear the player would have a limited amount of time to perform whatever task Mama tells you to do. For example, in making a pizza, there are instructions like “Add the ingredients”, “ Mix it ”, “Knead the dough”, “Let the dough rise”, etc.
Next, the player would also receive a feedback from cooking Mama, the girl’s player would treat it as a support. Girls like others to care of her. When the girls fail the task, they are still no need to worry. For example, if the player makes a serious fault or time expires leading that it does not have a successful meal finally, although the screen would appear the image of an angry Mama with flames, it still comes along with the caption "Don't worry, Mama will fix it!". From this, the girl players could immediately be relaxed and they seemed that Mama would protect them and would help her to fix all the problems. Or “Go, go, you can do it.” This shows the caring and encouragement to the girls, so they could play it without any concerns.

Furthermore, when the dish is finished, Mama would give out scores and give the player a grade from 0 to 100. Mama would also give the players one of three medals for the efforts of the process. If the score is above 60, a bronze would be given, if above 80, it would be silver and at 100, gold would be. At the same time, the comments like “Very Well Done” or “Terrific! Even better than Mama” would be given, these praises act a supporting mean to the girls and could enhance their confidence.

On the other hands, in Winning Eleven, the player could form the football team themselves according to the football players’ abilities. The player needs to control the football players in competing with another team in order to win the game. This shows that why boys prefer to play this game than the girls, since Winning Eleven is a game which is more skills oriented and player needs to keep on thinking and have an in-depth analysis. Besides, the boys are more aggressive, in the games, the result of win or lose is very significant. Since if the player wins the game, they could earn some money and these could help them to buy the team suits, balls or even some better football players. If the player could have better equipments or better football players, their probability to win is higher and he could have chance to enter the semifinal or even final competition. From this game, the players could gain the satisfactory of winning. The process of winning a competition and entering the final is the aim of the players. Usually, the male are logical, and they prefer to have a clear mind in working, this game could let them to achieve the aim and they could just work hard to fight for it. Besides, playing football is more physical. Due to the biological differences between male and woman, the body size of male is bigger, taller and stronger than woman. Hence, male is more muscular and physically fit, so they have privilege in doing physical activities like playing soccer. In the game, the characters are all boys, but even do not have a female football player. This shows the gender is stereotyped. It gives out the message that boys are the dominant in playing football. Hence, when playing the football games, the players would think that they are participating in a football match so logically, more boys would participate in playing this game than girls. What is more, in Cooking Mama, the tasks are simple tasks and each only needs a few minutes to finish. The tasks are only focuses on cooking. However, in Winning Eleven, in order to play the game better, the players must know more background information of the football teams in the world. The game is more focused on research based. If the player does not know the background of the football teams, they would not know the abilities of that team and it is difficult to substitute the players. This game also has high tendency of continuity, as it is match by match. The football match is an international issue, and sights of boys are always wider and organized, so that is why Winning Eleven is popular among boys.

In viewing the visual elements of these two games, it is noticed that why there is difference in popularity of gender between these two games. In Cooking Mama, the character of Cooking Mama is a cartoon and looks very cute. The background is always very fantastic, just like in a dreamland, this fits that the girls always like imagination and dreaming. All visual images are very colorful, using the color pink, yellow and light blue and these colors are very girlish as well. . The atmosphere is very happy and harmony. When the players finish the task in an excellent score, they could have bonus gifts, which are some beautiful clothes for Mama to change with, the new kitchen equipments or the new background of the kitchen. These bonus gifts are very suitable to the female‘s character. Girls always like to go shopping and buy new clothes. They like to be beautiful and like to decorate the environment just like their dreams. The new background provides the fresh and new thing for the players, which girls like keep on changing and having new things. The kitchen just likes a home of the Mama, since the concept of family and home is more obvious to a girl, so the girl player enjoy decorating the kitchen into a wonderful place. This shows that why more girls like to play Cooking Mama. In contrast, in Winning Eleven, the football characters are more realistic, it does not contain any funny visual elements. The image is just like that the character is in a real football court. The action of the football player is like the real situation, showing the skill that in the real world, the football player could really do so, but not a computer technique one. The name of football teams and the players are all real and they exist in the real society. From this, it matches the character of the boys that they like realistic and practical, not like the girls just like enjoying the fantastic world.
Besides, the popularity of the Cooking Mama shows the new change of video game culture. In the past, there are fewer games designed specifically for woman to play with, but from Cooking Mama, it is obviously a game designed for woman. It shows the equality between male and female becomes important in the video game world. The producers now would not just focus on the male markets. According to the Surveys of Entertainment Software Association of 2005, t
he gender distribution of gamers is reaching equilibrium; it shows that 57% of gamers are male and 43% female.[6] It indicates that there is a high developing room for the expansion of the female market.

In addition, it could see that both Cooking Mama and Winning Eleven have the characteristic of global features. In Cooking Mama, the dishes are included Italian pizza, Western T-bones steak, Japanese sushi, the Chinese vegetable meat buns etc. Although the games are designed in Japan, these kinds of food are from different countries. It shows that it covers with international features. On the other hand, in Winning Eleven, the football teams are included the national team from different continents. For example, LA Galaxy in the America, Manchester United in England, etc. These show that the target of both games not only aims at Japan, but also the international world. The games imported to U.S.A, Korea, England, Hong Kong, etc. When talking about the globalization, the status between male and female becomes more equal in these countries. From this, it could be noticed that the existence of Cooking Mama shows how the global video world also focuses on the female markets.

In conclusion, Winning Eleven and Cooking Mama are two obvious games that contain the different feature that are designed for a particular gender to play. The functionalist perspective shows that male is task-oriented, so boys like playing Winning Eleven. While female are family-oriented, so they better stay at home to cook, that is why Cooking Mama is a woman. It is conducive to see the innovation of the game type such as Cooking Mama, it is a good opening of the female markets in the video game culture. This game shows that the equity between male and female is more important in the global society nowadays. It is a good development to let the world become fairer between male and female. As a consequence, the players could have more range of games to select with and having more choices could enhance the creativity and innovation of the video games. Hence, the video game culture could be spread widely and exist continuously.


Bibliography:

Books:
Berger, A. A. (2002). Video games: A popular culture phenomenon. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.

Carr, D. (2006). Computer games: Text, narrative and play. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Horton, P. B., & Hunt, C. L. (1980). Sociology (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.


Poole, S. (2000). Trigger happy :The inner life of videogames. London: Fourth Estate,p.1-47.

Richard J Haier, E Jung and others. (2004).Structural Brain Variation and General Intelligence,p. 425–433.


Websites:

http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
http://www.1up.com/(Retrieved on 20/10/07)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy (Retrieved on 10/10/07)

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/gamerrevolution.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture (Retrieved on 12/12/07)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_Mama_2:_Dinner_with_Friends (Retrieved on 12/12/07)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Visual images (part 6)












http://www.ctonet.org/documents/SmithR_GameImpactTheory.pdf (Retrieved on 18/10/07)

This graph shows that the computer game markets expand rapidly in all over the world. This shows that the popularity of video games spreads and it becomes more and more important in people lives.

Visual images (part 5 )










http://www.ctonet.org/documents/SmithR_GameImpactTheory.pdf

(Retrieved on 18/10/07)

These two pictures show the change of video images from 1992 to 2005. It indicates the quality of the image is highly improved and hence, the video games become more attractive and exciting.


Visual images (part 4)









http://portagame.com/nintendo_ds.php?author=2


(Retrieved on 17/10-07)





www.cavinguk.co.uk/











(Retrieved on 17/10/07)
These two photos shows that people are playing with their NDS whereever and whenever they are, just like in the photos, one is at work, one is at lunch.




Visual images (part 3)
















http://www.hatayan.org/weblog/archives/2006/03/02/162141.php (Retrieved on 21/10/07)

The photo on the left describes the people are lining to buy the video game player, NDS, in Japan and they are waiting in the morning. The right one is the ticket for buying the video game player. These shows that people are so enthusiastic in buying the vedio game players and the whole society is covered with the atmosphere of playing video games.

Visual images (part2)














http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamHack

( Retrieved on 20/10/07)
This photo shows the situation of DreamHack, a LAN party, in which we can see groups of people gather in an area with network of computer playing computer games together. This indicates that it is popular to have games gathering and the number of people involved can be very large .


Visual images (part 1 )







http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
To include these two graphs, it can state as a prove of the survey found and it can clearly show the age groups of people playing video games. This helps us to analyze the effect of changing age groups to the market.


Quotes

1. http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN2425415820070624?feedType=RSS&rpc=452&sp=true (Retrieved on 24/10/07)

"Addiction experts say vedio games not an addiction“ Reuters, June 25, 2007.

Dr. Louis Kraus of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center, said “The more time kids spend on video games, the less time they will have socializing, the less time they will have with their families, the less time they will have exercising. ”


2.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/17/48hours/main525965.shtml
(Retrieved on 23/10/07)

Sony Online CEO John Smedley said,
“addictive” is nonsense. “It’s entertainment. Is a book dangerous? Is a TV show dangerous? I think the answer is no. People need to take responsibility and say, ‘Hey, you know, this is too much. Enough’s enough.’ It’s a game.”


3.
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=188100460
(Retrieved on 20/10/07.)
“Video Games Also Attractive To The Young At Heart”,Gonsalves,June18, 2006. Retrieved on 20/10/07.

“Video game addicts are more likely to have game consoles in their bedroom and spend an average of 24.5 hours per week shooting imaginary bad guys in the virtual worlds. Besides being more likely to perform poorly in school, addicts get into more physical fights and are physically heavier than nonaddicts.”

4.
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/gamerrevolution.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
Rachel Low, President, Red Apple Entertainment,said, "The idea of living inside a computer-generated universe is happening right now. The line between the real world and the virtual world is disappearing. Millions of people feel that they have a life inside these games."

5.
http://www.jupitermedia.com/corporate/releases/02.11.06-gamerep.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
Michael Gartenberg, Research Director for Jupiter Research,said,

"An older more usage-intense audience is a powerful change for game companies who struggle to adapt hardware and games for profitability in a highly competitive market. As the audience ages, the content will need to mature as well."

Links:

What facts do the survey annalyse about the computer and video games?

What is the updated news of video games?Why is it so attractive?

What effect of the video games could bring to the society?

What are the views that considering the video game addiction is a mental disorder?

How many people from all over the world are the regular players of the video games?




Bibliography:


Books:

1.
Berger, A. A. (2002). Video games :A popular culture phenomenon. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
In this book, Berger explores the cultural importance of expanding popularity of video games and points out the effects that could bring out the difference of video games among books , movies, etc. However. It is quite difficult to understand as the points he gave out sometimes do not have much elaboration and evidence, so it seems that it is not too objective.


2.
Earnshaw, R. A., & Vince, J. (2000). Digital media :The future. London; New York: Springer.
This book gives us some brief information of how European thinks about the new media technology. It also talks about the human –computer interaction with global information spaces, which helps us to think about the relationship between human and video games.



3.
Poole, S. (2000). Trigger happy :The inner life of videogames. London: Fourth Estate,p.1-47.
This book gives us a broader sense of video games culture. It discusses what makes video games unique as a brand new art form. It gives us the ideas that video games should be seriously respected, as same as with other forms such as film, painting and literature.This books contains many chapters and each chapters has different ways to look at the video game culture, which can help us to know more from different views of points.

4.
Wiedemann, J. (2001). Digital beauties :2D & 3D computer generated digital models, virtual idols and characters. Koln; London: Taschen.
This book contains many images of 2D and 3 D images of the characters of video games. However, it mainly focuses on the designs of female, but it can help us to understand the intention of the artists and the technique of making the female characters.



Newspaper Articles:

5.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN2425415820070624?feedType=RSS&rpc=452&sp=true (Retrieved on 24/10/07)

This article brings out a controversial topic of whether designate video game addiction as a mental disorder . It brings out the problems of more people addicting to video games. Seriously, some addicted people have the mental problems. It provides us some ideas of each sides of the decision of treating the video addition as a mental disorder.

6.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/17/48hours/main525965.shtml (Retrieved on 23/10/07)

This news states the truth that a youngster is too addictive to the video games that he
cannot come out of the reality and finally he get suicide. This helps us to think that who need to bear the responsibility of the death. The addicted youngster? Or the designers of the game? The society?

7.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198701937
(Retrieved on 24/10/07)
It conducts the result of a survey saying that the youth from ages 8 to 18 addicted gamers receive lower grades in school than their peers. It also mentions the amount of time played differs by age and gender with supporting data. I t gives us a prove that how video games affect the young children.



Websites:

8.
http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
It is a result to the survey. It provides graph and data for us to analyse who plays computer and video games, how long the games have been playing, how long the gamers expect to continue playing. I t also investigates what the top-selling game genres were.



9.
http://www.1up.com/(Retrieved on 20/10/07)

This link is a website mainly focusing on the video games’ world. It posts the updated most popular video games , news, previews and reviews of video games. It really can provide us in-depth information of the video game ‘s world. The most useful part of this website is that the news are particularly about the video games and they are from different newspapers, magazines of the different places, so we can look at different aspects of the game culture.

10.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy
(Retrieved on 10/10/07)

This mentions the effect that the video games could bring out to the society. It criticizes the crime and violent of the games, sexuality and nudity of the characters. It also mentions the legislation of different countries to deal with the problems of suspecting the video games.

11.
http://www.jupitermedia.com/corporate/releases/02.11.06-gamerep.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
I find it useful as this website states out that the report of Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), found that the average console user is already an adult, which is a significant change of the video game culture. The change of age group raises a challenge to the game production company to change the content and promotion strategy.


12.
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/gamerrevolution.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)

It is good because it states out the fact that over 800 million people from all over the world are regular players of video games, which is an important data. Most importantly, it is posted on February 1 & 8, 2007, which is very updated information, the video games ‘s world is always changing, so getting the newest data can help us to get in touch of the world of video game. Besides, this is a website of CBC –TV, which is a highly reliable source and the news is always updated.

13.
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=188100460
(Retrieved on 20/10/07)

This shows that video and computer games are as attractive to adults as to teens. It also states out that in computer games, strategy games were the biggest sellers, followed by family and children's games.

14.
http://www.ctonet.org/documents/SmithR_GameImpactTheory.pdf

(Retrieved on 18/10/07)


This website identifies five specific forces, which are computer hardware costs, game software power, social acceptance, other industry successes, and native industry experimentation, that cause the video game industry to adopt game technologies for their core products and services.

Questions


1. Why the video games are so attractive?


2. What effects could the video games culture bring out ?

3. Is the video game too isolated from the reality ? How we can be at grips with this problem?

4. Do we need to stop the spreading of the video cultures? Why ?



Why am I so interested in this topic?


Do you realise that the whole society is covered with the atmosphere of playing video games nowadays? Even I do not play video games; it seems that I still have a close relationship with me. When I go to have lunch or dinner with my friends, they just keep on concentrating on the video game players such as NDS, PSP, etc. When I am on my way home, I see people holding the NDS or PSP in the MTR. When I am resting at hall, I see my hall mates playing PSP or computer games in their rooms. Undoubtedly, it is a common place to see people holding video games player in their hands no matter they are at work, at home, in restaurant or even on transportation. The video game culture is getting close to us.


In the past, I just recognised that people who play video games are mostly teenagers and the gender is male for majority. However, I am surprising that the people who play video games now are more widespread, even adults and female like playing video games.

I find interesting that why people are so addicted to the games and how attractive the video games are. These provide me a driving force to examine the video game culture in depth.
When the video game culture is so popular, it intervenes our lives. What problems would it bring out? Is it conducive to the society?

Friday, October 5, 2007

Title

Video Games Culture