With Our Forces Combined We Are....

Here I'll have two friends select one random object each. I'll think of everything that comes to mind for each item and then try to combine them below.

CELLPHONE: Communication. Family. Friends. Appointments. Texting. Long distance. Love. Conversation. Arguments. Battery Life. Plug in. Connection to people. Email. Past. Present. Future. Location. Lost. Found. Pocket-sized. Multi-functional. Games. Alarm. Organizer. Planner. MP3. GPS. Broken screen. Small compared to laptop. Varying sizes. Sound. I'm not the type of person to have the latest and greatest cellphone. But not by choice. I don't have my own money, so unfortunately I have to get my parents to pay for my phones. Mostly, my phones just call. I have never had an iPhone or a Blackberry. I've never been able to check my email or use GPS... but God I hope my parents buy me something that does soon.

TRICYCLE: Fun. Kids. Transportation. Toys. Rusts in rain. Outdoors. Playful. Tires. Horn. Red. Driveway. Street. Safety. Laughing. Interaction. Back yard. Plastic. Metal. Small compared to bicycles. Bigger than most toys. I remember my first bicycle with training wheels. It was white and pink and may have had Barbie stickers on it. I rode it back in forth in our driveway.

Combination:

1. Tricycle with built-in GPS
2. Tricycle with easy-to-use phone built in
3. Tricycle that sends SMS of location in neighborhood to parent
4. Tricycle that can be adjusted to fit a large range of child sizes
5. Tricycle that is collapsible to fit in a pocket
6. Tricycle that is also scooter/bicycle
7. Tricycle that can play music
8. Tricycle that can hold a cellphone securely
9. Tricycle that is battery operated
10. Cellphone for children
11. Cellphone that can stand tougher wear and tear (be outside for a while and still usable)
12. Cellphone that expands and becomes a bicycle
13. Cellphone shell made of rubber (tire rubber)
14. Cellphone powered simply by human turning of a dial

It's crazy how I knew how to describe "cell phone" a lot more deeply than a tricycle. Am I getting so old that I've forgotten what it was like to ride a tricycle?

Anyway, I think a couple things were pretty cool that I thought of. The last one, cellphone powered by turning of a dial or some sort of crank I thought would be pretty awesome to have. (I say this as I have my cell phone plugged in because it was dying earlier today.) How nice would it be to be able to crank up your phone when its on its last bar of life? I know there are things out there that can charge a battery with a crank, those emergency radios, but not a cellphone, from my knowledge.

Obviously cellphones with the durability of a tricycle would be great for anyone. It might not be great for companies to make something with a longer durability, because the customer might come in to the store less often, but it will definitely make customers happier to have a phone that is water resistant, doesn't crack easily, buttons always work, etc.

And who knows, maybe one day we will all own a travel sized bike in our pocket and whip it out whenever we're running late.

Game On, Girls.

Gaming has been a great interest of mine, ever since my first SEGA Genesis console playing Sonic The Hedgehog from that cartridge you had to blow on. Recently, however, I've gotten more into gaming. I've dabbled in games on the Xbox 360, Playstation, Wii, Nintendo DS, PC games, and social media games. And all throughout my life, it was rare to find another girl with the same interest in gaming as me. Even in college! Maybe it's the fact that I'm a business student, but come on... isn't UT is supposed to have a student organization for everything? But I digress...

While the popularity of video games in girls is apparently on the rise, (a recent study showed girls make up 38% of total gamers),⁴ girls are still looked at as incapable of being good at playing games: from being harassed on Xbox Live to the disbelief when a girl won this year's Ultimate Gamer from WCG.³ And, women are also still very much underrepresented at game conferences. Austin's GDC Online ⁵, from my own approximation, had about 30% women attendees.

So, how come if studies show nearly 40% of gamers are girls, I still see a store full of guys at GameStop?

"38% of gamers" is a statistic I'd like to explore, primarily because "games" is a pretty broad term. It can mean anything from Playstation 3 games to social media games on Facebook. In my Advertising in Video Games class, we learned that one of the fundamental reasons that girls aren't big gamers is simply because guys make the games. It's no wonder that you don't find too many girl gamers when 88% of the industry is men,¹ and they usually create games to reflect what guys like.

However, things are looking up for girls. Female professional gamers (gamers that go to tournaments across the country, kick butt, and win money...for a living!) are now more common. Take Ciji Thornton, for example (image left). She's a big Super Street Fighter and Guitar Hero gamer. Or, Katherine Gunn, who claimed WCG's Ultimate Gamer title and caused a big stir for being the first girl ever to win. Networks have popped up online that cater to girl gamers, like www.GirlGamer.com. There is even a group of girls that play professionally and are sometimes considered the spokesmen of girl gamers called the Frag Dolls.

So, here are some questions I'd like to answer for my Current Topic Report.

1. What video games do girls play?
2. Why do they play it? What draws them to this game, what is appealing about it?
3. Why don't they play other games that are out there?
4. How do they feel when they compete against guys?
5. Does it take a certain personality for a girl to be a "gamer"? For example, do only shy girls or tomboys play games?
6. What can people in the gaming industry do to change that and make it more inclusive and accessible to all or most girls?
7. Does this barrier between men and women in games exist simply because every industry is male dominated industry?

These are probably questions people in the industry are trying to answer now, but I'd love to find out what is the driving force behind the over representation of men in the gaming world.

Links:

1. http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-28/tech/women.gamers_1_women-gamers-female-gamers-entertainment-software-association?_s=PM:TECH

2. http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/24/technology/social_gaming/?section=money_latest

3. http://techland.com/2010/10/08/and-the-winner-of-wcg-ultimate-gamer-2-is/

4. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE49202W20081003

5. http://www.gdconline.com/

6. For my use: http://www.womengamers.com/articles/editorials/women-gaming-industry/