With or without a review copy, I’m determined to have something to say about Ubisoft’s babysitting sim, Imagine Babyz. Released this October, Babyz is part of the Imagine series, a collection of Nintendo DS titles Ubisoft is trying to market to young girls. Other games include Imagine Fashion Designer and Imagine Animal Doctor. It’s true: if there are three things women can do, it’s raise children, design clothes, and tend to wounded animal. Oh, and bake pies. That’s why there’s also Imagine Master Chef.
When the series was announced, it got heat for being, well, amazingly sexist. Sure, girls games aren’t all bad. They appeal to female players who might not otherwise take up gaming. Besides, professions like veterinarian or chef are hardly career choices to scoff at. Still, the fact of the matter remains: aside from being plain old lower quality than non-girl games, titles like these pigeon hole female players into “women’s professions.” Where’s the pretty pink version of Imagine Firefighter, or Imagine Corporate Lawyer?
Of the Imagine games, Babyz has incited the most finger wagging. Why? It turns child rearing into a game, it inspires young girls to want children, it seems to have the gender sense of a 1950’s health ed teacher: take your pick. Of course, early speculation that Babyz was a game about actually having children were quelled when it turned out the game was a mere babysitting simulator. Still, taking care of infants is taking care of infants–whether they they popped out of your uterus or someone just dropped them at your grandma’s house for the afternoon.
I’d like to be able to say Imagine Babyz is bad. Or good. Or anything. Honestly, I have zero gameplay input–though the singular review I’ve come across gives it a whopping 3.5. So in the place of actual constructive criticism, I give you sex and gender deconstruction.
First there’s the idea of “playing mom.” Pick up Babyz, and you’re doing this in two senses: first, as a babysitter, you’re playing the role of the mother substitute. Second, as the game player you’re playing the role of the babysitter. Lots of children “play mother” to their dolls, their friends, etc. That in and of itself is nothing new. What’s interesting is to see the role played in a structured, game format with preset gameplay rewards. Rock the cradle well, gain points. Forget to feed your charges, lose them. Oddly enough, what we’re being reminded of here is that motherhood itself–like gender–is a role to be played, not an inherent state. For such a sexist game, it’s a strangely feminist message.
We could also talk about why children play mother in the first place. Have you ever watched a toddler pretend to coddle a plastic doll? To tell the truth, it’s kind of creepy. Why would a child that small want to be a mom? Kristeva says (yes, I’m breaking out the psychoanalysis) it’s because the female child wants to be closer to her father. Subconsciously, she believes the father of her new baby is her own father. She replaces her mother as an object of affection by becoming a mother herself.
Now it’s time for the fun over-analyzing! Can we read Kristeva’s theory into girl games? Are Imagine Babyz players somehow usurping the power they currently lack as consumers in the games industry? If Babyz is the toy baby in question, then the industry would be its “father,” and us reviewers and players are the child busy coddling it. That would mean the attention we give to the game–both negative and positive–is really be energy diverted from the paternal “industry,” who’s love we’re hoping to turn toward ourselves. But then who would be our mother?
December 10th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Following your analogy, I guess that would make the current target of the industry’s love - i.e. the 18-34 male demographic - the mother.
Which is delicious, really, but also points at something that comes up whenever ‘girl games’ or even just casual games are discussed: there seems to be a real jealousy among hardcore gamers for the industry’s affection. Each time a developer makes a game that doesn’t appeal to the hardcore male demographic, they’re lambasted for it, and there’s a sense of “why aren’t they making games for me, dammit?” in the comments. Not to mention the (sometimes deserved) opprobrium towards existing titles. Barbie Horse Adventures is pretty much a running joke whenever developers gather.
December 10th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Ah, but by that logic the target demographic sure seems like another child, not the mother… Well, maybe the whole analogy doesn’t 100% work, but I totally agree with you. Then again, there’s a lot of jealousy on the non-demographic end of things as well. “I’m female, I’m not hardcore; why isn’t the industry paying attention to me?”
December 13th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Generally I think toddlers like to play mother because they’re merely imitating what their own mothers do and they’re trying to learn what’s proper behavior and what’s not.
And if we’re hitting all the major traditional “female” professions then where’s my Imagine: Call Girl, Ubisoft?
December 16th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Good point, Anne, though less fun than wanting to be the mother of your father’s child ;).
December 17th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
[…] Ruberg pisze na swoim blogu o przeznaczonej dla dziewczynek grze Imagine Babyz, w której opiekować należy […]
January 6th, 2008 at 8:26 am
[…] the topic of real world little girls, Bonnie’s Heroine Sheik writes about the appalling sexism of Ubisoft’s line of “games for girls”, but takes a deeper look at the Imagine Babyz game: Lots of children “play mother” to their […]
January 29th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Anyone remember the pocket sized Digital Pets?
One of the first ones that came out in America had you taking care of a little human baby. If you were successful at it, it grew into a child and you got a second baby to look after. Succeed there, and after six days, you had a mini-family to call your own. Variations of these toys are still around in any Target or Toys’R'Us. They have the babysitting version, too.
This has been done before. In fact, most of the stuff they’re planning for this series has already been done in various forms, especially by the Japanese. (Though I say that with the realization that the Japanese are not ones to bring up in a discussion of gender equality.)
In all truth, my hard-core gamer girlfriend plays her copies of “Cooking Mama” or “Animal Crossing” as readily as she plays “Soul Caliber III” or “Fire Emblem”. And I know guys who enjoy the milder care-taking or building type games such as “Harvest Moon” and “The Sims2″ over the shoot-em-ups like “Halo”.
I don’t find anything wrong with making games like this (and only some with marketing them specifically at girls), I think the real problem is a lack of balance. Not only is there is there no pretty pink Imagine: Corporate Lawyer, there also isn’t a boyish blue version. Games marketed at boys are as violent as games marketed at girls are full of socially approved gender norms.
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
While I don’t find anything wrong with little girls wanting to play a game that encourages nurturing, I think it is terribly sexist that you don’t have and option to make the caregiver a boy. There are boys out there that want to be dads and who love babies and want to play with babies. My seven-year-old son wanted this game and we got it for him for Easter. I was shocked that When he entered his name, and started the game, he had no option than to be a girl. A white girl at that. Would it have been that much harder to have let them pick their sex, skin color and hair color? I would rather my son play a nonviolent game like this, but I think it’s awful that our society isn’t doing everything they can to encourage our sons to grow up and be good dads!