Sad news for me today:
Girl game pioneer Purple Moon shuts down
On the front door of Purple Moon's Web site last week, a cartoon girl named Miko
exclaims, "Everyone has gone weird around here ... rumors flying, boys behaving
totally strange, band members freaking out ... GET A GRIP, people!"
The screen was, perhaps, an unwitting commentary on the sudden demise of Purple
Moon itself, the Paul Allen-backed company that proposed to lure girls to
computers by offering them software with "a high cootie factor." Brandishing
sheaves of research on girlish behavior by interface design pioneer Brenda
Laurel, Purple Moon has produced a handful of games and an online community in
the last two years -- all built around girls'
relationships and friendships. As Laurel put it in an interview in the book
"From Barbie to Mortal Kombat," the games focused on "emotional rehearsal for
social navigation."
Purple Moon announced Friday that it was shutting its doors and firing all its
employees, citing market competition. Purple Moon's signature character -- an
anxious teen named Rockett -- couldn't, it seems, hold a candle to her buxom
blond rival, Barbie. Despite the media buzz around Purple Moon, Mattel's popular
line of "Barbie software" still firmly holds 63 percent
of the "girl game" market, according to IDG.
It might be a case of good-for-you "girl-positive" earnestness falling flat on
its face in front of frivolous, mainstream fun. It's also a big blow to the girl
games pioneers -- idealistic independent entrepreneurs like Girl Games and Her
Interactive, Purple Moon and Rhinestone Publishing -- who have hoped to weave
pro-woman principles into entertainment software and
bring girls up to speed on the technological revolution to boot.
"The whole girl games movement came from an unstable alliance between people out
to make money, and therefore subject to market pressure, and people out to do
good for girls and technology," says Justine Cassell, MIT Media Lab professor
and editor of "From Barbie to Mortal Kombat." "Certainly Purple Moon were the
most successful of the nonstandard paradigms, the nontraditional startup; they
were really pushing a different kind of game ... But, who made the big inroads?
It was Mattel, and they
started out with 98 percent of the market."
Many of the independent girl game publishers have banded together in the past
both to build the category and to create a united front in their
competition against the Mattels of the world. Sadly, it seems, even independent
companies with Paul Allen's cash behind them can't compete in an increasingly
consolidated gaming industry that measures success by millions in sales. Even
one of the biggest producers of girl-positive
games -- the Learning Company -- was recently bought out by Mattel.
But as Cassell looks at it, even Purple Moon's demise isn't a total failure for
do-good girl gaming: "The biggies aren't going to forget what Purple
Moon learned, and I don't think we can go back at this point. Parents are so
aware in 1999 of the fact that what used to be called the games market is
actually the boys' games market. Neither girls nor their parents are going to
put up with boys' games in pink boxes. And that's a success story." -- Janelle
Brown
Forwarded by <kgullo@earthlink.net>
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