So earlier this summer Ubisoft announced its "Imagine" series, a line of games aimed at 6-14 year-old girls. Ubi said at the time the series is the product of "extensive research on this audience" and that it allows girls to explore their favorite hobbies.
Plenty of girls will surely be piqued by Ubi's Imagine lineup -- which includes Imagine Fashion Designer, Imagine Animal Doctor, and Imagine Master Chef (which I keep reading as "Imagine Master Chief," something I don't need to imagine because I see him everywhere without ever even picking up Halo 3). However, also in the lineup is Imagine Babyz, rolling out this month, and it has some eyebrows raising.
Despite my position on games as useful constructive tools and healthy experimental environments, I always think it's a bit reactionary and myopic to pretend that constant exposure to simulated electronic stimuli -- y'know, sex, violence, representations of people, war, relationships, whatever -- doesn't desensitize us, over time, if we're not careful. I wrote an Aberrant Gamer column once about how while I don't think violent games make us violent necessarily, I do feel we should take some responsiblility for maintaining a thinking stance on what we expose ourselves to, to avoid becoming too callous, too matter-of-fact about content that becomes more human, more graphic, as technology advances. I have a problem with the gamer's typical short attention span and blasé
What does that have to do with Imagine Babyz? Well, if I were a parent, I'd be a little uncomfortable at the idea of presenting babies to my children as electronic playthings. Granted, Tracey John at MTV's Multiplayer blog points out it is a babysitting simulator, not a mothering simulator -- but to send the message to kids that human babies equate to Nintendogs or Tamagotchis is kind of concerning, given the immersive nature of videogames and their ability to desensitize us, when we're not careful, to real-world emotions about what we see on a screen. To put it bluntly, I would be concerned about my daughter growing up thinking children are adorable toys and getting knocked up when she's 12.
I'm not, however, interested in skewering Ubi over pandering to stereotypes. They asked girls what they wanted to play, and this is what they got. I may be a big fan of degrading Japanese porn games, breast physics, guns, bombs, spaceships and traditional gender roles. And I wasn't into Barbies when I was a kid, I was obsessed with Altered Beast. Yeah, I know I was kind of, um, unusual. But even I, as a little girl, loved to play imagination games related to fashion, animals, medicine, cooking -- and, yes, babies. I used to haul out my World Book medical encyclopedia and read all about how to properly swaddle my stuffed animals. I was serious.
Still, while it's true that baby-raising play is part of most young girls' childhood, I can't help but be a little unsettled seeing a video game for kids focused on it -- not because I think it will teach kids that children are toys, but because I just don't trust parents today when it comes to video games.
And also, spelling it Babyz sucks. What's with that? Even if it doesn't encourage premature knockups, won't it encourage idiocy?
[UPDATE: Ian Bogost explains -- see the full detail at his blog.:
There's a history here you're missing.
Babyz was first released in 1999, created by PF Magic, the same company that did the original pet sims Dogz and Catz (collectively Petz) in 1995.
Ubisoft bought the rights to the Petz line in the late 90s, and they've been releasing a jillion titles of this sort, from Hamsterz to Horsez.
Andrew Stern, one of the creators of Babyz, went on to co-author Facade with Michael Mateas, which draws on some of the procedural animation and living creature simulation features of Babyz.
Oh, and the Z comes from the original PF Magic titles. They first created this game called Oddballz, which had these procedural ball critters, and they kept the Z around after that.]