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從1992年起,我為一間叫做Interval Research的公司工作。當時公司正處於創始階段,由David Lidell 和 Paul Allen 所創立,是一個位於矽谷的盈利性研究企業。我與David見面,談談我在他的公司可以做些什麼。我才剛經歷失敗的虛擬實境業務,並以巡迴演講和寫書維持生活。經歷20多年的電腦遊戲產業生涯,擁有人們不認為能夠銷售的點子。
David和我都發現,我們有一個共同的疑問,且真心希望能得到答案。那就是,為什麼沒有人為小女孩們製作電腦遊戲呢?為什麼會這樣呢?這並不是一個性別歧視的大陰謀,這些人還沒有這麼聰明。60億美元就在眼前,如果他們搞清楚該怎麼做就能到手。那麽到底是怎麽回事呢?
當我們想著我們的目標,我想 Interval公司實在算得上是一個人文機構。,在傳統意義上,人文主義最好的部份就是找到明確的實證研究辦法,以結合一種核心價值,即對人的基本尊重與愛。人文主義的基本思想,是要能增進生活品質。我們可以做善事,那是值得做的事情,因為那是可以實行的好事。這些明確的經驗可以幫助我們弄清楚該如何做這些事。因此,與一般看法相反,在經驗主義和價值觀間並沒有利益衝突,Interval Research公司就是個活生生的,讓這一切成真的例子。因此David和我决定把它找出來,藉由我們所能掌握的最好研究如何讓一個小女孩,將她的雙手放在電腦上,並達到舒適和方便運用的技術程度。就像那些小男孩因為玩影音遊戲而學會的技術。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
Back in 1992, I started working for a company called Interval Research, which was just then being founded by David Lidell and Paul Allen as a for-profit research enterprise in Silicon Valley.
I met with David to talk about what I might do in his company. I was just coming out of a failed virtual reality business and supporting my self by being on the speaking circuit and writing books after 20 years or so in the computer game industry having ideas that people didn't think they could sell.
And David and I discovered that we had a question in common, that we really wanted the answer to, and that was, "Why hasn't anybody built any computer games for little girls?" Why is that? It can't just be a giant sexist conspiracy. These people aren't that smart. There's six billion dollars on the table. They would go for it if they could figure out how.
So, what is the deal here? And as we thought about our goals -- I should say that Interval is really a humanistic institution in the classical sense that humanism, at its best, finds a way to combine clear-eyed empirical research with a set of core values that fundamentally love and respect people. The basic idea of humanism is the improvable quality of life, that we can do good things, that there are things worth doing because they're good things to do and that clear-eyed empiricism can help us figure out how to do them.
So, contrary to popular belief, there is not a conflict of interest between empiricism and values. And Interval Research is kind of the living example of how that can be true. So David and I decided to go find out, through the best research we could muster, what it would take to get a little girl to put her hands on a computer. to achieve the level of comfort and ease with the technology that little boys have because they play video games.
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我們花了兩年半的時間進行研究,我們又花了一年半使它更精進,然後成了分公司。該計畫在Interval公司的研究階段時,我們和Cheskin Research公司以及Davis Masten和Christopher Ireland等人合作,他們完全改變了我對市場調查的想法,以及它可能發生的情況。他們教我如何觀察和思考,他們不會做這種不可思議的蠢事,對孩子說:“這些我們都已經替你做好了,你最喜歡哪一個?”這樣不會得到任何有用的答覆因此,我們在最初兩年半時間所做的是四件事:我們做了廣泛的文獻審查,在認知心理學等相關領域,空間認知、性別研究,遊戲理論、社會學和靈長類動物學。感謝Franz Duvall,無論你現在身處何方,我愛你,只要能再見到你,我願付出一切。在我們和一大團人一起做了這些後,並發現了我們認爲最重要的問題就是女孩、男孩及游戲。因為,畢竟這就是這一切的主題。
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We spent two and a half years conducting research; we spent another year and a half in advance development. Then we formed a spin-off company. And the research phase of the project at Interval, we partnered with a company called Cheskin Research, and these people, Davis Masten and Christopher Ireland, changed my mind entirely about what market research was, and what it could be. They taught me how to look and see, and they did not do the incredibly stupid thing of saying to a child, "Of all these things we already make you, which do you like best?" which gives you zero answer that's usable.
So, what we did for the first two and a half years was four things: We did an extensive review of the literature in related fields like cognitive psychology, spacial cognition, gender studies, play theory, sociology, primatology -- thank you Franz Duvall, wherever you are, I love you and I'd give anything to meet you.
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我們轉移到第二階段的工作。我們采訪了成人專家,在學術界出版相關文學作品的一些人。同時我們也著重於那些每天與孩子實際相處的人們,如游樂場主管,跟他們聊聊。確認一些假設,確定了一些關於性別差异和游戲的嚴重問題。然後做了些我認爲是核心的工作:採訪1100位遍布美國 7至12歲的男孩和女孩,除了矽谷、波士頓和奧斯汀以外。因爲我們知道這些地方的小家庭中,有上百萬部電腦,不會是一個具代表性的樣本。在這些與全美國孩子及他們最好的朋友指標性的談話後,兩年後,我們收集一些從其他10,000名兒童得來的調查數據,建立了我們認爲是研究結果的關鍵。再花一年時間把它們變成啟發式設計,以設計電腦相關產品。事實上,是每一種為8至12歲小女孩設計的產品。我們花時間設計互動式電腦軟體原型,讓小女孩做測試。
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After we had done that with a pretty large team of people and discovered what we thought the salient issues were with girls and boys and playing -- because, after all, that's really what this is about -- we moved to the second phase of our work, where we interviewed adult experts in academia, some of the people who'd produced the literature that we found relevant. and also we did focus groups with people who were on the ground with kids every day like playground supervisors, talked to them, confirmed some hypotheses, identified some serious questions about gender difference and play.
Then we did what I consider to be the heart of the work -- interviewed 1,100 children, boys and girls, ages seven to 12, all over the United States, except for Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin because we knew that their little families would have millions of computers in them and they wouldn't be a representative sample.
And at the end of those remarkable conversations with kids and their best friends across the United States, after two years, we pulled together some survey data from another 10,000 children drew up a set up of what we thought were the key findings of our research and spent another year transforming them into design heuristics, for designing computer-based products and in fact, any kind of products for little girls, ages eight to 12. And we spent that time designing interactive prototypes for computer software and testing them with little girls.
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1996年11月,我們成立了紫月亮公司,這是Interval Research的子公司。我們的主要投資者是Interval Research、Vulcan Northwest Institutional Venture Partner及Allen and Company。我們在9月2日發布了網站,目前已儲存2500萬個頁面,並有42,000名年輕女孩用戶註冊。他們每天平均造訪這個網站一次半,每次平均花費35分鐘,瀏覽50個頁面。我們覺得已經建立了一個成功的女孩綫上社群。
我們在10月推出了兩項主題。第一個系列是Rockett的新學校,開始她第一天的學校生活。關於一個叫做Rockett的人物角色,在一個全新的地方當八年級學生,擁有全新的生活,這讓女孩們可以參與一些問題,例如:像當我大一點時會是什麽模樣?在高中或初中會有怎樣的生活?誰會是我的朋友?體驗社會複雜的愛,和敘事的智慧驅動她們大部分的遊戲行為,並嵌入了我們有許多選擇的價值觀。在生活和自我管理的方式中,我們推出的另一個主題叫做「森林中的秘密路徑」。這描述更多女孩內心生活的幻想世界,這兩個主題12月都曾出現在排名前50的PC娛樂遊戲資料庫之中。資料庫中的「約翰‧梅登足球」差點把我嚇死。所以我們的確已經觸動了幾十萬小女孩的心。至今,我們得到了5億人的目光,藉由行銷和推廣紫月亮這個品牌。其中的百分之96左右表示肯定,百分之四有其他觀感。
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In 1996, in November, we formed the company Purple Moon which was a spinoff of Interval Research, and our chief investors were Interval Research, Vulcan Northwest, Institutional Venture Partners and Allen and Company.
We launched a website on September 2nd, that has now served 25 million pages, and has 42,000 registered young girl users who spend an average of -- they visit an average of one and a half times a day, spend an average of 35 minutes a visit, and look at 50 pages a visit. So we feel that we've formed a successful online community with girls.
We launched two titles in October -- "Rockett's New School," which is the first of a series of products about a character called Rockett beginning her first day of school in eighth grade at a brand new place, with a blank slate, which allows girls to play with the question of "What will I be like when I'm older?" "What's it going to be like to be in high school or junior high school?" "Who are my friends?" to exercise the love of social complexity and the narrative intelligence that drives most of their play behavior, and which embeds in it values about noticing that we have lots of choices in our lives and the ways that we conduct ourselves.
The other title that we launched is called "Secret Paths in the Forest," that addresses the more fantasy-oriented, inner lives of girls These two titles both showed up in the top 50 entertainment titles in PC Data -- entertainment titles in PC Data, in December, right up there with "John Madden Football," which thrills me to death. So, we're real, and we've touched several hundreds of thousands of little girls. Now then, we've made half a billion impressions with marketing and PR for this brand, Purple Moon. 96 percent of them roughly, have been positive, four percent of them have been other. I want to talk about the other, because the politics of this enterprise, in a way, have been the most fascinating part of it, for me.
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我想談這些其他觀感,因爲這個企業政策,就某方面而言,對我來說一直是最吸引人的部分。我們確實得到兩種負面評價,一類評論家爲男性玩家,認爲他知道游戲該是什麽模樣,而不會讓小女孩玩這個產品。另一類評論家有一定的女權主義意味,認為他們知道小女孩應該做什麼。好玩的是,我認為這些有趣、但總是意見相左的人們,至少還有一項共同點。他們不傾聽小女孩的內心,他們從不正視孩子,而且他們肯定沒有對孩子表現出任何的愛。我讓你們聽聽小女孩的聲音,從我們從事了兩年半的研究中而來,其實一些聲音還是最近錄製的。這些聲音將伴隨著來自我們生活中的照片,那些他們珍惜和關心的事情,這些照片是女孩子們彼此從沒見過的,但她們給了我們。這些是那些評論者不瞭解、也不會傾聽的東西。這是種我會向想要做人文工作者推薦的研究。
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There are really two kinds of negative reviews that we've received. One kind of reviewer is a male gamer who thinks he knows what games ought to be, and won't show the product to little girls. The other kind of reviewer is a certain flavor of feminist who thinks they know what little girls ought to be. And so it's funny to me that these interesting, odd bedfellows have one thing in common. They don't listen to little girls. They haven't looked at children and they're certainly not demonstrating any love for them. I'd like to play you some voices of little girls from the two and a half years of research that we did -- actually some of the voices are more recent. And these voices will be accompanied by photographs that they took for us of their lives , of the things that they value and care about. These are pictures the girls themselves never saw, but they gave to us This is the stuff those reviewers don't know about and aren't listening to and this is the kind of research I recommend to you, who want to do humanistic work.
Video: Girl 1: Yeah, my character is usually a tomboy Her's is more into boys.
Girl 2: Uh, yeah.
Girl 1: We have -- in the very beginning of the whole game always we do this We each have a piece of paper, we write down our name, our age, are we rich, very rich, not rich, poor, medium, wealthy, boyfriends, dogs, pets -- what else -- sisters, brothers, and all those.
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女孩1:是的,我的性格通常較像男生,她的個性更像男生。
女孩2:嗯,是的
女孩1:在整場遊戲開始時我們通常這樣做。我們每個人都有一張紙,我們寫下名字和年齡。我們富有嗎?非常富有、幷不富有、窮困、小康、富裕、男朋友、狗、寵物,還有其它的姐妹、兄弟及所有這一類的事。
女孩2:或是離婚、父母離異之類的。
女孩3:這是我假裝[不清楚] 的一個角色。
女孩4:我們在電腦上編了一份校報。
女孩5:一個女孩遊戲通常會有很漂亮的風景,有雲和花朵。如果你是女孩,而你真的喜歡冒險或真的很男孩子氣,你會覺得這個女孩游戲是有點兒娘娘腔。
女孩6:我跑步、踢足球,我打籃球,我喜歡有很多事情可做。有時我覺得我不能真正享受這些,除非它就像個假期,就像當我星期一和每一天都休息時一樣。
女孩7:嗯有時候很多的事物在進行。因爲我有音樂課,而且我是游泳代表隊的一員,而我必須做的這一切不同的東西,有時事情真是多到不行。我的朋友Justine帶走了我的朋友 Kelly,現在他們對我很不友善。
女孩8:嗯有時會覺得當兄弟姐妹們很煩。無論是兄弟或姐妹,當你先有個主意,而他們却模仿你,他們用你的想法,卻自顧自做。
女孩9:因為我姐姐,她總是得到一切。就像我向媽媽要東西,她總是說不,但她什麼都給我姐姐。
Brenda Laurel:我想很快地告訴你,只要一分鐘。Rockett技巧的決定,兩天前拿下金牌,希望它真的很穩,這是Rockett生活的第二天。我向你們介紹這些的理由,是希望我將向你們顯示的場景,是你們看起來和聽起來很熟悉的。現在你們已經聽到一些女孩的聲音,你可以看到我們是如何試圖把這一些他們很在意的問題跟我們創造的游戲結合起來。
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Miko:嗨,Rockett 過來一下
Rockett:嗨,Miko 最近還好吧?
Miko:你聽說了Nakilia這個週末的萬聖節大型派對嗎?她要我確認一下你知道這回事。
Nakilia也邀請了Reuben,但是……
Rockett:但是什麼?難道他不來嗎?
Miko:我想他不會來。我聽說那晚,他的樂團會在另一個派對上表演。
Rockett:真的嗎?哪一個派對?
女孩:Max的派對會很酷,Whitney他邀請了所有最棒的人。
Brenda Laurel:我必需快轉到她做決定的片段,因為我知道我沒有很多時間。在這種糟糕的情況發生後,Rocket要想想她對這一切的感受如何。
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Rockett:他根本不會去參加那個派對,如果我想要的話,隨便哪一天我都可以得到那個派對的邀請。哎呀,我不確定我會在Max的最棒人物名單上。
Brenda Laurel:好吧,我們將讓情感來做導航。如果玩這個遊戲,那就是我們得做的任何時候,在遊戲中,如果我們希望更瞭解人物個性,我們可以進入這個隱藏的走廊。我很快就會向你顯示接口。例如:我們可以去找Miko的寄物櫃,並獲得多一些有關她的信息。哎呀,我轉錯邊了!但你得到了關於産品整體的概念。我想向你們顯示,這些方式,因為它們看來似乎無害。其中包含我們所瞭解到有關於女孩的想法。她們渴望能夠體驗更多的情感靈活性和體驗社會生活的複雜性。我想說的是,藉由這項努力,我們給予女孩們的是一種驗證,一種可見的感受,是一種他們在生活上可做選擇的感受。我們愛她們,我們看著她們,我們不是要告訴她們應該成為怎樣的人,但是,對於她們會成為怎樣的人我們真的感到非常高興。結果是她們很棒。我想讓你們看一段影片來做結束,這是一個Rockett 系列未來的游戲版本。我們的圖像藝術家和設計師集合起來,我們想這將能夠取悅那百分之四的評論者。
Rockett28
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Rockett:你知道,這就好像我才剛起床
Brenda Laurel:謝謝
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Video: Girl 1: Yeah, my character is usually a tomboy Her's is more into boys.
Girl 2: Uh, yeah.
Girl 1: We have -- in the very beginning of the whole game always we do this We each have a piece of paper, we write down our name, our age, are we rich, very rich, not rich, poor, medium, wealthy, boyfriends, dogs, pets -- what else -- sisters, brothers, and all those.
Girl 2: Divorced -- parents divorced, maybe.
Girl 3: This is my pretend [unclear] one.
Girl 4: We make a school newspaper on the computer.
Girl 5: For a girl's game also usually they'll have really pretty scenery with clouds and flowers. Like, if you were a girl and you were really adventurous and a real big tomboy you would think that girls' games were kinda sissy.
Girl 6: I run track, I played soccer, I play basketball, and I love a lot of things to do. And sometimes I feel like I can't really enjoy myself unless it's like a vacation, like when I get Mondays and all those days off.
Girl 7: Well, sometimes there is a lot of stuff going on because I have music lessons and I'm on swim team and all this different stuff that I have to do, and sometimes it gets overwhelming. My friend Justine kinda took my friend Kelly, and now they're being mean to me.
Girl 8: Well, sometimes it gets annoying when you brothers and sisters, or brother or sister, when they copy you and you get your idea first and they take your idea and they do it themselves.
Girl 9: Because my older sister, she gets everything and, like when I ask my mom for something she'll say, "No," all the time. But she gives my sister everything.
Brenda Laurel: I want to show you, real quickly, just a minute of "Rockett's Tricky Decision," which went gold two days ago. Let's hope it's really stable. This is the second day in Rockett's life, and the reason I'm showing you this is I'm hoping that the scene that I'm going to show you will look familiar and sound familiar, now that you've listened to some girls' voices. And you can see how we've tried to incorporate the issues that matter to them in the game that we've created.
Video: Miko: Hey Rockett! C'mere!
Rockett: Hi Miko! What's going on?
Miko: Did you hear about Nakilia's big Halloween party this weekend? She asked me to make sure you knew about it. Nakilia invited Reuben too, but
Rockett: But what? Isn't he coming?
Miko: I don't think so. I mean, I heard his band is playing at another party the same night.
Rockett: Really? What other party?
Girl: Max's party is going to be so cool, Whitney. He's invited all the best people.
BL: I'm going to fast-forward to the decision point because I know I don't have a lot of time. After this awful event occurs, Rocket gets to decide how she feels about it.
Video: Rockett: Who'd want to show up at that party anyway? I could get invited to that party any day if I wanted to. Gee, I doubt I'll make Max's best people list.
BL: OK, so we're going to emotionally navigate, if we were playing the game that's what we'd do. If, at any time, during the game we want to learn more about the characters we can go into this hidden hallway, and I'll quickly just show you the interface. We can, for example, go find Miko's locker and get some more information about her. Oops, I turned the wrong way. But you get the general idea of the product.
I wanted to show you the ways, innocuous as they seem, in which we're incorporating what we've learned about girls -- their desires to experience greater emotional flexibility, and to play around with the social complexity of their lives I want to make the point that what we're giving girls, I think, through this effort, is a kind of validation, a sense of being seen. And a sense of the choices that are available in their lives. We love them. We see them. We're not trying to tell them who they ought to be. But, we're really, really happy about who they are. It turns out they're really great.
I want to close by showing you a videotape that's a version of a future game in the Rockett series that our graphic artists and design people put together, that we feel would please that four percent of reviewers. "Rockett 28"
Video: Rockett: It's like I'm just waking up, you know
BL: Thanks.