Barbie fashion show computer game

Great games for girls: girls don't hate computers. They just don't like the games boys like

Think quick: You're face to face with the supercute jock you've had a crush on for months. If you blurt out the wrong thing, you'll blow your chances of ever dating him. What do you say?

Adults, do not be alarmed--this is not a pop quiz. It's a scene from McKenzie & Co., a new computer game targeted at adolescent girls (Her Interactive, Windows 3.1 or better CD-ROM, $49.95). The game is one of a handful--along with titles based on Barbie and The Baby-sitters Club books--lining computer stores' software shelves this season. "Handful" may sound like a slim selection, but where computer and video games for girls are concerned, it's actually a fairly generous allotment. This is a market that devotes itself almost exclusively to males, adolescent and otherwise.

While politically-correct-thinking parents might not cotton to games that feature fighting, simulated flight and lightning action, boys do. What girls might want in a computer game, however, has remained something of a mystery. Some software designers have hoped that adding female characters to games already successful with boys would do the trick. The few that have been popular with girls--primarily Tetris and Nintendo's Mario Brothers series--were accidental hits that weren't targeted at girls at all. While no one wants to be quoted as saying so, many in the gaming industry have concluded that perhaps girls don't like electronic games because they aren't good at them. But it turns out that girls just don't play that way on computers.

"I like to do a lot of different activities and to feel included in the game," says Paris Spies-Gans, an 11-year-old who lives in Pacific Palisades, Calif. "Video games get boring because you have to do the same thing over and over again." Indeed, a 1995 Rice University study on girls' preferences in entertainment software found that girls are not necessarily turned off by violence or action but by repetition. They seem to be most captivated by games that offer lots of different activities, social interaction on the screen and between players, and challenges. They tend to dislike an emphasis on intense competition. A review of the latest offerings shows that developers are delivering products designed to those specifications.

Not just sequins. Software packages aimed at girls ages 5 to 11, for example, are mainly arts-and-crafts programs designed for group activity. Based on the popular book series for preteen girls, The Baby-sitters Club Friendship Kit (Philips Media Home and Family Entertainment, Windows 3.1 or better/Macintosh CD-ROM, $39.99) invites players to join the cadre of 10- to 11-year-old baby sitters onscreen in a virtual girl's bedroom filled with stationery-making goodies. Players can design their own cards, posters and invoices for baby-sitting services rendered. Barbie Print 'n Play (Mattel Media, Windows 3.1 or better CD-ROM, $29.99) also is meant for paper-decorating parties. In Barbie Fashion Designer ($44.99), players dress the onscreen doll in various outfits, which also can be printed out as patterns from which actual clothes can be made using the fabrics, glitter glue, sequins and other materials included. The third in the Barbie series, Barbie Storymaker ($29.99), is a remarkably powerful animation package that lets kids direct their own movies (starring Barbie, of course) by adding special effects, editing frame by frame and making choices from dozens of characters, backdrops and soundtracks.

"I like [the Barbie software] because no one bosses you around or tells you what to do," says 7-year-old Nell Pierce, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif. "In video games, if you want to do something or go somewhere, they may not let you." Indeed, in none of the new games for girls will you find the restrictions common in the usual video games. Players do not have to rack up a certain number of points before moving to another level, nor do they face off against opponents. By conventional definitions, these aren't games at all: There are no rules, no clear winners and losers. And these games, unlike the single-player games targeted at boys, are designed for crowding around the computer and playing as a group.

Life lessons. Games for older girls up to age 17 or so are similar but focus on relationships with friends, parents and, naturally, boys. Let's Talk About ME! (Girl Games, Windows 3.1 or better/Macintosh, $29.99) is a multimedia handbook for girls, offering personality and health quizzes, horoscopes, lists of international girl pen pals and an "ultimate closet" filled with virtual outfits; the diary has a "panic button" that you can hit to hide personal entries when parents or siblings barge in unannounced. In McKenzie & Co., a game-cum-soap opera, girls play a character in a clique of high school girls. The object is to get a date with the perfect guy by polishing your social skills, getting the advice of your computerized friends--and staying true to yourself.

A different sexism? One frequently heard argument in favor of these games is that almost any activity that encourages girls to use computers is a good thing, since studies show that many girls lose interest in math, science and technology around ages 10 to 12. But are these games, with their emphasis on fashion and dating, just as, well, sexist as shoot-em- ups for boys?

At least some girls think so. "Maybe boys and girls prefer different games because they are taught to. I think it's the way our civilization stereotypes people," says Katy Zollars, 15, of Austin, Texas. "Guys are macho, and girls are ditzy, write in their diaries and shop all the time." She enjoys the health information, career advice and personality quizzes in Let's Talk About ME! but finds sections like the ultimate closet--and even the diary--a little condescending.

Destructive myths. "A lot of the difficulties that women have faced come from our learning hurtful stories about what it means to be female, and girls have been hurt by these myths," says Brenda Laurel, who for the past two years has been studying girls' attitudes toward technology at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Interval Research Corp., which is launching a new company--Purple Moon--devoted to the development of electronic games and other products for girls. Many of these myths encourage gender-based social conditioning: giving girls dolls to encourage them to behave like mothers, for example. But other myths, says Laurel, send false messages--for instance that boys, more than girls, enjoy constructive play, such as building structures with blocks or constructing model machines from kits. Playing house also is constructive play, explains Laurel, but it is often overlooked as such. "Designing an outfit for Barbie is actually a fairly complex mathematical problem, involving conceptualizing a 2-D model in 3-D," Laurel observes.

If the current offerings aren't exactly perfect and even occasionally fall into the look-how-cute category, girls who are familiar with them definitely prefer them over no games at all. "I would choose to play with McKenzie over other games because it's fun interacting, even if it does kind of make it seem like all girls are interested in is their looks and finding a date," explains Louanne Cabe, 14, of Staten Island, N.Y. "I would improve it by letting girls play who they really are, not some perfect character with a totally sunny life. Me? I would like a game with science and mystery and even, sometimes, violence."

GIRLS ON THE WEB

The long-male-dominated Internet is making way for girls, too. Here is a sampler of some of the sites aimed at girls. Be sure to put http://www. before every Web address.

gURL (gurl.com). Are you coping with parents, friends, school? Do you have a love/hate relationship with fashion? gURL can relate. Witty online articles and an advice column that answers E-mail questions appeal to teenagers on up.

Her Online (her-online.com). Explore your own "room," which has doorways to a virtual pizza place (to hang out with friends), a field house for sports talk and more.

GirlTech (girltech.com). Drop by "Chick Chat." Or visit one of the neatest spots in this online girls-only club, the Games Cafe, where you use a program to write wacky stories.

G.I.R.L. (worldkids.net/girl). An acronym for Girls Internationally wRiting Letters, this girl-run club connects you with key pals (online pen pals) from around the world.

Femina (femina.com). A directory and search engine mostly for women's sites. But a smart, regularly updated section is devoted to girls' sites.