Project 2: Stereotype Experiment

IE179: Gender and Computer Games
Spring 2008




Overview

Today's games are rife with gender stereotype. There has been considerable work exploring how these stereotypes affect players' satisfaction with games; see for example Taylor. On the other, the effects of stereotypes on performance has been well studied in other areas; see for example Dobbs. In this project you'll bridge these works by exploring how gender stereotypes in games affect performance in gaming.

Objectives

You and your teammates will design three variants of a simple 2D arcade-style game. The first game will employ standard gender stereotypes, the second will avoid stereotypes, and the third will use positive gender typing. You will also design a study to explore how these stereotypes affect players pleasure and performance. At the end of the design phase, the class will choose one team's design to implement. The class will collaborate to develop the games and carry out the proposed study.

Project 1 Schedule

Date Assignment Due
Thu
2/21/08		 Project 2 Proposals
Tue
2/28/08 		Project Critique, Prototypes, Selection
Thu
3/6/08 		Alpha release
Thu
3/13/08 		Final games
Thu
3/27/08 		Experiments concluded
Thu
4/3/08 		Project write up and presentation

Teams

You will be part of a design team and a development team. The design team is responsible for coming up with the proposal and analyzing the results. There will be three development teams: technical, art, and project management. The technical team will develop the game technology, the art team will produce the art assets, and the project managers will coordinate development, carry out game testing, and organize the experiments.

Proposal

Your proposal should include a description of your games.
  • For each of the variants include the backstory, description of players and non-player characers, look and feel, gameplay objective, and concept art.
  • Describe the game interface, scoring, power ups, and level structure that is common to all variants.
  • Use cases: the steps the player goes through from start to finish in a typical game session.

    The proposal should also describe the experiment. How will you find players, how many do you need, how do you decide who plays which game, and what data will you collect. Be sure to take into account that many factors can affect performance but we want to isolate the effects of stereotypes in games. Note: We don't want to evoke stereotypes other than those typically found in popular games. So for example, we don't want the startup screen to say "We are testing the well-known fact that girls suck at games."

    • Final Report

    You and your design team will write a final report with your analysis of the data. Note: All data collected will be available to all teams. You will present your findings to the class.