Mindy Faber

After going to Chicago’s latest Comic-Con ago its hard not to notice the objectification of women. What some people might not think about however, is the self-objectification of women. 

Mindy shared a great article with me on the matter, from a panel presentation called “Oh, You Sexy Geek!”  The panel description: 

• Does displaying the sexiness of fangirls benefit or demean them? When geek girls show off, are they liberating themselves or pandering to men? Do some “fake fangirls” blend sex appeal with nerdiness just to appeal to the growing geek/nerd market, or is that question itself unfair? And what’s up with all the Slave Leias?

“Oh, You Sexy Geek!”: “Geek Girls” and the Problem of Self-Objectification

“…14-year-old Lexi Peters will be stick handling past men twice her size as she plays in the starting lineup for the Buffalo Sabres. Or the Vancouver Canucks. Or any NHL team the 90-pound left-winger chooses.

Because when video game publisher Electronic Arts releases the latest edition of its popular NHL series on Tuesday, Lexi will be the first female in its virtual hockey roster.”

Check out the full post at The Globe and Mail

Radio Rookies at WNYC is a youth media program that trains youth in radio journalism. This piece is done by 17 year old Jessica Cernadas and it’s awesome! Listen to it now!

Forty percent of the people who play video games in the U.S. are female, according to the industry group Entertainment Software Association. But according to 17-year-old Jessica Cernadas, the games are designed to appeal to guys. And that, she says, is very frustrating.

Team Chi-Buzz, a group of teens girls who worked under the mentorship of indie game designer, Susana Ruiz (Take Action Games) at the 3G Summit, has just entered a playable prototype of Mosquito race into the national STEM Video Game Challenge where they are competing for up to $50,000 in prizes.

Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge aims to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passions for playing and making video games.

http://www.stemchallenge.org/Default.aspx

http://www.zidware.com/welcome.html

“Mosquito Race: Inside the World of Haritha Mus-Ketas” is a resource gathering game where the main character Haritha, a pregnant mosquito, must collect blood in order to gather protein so she can grow and lay her eggs. “Mosquito Race” also challenges the player to learn scientific fact based questions about mosquitoes in order to gain lives and earn more points. Mosquito Race is in beta stage as a playable prototype on iPhone/iTouch/iPad app. Zidware will publish this game to iTunes after the contest period where it will be offered as a free app to complete the process of mobile game design.

The concept, design and art for “Mosquito Race” was created by Team Chi-Buzz, a diverse group of urban girls, aged 13-16. Led by indie game designer Susana Ruiz, the girls were part of a participatory design process that took place at the 3G Summit, held August 12-15th Columbia College, 2010. While the technical production of the game for the iPhone and iPod Touch devices has been carried out by John Popadiuk of Zidware Interactive, an indie software design company specializing in learning apps for children, the team of girls participated fully in all game play design intricacies, the composing of the game document, and the creation of all game art.

During 3G, five teams competed for prizes. Mosquito Race was awarded the Game Development Prize by Zidware Interactive, a boutique shop specializing in mobile learning apps for children.

A hard working mom mosquito that bites humans so she can lay eggs is an unlikely protagonist for a children’s learning app. Yet, Mosquito Race is a truly smart, fun and challenging game that imparts key scientific content and concepts during play. Mosquito Race goes even further by extending STEM-based learning through a simulation of eco-system thinking while embedding positive values, such as knowledge acquisition, cooperation, gender equity, and resilience into the mechanics of game play itself.

The 3G team chose to enter the STEM Video game Challenge in hopes to extend its ground-breaking work in STEM-based learning through game design labs for urban girls. Women and girls, as well as youth of color, are seldom-heard voices in the world of game design. Their goal is to game the gap by creating better and more gender inclusive games for the future.

Chi Buzz will learn if they are one of the five finalists to vie for a $50,000 Developers Award in late February.

In Summer of 2010, world renowned game designer, Tracy Fullerton served as a mentor for Team Awesome, a group of teenage girls at the 3G Summit (August 12-15^th, 2010).  The original game concept was awarded the Audience Choice Award and the IAM Faculty Award.

After Team Awesome put their brains behind Glop Ogus, the concept was passed on to the fall 2010 Interactive Arts and Media Team Class to work on bringing the idea to life. Seven seniors the class worked together to mold Glop Ogus into an actual product, and now, Glop Ogus exists as a location-aware data-driven web application. http://www.glopogus.com/

In Glop Ogus, players are encouraged to find places in their environment (e.g. the city) that could be made more beautiful by planting trees. Through the use of smart phones or computers, users can access the web application and start planting trees virtually.

The main goals of Glop Ogus are to show that individuals have power to positively impact the world around them by taking action and raising awareness about the environment.

Mosquito Race is now in beta! Here is our latest demo. Way to go Team Chi-Buzz!

Mosquito Race: Inside the World of Haritha Mus-Ketas
A Co-production of Columbia College’s Interactive Arts and Media Department, The 3G Project on the Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender and Zidware Interactive Social Media.

The original concept for Mosquito Race: Inside the World of Haritha Mus-Ketas was developed at the 2010 3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender, co-organized by Interactive Arts and Media Department and The Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in Arts & Media at Columbia College.

Team Chi Buzz: Game Designers
Jessica Bernal, Ann Marie Brown, Sarah Saks Fithian, Risé Henderson, Hollie Marcinkowski, Chanel McClay, Linda Rueda, Fernanda Tobias-Corona

John Popaduik: Game Designer, Lead Production Designer, Programmer
Susana Ruiz: Lead Game Design Mentor
Mindy Faber: 3G Director and Production Coordinator
Matthew Board: Game Artist and Associate Game Design Mentor

Steven Crump – Audio Engineer
Kyle Reden – Video Engineer
Mindy Faber – Videographer
Isabella Popadiuk – Play Tester
Emily Kuehn and Elise Motzny – 3G Facilitators

Additional educational support: Mirella Shannon, Petra Maton, Kim Richards and Pam Sloan
Special Thanks to Annette Barbier, Chair of Interactive Arts and Media and Doreen Bartoni, Dean of School of Media Arts, Columbia College

The Game

Mosquito Race is fun, challenging, scientifically educational and socially relevant. In fact, the team of girls was inspired by their own experiences in Chicago during the Summer of 2010 when an unusual combination of conditions led to a mosquito outbreak that in the end impacted their own lives. As they began their rigorous research into the life cycles of mosquitoes, the girls learned that mosquitoes have very interesting and unique gender roles. Based on this research during the 3G Summit, the girls decided to create the character of Haritha (meaning provider) to be a strong, independent and hard-working female figure, unwavering in her resolve to face danger in order to attain enough blood protein to sustain her family.

Playability

Once Haritha lays her eggs, she earns points and can advance to the next level. At this point, the game play pauses so that one of Haritha’s children can directly address the player and ask a true or false mosquito-trivia question, such as: “Both male and female mosquitoes bite people.” Answering correctly earns the player an additional life. The question is posed both in text and spoken audio form so readers of all levels can play. The game’s levels get progressively more difficult by way of lessening the time on the Swat Meter and by increasing the number of dragonflies. The trivia questions also become tougher.

Game Scenario Walkthrough

1. To begin the player touches the screen PLAY button and flies over a beach full of humans. On the lower left, a button allows the player to navigate around the screen.
When the player flies over a human leg, she/he helps Haritha bite the human by pushing the lower right BITE button.
2. A Swat Meter at the top center screen serves as a timer and adds further tension. If the player hovers Haritha by a human for too long, the volume of the buzz increases and a giant fly swatter may suddenly come out of nowhere and ugh, well you get the picture, splat the mosquito. Then Haritha would lose a life. After Haritha has gathered enough blood, the protein meter displays as full.
4. The player must now help Haritha travel though a dangerous swarm of dragonflies to get to her nest, mindful that collision with dragonflies will deplete another of Haritha’s lives. Haritha’s husband, Henry, tends the nest and helps defend Haritha from the dragonfly swarm as she is laying her eggs.
5. The player can now lay the eggs. The meter shows the blood protein levels convert to number of eggs laid (300,000). A victory screen lights up and Haritha tells the player Good Job!

Screenshots

Splash screens load (fades). Title screen loads then fades to MAIN MENU

MAIN MENU includes (Play, My Story, My World, Study Up) + small info button(s)

PLAY goes to BEACH where you select a human….then to main gameplay. BEACH screen goes to a level for play (can be infinite)

MY WORLD – is user screen with scores and game tidbits such as “How to Play” and Scores

STUDY UP – mosquito lab with science facts (includes animation of girl in a lab coat)

Team Chi Buzz is responsible for the design and creation of Mosquito Race.

Youth Members

My name is AnnMarie Brown I’m 16 years old and a junior at Evanston Township High School. The activities I enjoy are gaming, art, and basketball. I aspire to be an architectural engineer in my future. I have had a lot of fun learning the process it takes to design a game and am happy with how much I have learned through this gaming experience.

My name is Jessica Bernal age 15 and I’m a sophomore at Farragut Career Academy in Chicago Illinois. I’m into a few things they include listening to punk rock and ska, writing short stories or full length ones, going to concerts, dancing a type of style called skank. I love to play video games if they are good and addicting like fighting games or RPG’s stuff like that. I was also involved in the same program three times to do some video productions. The best one by the name of “Ten ways to survive a horror movie.”  Well that’s all i have to say about myself.

My name is Rise’ Henderson I’m 17 years old and a junior at Evanston Township. The activities I like to enjoy are track, animation cartoons, playing video games, and entertain my fellow peers. When I grow up I want to be a physical therapist for the Chicago Bulls. I have achieved a lot in my life but the most interesting achievement is making a game to be entered in a contest for the country with other game developers. I love meeting new people and explore the city of Chicago.

My name is Hollie Rose Marcinkowski,I am 15 years old. I am a sophomore at Farragut Career Academy in Chicago, Illinois. Some of my interests include listening to Punk rock, Ska, and Rockabilly music, i like going to shows (concerts), i am trying to accomplish skateboarding, i like playing video games like racing, fighting, adventure, or RPG games. I am involved in an After School Matters program at Farragut Career Academy the program that i am in is Digital Video Production and so far me and my group accomplished Three videos with a length of about 10 minutes give or take, they are pretty cool. Yep well that’s pretty much me.

Reflections from other Team Members

Chanel McClay –

Fernanda Tobias-Corona – “my team, team chibuzz worked on an idea that everyone could relate to in the summer. our game idea was related to the works of mosquito’s where they go, where they live, and who does all the biting. significantly enough the female mosquito does all of the biting to take cater to her eggs while the male mosquito stays home with the babies.I am very proud of encouraging the idea of having the male mosquito stay home with baby mosquito’s and cleaning the nest in the game to show how females can dominate. my favorite thing about the 3g summit was meeting all the girls and making new and better friends. I learned that many mosquitoes are very attracted to water and sunlight.

Sarah Saks-Fithian - I am proud of the ideas I contributed to my team, and my drawings that i worked on in Photoshop. Some of my favorite things about the 3G Summit were learning how to use new software, coming up wit our own game ideas, and playing some really cool games.

Linda Ruiz – I am most proud of the that i draw a perfect cartoon character on the computer. The thing about 3G that I enjoy the most is that making our own avatar and knowing each other.

Adult Members

Susana Ruiz – Game Design Mentor

Susana is a media artist and scholar working in the intersections between art, journalism, game design and documentary. Susana served as the lead game design mentor for a group of girls that designed Mosquito Race at the 3G Summit held in Chicago in August 2010. She continues to act as their Team Leader on the Mosquito Race game development project. Susana lead the development of the multiple award-winning “Darfur is Dying,” a pioneering game for social change which received critical acclaim and helped garner the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ prestigious Governors Award. The game was said to be one of the best representations of life in Darfur by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, and was presented in Capitol Hill to members of Congress. Her follow up project in collaboration with the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children – “RePlay: Finding Zoe” – addresses gender stereotyping and teen dating abuse, and won the Ashoka Changemakers and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s global competition “Why Games Matter: A Prescription for Improving Health and Health Care,” and the Adobe 2009 MAX Award for Social Responsibility. Susana has presented at numerous media festivals and academic conferences and has been interviewed by news venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, CNN, and ABC. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and an MFA from the University of Southern California. She is co-founder of the game design collective Take Action Games, a member of the Games for Change Advisory Board, and a current doctoral student at USC focused on the areas of design and social justice, digital media and learning, and games and art practice

Mindy Faber – Director of 3G Project on the Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender

Mindy  is a George W. Foster Peabody winning video artist and the founder of Open Youth Networks, a program of Interactive Arts and Media at Columbia College in Chicago. Open Youth Networks trains youth to use emergent technologies, games and social media for education and change. Faber’s innovative technology curriculum emphasizing participatory learning has earned her invitations to speak at many national conferences and publish in various journals. During the 2011 Digital Media and Learning Conference in Long Beach, Faber will present her current initiative – The 3G Project on Girls, Gaming and Gender, of which Mosquito Race is a part. Faber has an MFA in Time-Based Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and taught new media and technology at Evanston Township High School before coming to Columbia College. She also serves as the Coordinator of the Chicago Youth Voices Network, a coalition of youth media education organizations.

John Popadiuk – Lead Game Producer

John is currently the VP of Product Development for Zidware Studios in Chicago. Zidware is a small indie studio currently working on digital projects for the iPhone and Nintendo DSi game systems. He has been an active game designer and developer in the US, creating engaging content for partners including: Disney, Midway Games, Bally Entertainment, Atari, Zizzle, Cartoon Network, Apple Computer, WMS Games, and Nick Jr. – Zidware’s current focus, with the Nanoschool Brand is on kids educational apps that touch on merging classic game mechanics (like Asteroids) and typical learning themes (math). “Matheroids” is a good example
Zidware works hard to avoid perpetuating  mainstream gender based stereotypes.

As a game designer, Popadiuk has authored or contributed to many game titles for a range of platforms. Titles include: “Theatre of Magic, Star Wars Episode 1 Pinball, Cirqus Voltaire, World Cup Soccer, Tales of the Arabian Nights and many more. Some of his writings, illustrations and documented work have made it’s way into Wired Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Java, GamerBlips, BusinessWeek, Core77, Google, Gamasutra, Flipper Italia, NY Times, and other notable blogs and popular news sites. John holds many patents for design and engineering related to game development or unique device systems, controllers and interface elements. He studied in the Product Design BFA program at Columbia College Chicago, one of the nation’s largest media arts university, where he currently teaches toy and game design.

Matt Board (mattboard.com) – Game Artist

Matt Board is an independent game and digital artist specializing in 3D modeling and game art. Matt teaches courses in Digital Sculpting, Rapid Prototyping, Game Development, Texture Painting, Rigging, Serious Games, and Mobile Games in the Game Design program at Columbia College’s Interactive Arts and Media Department. Matt has a BFA from Northern Kentucky University and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including exhibits at Cal State Long Beach, The Hungarian Multi-Cultural Center, Around the Coyote, Chicago and The Gnomon School of Visual Effects. His work is archved in the Rhizome ARTbase. On the industry side Matt has performed work for Hasbro, Vermont Digital Arts, Great Eastern Technology and GT Productions.

The concept for Mosquito Race was developed at the “3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender”,  presented by the Interactive Arts and Media Department and the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media, at Columbia College Chicago. Major support was provided by McCormick Foundation, Chicago Foundation for Women, Illinois Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois General Assembly, and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. Additional sponsors include: Resolution Digital Studios; Show Department; Pearson Publishing; the Leadership Donors of the Ellen Stone Belic Institute; Columbia College Chicago’s Admissions Office, Critical Encounters: Image + Implication, School of Media Arts and Television Department; the Busy Beaver Company; Entertainment Consumers Association; Gaming Angels; International Game Developers Association; Her Interactive; and Wideload Games/Disney Interactive.