This paper examines audiovisual style and play principles of successful mid-1990s games for girls titles including Barbie Fashion Designer (Mattel Media, 1996), Chop Suey (Magnet Interactive, 1995), Rockett's New School (Purple Moon, 1997), Secret Paths to the Forest (Purple Moon, 1997), and related titles. These games, developed for an audience of tween girl consumers, demonstrate a distinct style informed by the affordances of the then-emergent CD-ROM medium, by established play patterns, and by emerging research on girls’ desire for and discomfort with emerging technologies. This paper, combining methods from historical and media studies research, utilizes artifact analysis, archival research, and original and historical interviews with game developers, argues that the media-rich, multi-media design practices deployed in games for girls titles have broad utility in story-based games and for non-expert users. By using playful media cues integrated into the game's visual and narrative environment, this approach offers users subtle scaffolding, avoiding the pitfalls of overt pedagogical strategies and embedding moments of surprise and delight in sometimes unexpected places.
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Building Digital Dreamhouses: An Interview with Jesyca Durchin
In 1995, Jesyca Durchin accepted a job as a producer at Mattel Media under Nancie Martin. The then-fledgling game and software studio had fewer than a dozen employees and existed at a distance from Mattel’s more central toy business Barbie Fashion Designer (Mattel Media, 1996) was Durchin’s first major project and is widely credited with catalyzing the girls’ game and software market in the mid-1990s. However, as Durchin discusses throughout this interview, the game’s success was not as immediate or automatic as might be assumed. In the first weekend of its release, Barbie Fashion Designer sold only eleven copies; Mattel CEO Jill Barad’s enthusiasm for the project and willingness to invest in a television commercial salvaged the situation. Most companies attempting to create the games-for-girls market lacked the resources of toy giant Mattel, of course, and the reality that even Mattel nearly failed to break through speaks volumes about the level of inertia that defined the mid-1990s computer and video game market.
Over the past two decades, Durchin has worked extensively with Disney Imagineering; founded and sold her own startup, Digital Playspace; and today works as a senior producer at Warner Bros., where she is producing the company’s first AAA game featuring Wonder Woman. Her interests in storytelling, multimedia interface design, and play patterns have driven her professional trajectory and serve as useful examples of her audience-focused approach to media production. She summarizes her creative and design ethos as one of wish fulfillment, enabling players and audience members to experience the magic of making things better than they found them and using technology for creative ends. In this interview, Durchin reflects on her career, offering insights from her experiences creating games that girls love. She shares stories of early production discoveries that led to pivotal games like Barbie Fashion Designer, and she discusses the difficulties the field faced in trying to forge a more inclusive industry. Taken together, Durchin’s insights shed light on an important and often overlooked chapter of games history.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1922391
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10478312
- Publisher / Repository:
- ROMchip
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ROMchip
- ISSN:
- 2573-9794
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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