In yesterdays lecture Kevin showed us the game Lady Popular and although I laughed at how absurd it looked I found myself wanting to play. Let’s say for research purposes.
Once I created my character my first task was to change my hair to black pigtails and upon doing so I received 40 points. Yay! Next I must buy a piece of clothing. I buy a football top that resembles the uniform of
Then I must rent an apartment and Congratulations I have new found independence!! Life is good. But after these 3 tasks a new list comes up, and these look challenging. I’ve been invited to a party, but I have no boyfriend and obviously I would never go to a party without a hunk of spunk. “You don’t have a boyfriend at the moment! Visit the Club and go flirting, you might meet someone hot”. I certainly hope I do otherwise my task list will be incomplete.
So I hit the club and straight away I have a new boyfriend, oh if only life were this simple! Unfortunately his name is Unemployed (I hope his last name isn’t Permanently), but he gives me $50 a day so a task is completed. Awesome. After this I take another look at my profile and see I’ve been given an IQ of 60 and the “perfect weight” of 57kg. “Don’t forget the perfect weight of your lady. If she becomes too thin, or too fat this will affect her happiness”.
I looked this up and found out that “5% of people have an IQ under 70 and this is generally considered as the benchmark for "mental retardation". Ouch. But it’s possible for me to increase my intelligence by playing mini games or going to the library, phew. I was afraid my character would remain so unintelligent that if she did happen to gain a few kilos she would lack the intelligence to realise!
Upon finding this in the game I decide to stop my experience. It’s just a little too disheartening for me to see the framework of this game. Some aspects of it are pretty harmless like choosing an apartment, clothes or a job, but actually defining what the perfect weight should be is horrifying to me. There’s enough pressure from the media about how to look without a game defining what the ideal weight is. When I was creating the image of my character I was trying to get her to look as similar to me as possible, which turned out still didn’t really resemble me. But I don’t appreciate the game telling me I can choose most things about myself, but if I dare change my weight my character will be unhappy. Seriously? I think I prefer games where I get to shoot things.
Here's a quick look at the game
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