Toys, Games, and Media

Jeffrey Goldstein, David Buckingham, Gilles Brougere

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135614546
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book is a state-of-the-art look at where toys have come from and where they are likely to go in the years ahead. The focus is on the interplay between traditional toys and play, and toys and play that are mediated by or combined with digital technology. As well as covering the technical aspects of computer mediated play activities, the authors consider how technologically enhanced toys are currently used in traditional play and how they are woven into childrens' lives. The authors contrast their findings about technologically enhanced toys with knowledge of traditional toys and play. They link their studies of toys to goals in education and to entertainment and information transfer.This book will appeal to students, researchers, teachers, child care workers and more broadly the entertainment industry. It is appropriate for courses that deal with the specialized subject of toys and games, media studies, education and teacher training, and child development.

CHAPTER
1

Introduction:
Toys, Games, and Media

Jeffrey Goldstein
David Buckingham
Gilles Brougère

Toys, games, and media are merging inexorably into a seamless blend of entertainment, information, education, and play. Although traditional toys and play have not lost their appeal, technology is increasingly applied to the pursuit of pleasure. And pleasure in the form of computer-mediated activities and games is increasingly applied in the pursuit of more purposeful goals such as education in the form of “edutainment” or, more directly, as educational toys and computer games. In Toys, Games, and Media, the focus is on the interplay, so to speak, between traditional toys and play and those mediated by or combined with digital technology. The discussion considers how traditional and technologyenhanced toys are used in traditional play and in new ways of playing, and how these are woven into children’s lives. The astute reader will notice that this book is not divided neatly into independent sections labeled “toys,” “games,” and “media.” The 14 chapters in Toys, Games, and Media began as papers at a conference with this theme in August 2002. The meeting was jointly organized by the International Toy Research Association (www.he.se/ide/ncfl/ITRA.html) and the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth, and Media at the University of London Institute of Education (www.ccsonline.org.uk/mediacentre/home.html). More than 150 delegates from nearly 30 countries participated in the London conference. The editors invited a dozen contributors to elaborate and update their conference papers for this book. The contributors include long-established scholars as well as young scientists and educators from Europe and North America. Their disciplines involved communications and media studies, education, history, psychology, and sociology. The result is a look at the past, present, and near future of toys, games, and play based on cutting-edge research, sometimes with prototype and new hybrid toys.

UNDERSTANDING CONVERGENCE

This book, based on the aforementioned conference, reflects the increasing convergence of toys, games, and media, both in the commercial marketplace and in children’s daily lives. This convergence of media—print, television, film, computer games, toys, and collectibles—occurs almost seamlessly. This development is far from new. A look back to the early days of Disney will show instances of how movies were used as an opportunity for merchandising toys and other commodities, particularly, though by no means exclusively, to children. Even in the early days of television, children’s programming generated spin-offs, and shows that now are recollected with sentimental nostalgia (e.g., BBC’s Muffin the Mule and Sooty from the 1950s) were money-spinning franchises in their day. As this latter example suggests, and as the subsequent success of Sesame Street confirms, “educational” media produced by public service broadcasters can prove just as profitable in this respect as the apparently more “exploitative” productions of commercial companies. Indeed, in the past few years, public service productions such as Barney and Teletubbies have been among the most profitable media phenomena, not the least in terms of global toy merchandising.

Toys, games, and media today are increasingly enmeshed in webs of “integrated marketing,” which depend on what marketers call the “synergy” between different types of products. Books, movies, and TV shows are tied in with games (not just computer games, but also more traditional games such as cards and board games) and with toys of many kinds, ranging from the plastic models contained in fast-food “happy meals” to the more elaborate and expensive interactive toys considered in the third section of this book.

Play is not always media driven. Harry Potter famously began life in a book—indeed in one with a very short print run. Pokemon started out as a computer game. The Ninja Turtles first appeared in an obscure alternative comic, whereas it appears that Beyblades began as a toy. Yet the companies responsible for these properties were quick to capitalize on their success by translating them to other media.

In the world of media, merchandising is no longer an afterthought or a lucky accident, but an integral part of the commercial strategy. In cultural terms, this has ambiguous consequences. Children’s culture is now highly intertextual: Every “text” (including commodities such as toys) effectively draws upon and feeds into every other text. When children play with Pokemon cards or toys, for example, they draw on knowledge and expertise they have derived from watching the TV shows and movies, or from playing the computer games: Each play event is part of a broader flow of events that crosses from one medium or “platform” to another. This is play that involves an energetic form of activity (children who want to succeed in the game), or in the broader peer-group culture that surrounds it, there must be energetic seekers of information, honing their skills in a disciplined way and working flexibly across different media and modes of communication.

THE MEANINGS OF ACTIVITY

Many critics argue that children are no longer able to engage in authentic, spontaneous play, that the narratives, symbols, and scenarios of their play have been taken over by the media, depriving children of the opportunity to develop their imagination and autonomy. Yet much research, including many of the studies contained in this book, suggests that children are far from being the passive victims proposed by this kind of pessimistic critique. In their play, children actively appropriate cultural commodities, making their own discriminations and judgments, while combining and reworking them in myriad ways. Contemporary children’s culture depends not on passive consumption, but on the energetic activity of the child.

This also is a process of learning. Participating in recreational activities and joining game-playing communities means developing the necessary know-how for legitimate participation. To participate, an individual must be ready to learn. Contemporary play objects are, by the virtue of their electronic functions and affordances, vessels of knowledge. It is not surprising that many practices involving these objects arise out of exploration and discovery, heuristic activities par excellence. Discovering an object and its uses, learning the means by which to communicate with others via this object, sharing in and eventually collectively creating new meanings around this object, such is the implicit curriculum of the overall toy culture, of those recreational objects that, beyond the standard toy, include the video game console and the computer.

Yet there also are limits to activity. It may be a mistake to equate activity with agency, or with genuine control or power on the part of the user. Users who are more active may simply be more open to exploitation, as Ellen Seiter’s contribution to this volume suggests. Furthermore, the seductive rhetoric of “interactivity” should be considered with caution. There are striking continuities between “interactive” computer games and the board games that preceded them, not just in their thematic concerns, but also in the ways by which they seek to engage the player, as well as in the rewards and pleasures they offer. In both cases, much of the activity derives from the social context of play. On the other hand, much of the “interactivity” of contemporary media is little more than superficial or tokenistic—a matter of e-mailing in the answers to a TV quiz, clicking away at the interface of a Web site or an educational CD-ROM, or prompting the limited repertoire of a talking doll.

Nevertheless, a look across the contemporary media landscape, not just for children, but also for adults, strikingly shows how the metaphor of play has become central to a range of genres. For example, the new hybrids of game shows and documentaries represented by “makeover” shows and “reality” programs can be identified, as well as the use of TV-linked Web sites in shows such as Big Brother or in more overtly gamelike programs such as Fightbox. For some critics, this merely indicates the terminal “infantilization” of adult culture, whereas others are inclined to celebrate its irreverent, and perhaps even subversive, appeal.

The contributions collected together in this volume cast an interesting light on these issues, and offer a range of contrasting perspectives. For example, the chapters by Grugeon (From Pokemon to Potter), AlberoAndres (The Internet and Adolescents), and Seiter (The Internet Playground) provide evidence of the aforementioned activity, although as Seiter and also Kline (Learners, Spectators, or Gamers?) imply, there are limits on the extent of children’s “literacy” or competence when it comes to new media. Seiter, along with Powers (The Revival of the English Toy Theater, 1945–2001), Hartmann and Brougere (Toy Culture in Preschool Education and Children’s Toy Preferences), Wegener-Spöhring (War Toys in the World of Fourth Graders: 1985 and 2002), and Fabregat, Costa, and Romero (Adaptation of Traditional Toys and Games to New Technologies), also makes the vital point that children’s engagement with toys, games, and media needs to be understood in the social and interpersonal contexts wherein they are situated.

AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

The chapters in this volume are arranged according to three themes: toy culture, children and digital media, and the influence of technology on play. In part 1, the changing nature of contemporary children’s culture is considered. Although new media and developments in information technology have influenced the play, toys, and games of children and adults, traditional forms of play and traditional play objects have not been replaced, even if they have been merged and reshaped.

Because this volume aims to present a dynamic picture of the changing nature of toys, games and media, several chapters deal with comparisons across time (Powers, English toy theater, 1945–2001; Wegener-Spöhring, war toys in 1985 and 2002; Grugeon, media-related play, 2000–2003) and place (Hartmann and Brougere, Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Sweden; Yano, Japan).

Powers considers the evolution of the English toy theater, tracing how it appears to have survived despite commercial pressures by adapting its contents to changing cultural enthusiasms. The toy theater can be seen as an example of an “interactive” toy that long predates the advent of digital technology. It shows how some themes of children’s play persist despite historical change.

Hartmann and Brougere, along with colleagues in Australia, Brazil, and Sweden, conducted surveys over a 10-year period to determine the toys available to preschool children in home, preschool, and day-care (crèche) settings. Two opposing toy cultures emerge: preschool toy culture and the more “child-centered” family toy culture. The ensuing tension between adult objectives and child interests is the source of the recreation versus education dilemma.

Yano (Japanese Cute at Home and Abroad) shows that the integrated, multimedia approach described as symptomatic of children’s culture also is reflected in adult “toys.” As she suggests, the Japanese notion of kawaii (or “cute”) embodies some of the tensions that surround contemporary conceptions of childhood, but it also is inflected in diverse and sometimes unexpected ways when exported to a global market.

School recess represents an essential area for marketing as well as for criticism and reconstitution of child culture—a place where Harry Potter hangs with Pokémon. In this influential space, conformity and change, tradition and innovation, and acceptance and rejection of the contemporary are found side-by-side. Elizabeth Grugeon asked trainee primary school teachers to observe school breaks on the playgrounds. They recorded jokes, games, and narrative play in an effort to discover the influence of the media. In 2000, Pokemon, Beanie Babies, Game Boys, and the lore of football and wrestling were frowned upon by teachers and banned from classrooms, but enthusiastically welcomed by children on the playground. A year later, the playground repertoire had been extended by text-messaging and Harry Potter. Children incorporate and adapt a variety of media crazes into their narrative play.

These chapters suggest that the boundaries between toys, games, and media are blurring. So perhaps are other boundaries, namely, those between education and entertainment, as observed by Kline (Learners, Spectators, or Gamers?) and Linderoth, Lindstrom, and Alexandersson (Learning With Computer Games); between home and school, as observed by Hartmann and Brougere; between the commercial and the public sector; and perhaps also, as Yano’s contribution implies, between adults and children themselves.

Part 2 presents four studies investigating children’s uses of digital media from the United States (Ellen Seiter), Canada (Stephen Kline), Spain (Magdalena Albero-Andres), and Sweden (Jonas Linderoth, Berner Lindstrom, and Mikael Alexandersson). These chapters are a rich source of information on how and how often children used computers, the Internet, video games, and mobile telephones in 2002.

Seiter considers how children use the Internet to play. How do games on the Web compare with more traditional forms of children’s play? How do issues of access and social communication differ between computers and playgrounds? The findings presented in this chapter are based on a 3-year study of a California after-school computer laboratory for children ages 8 to 11 years. Seiter shows that, whereas the children were very aware of the commercial motivations of other media, they were significantly less attuned to the ways in which advertising, sponsorship, and market research functioned in relation to the Internet.

The chapters by Stephen Kline and Magdalena Albero-Andres paint a complex cultural portrait of interactive media and video games. They contrast the utopian visions built around multimedia as described by Negroponte (1995), Rushkoff (1996), and others, with the commercial, social, and educational realities of today’s media diet.

Magdalena Albero-Andres presents the results of a study that investigated how children use the Internet to communicate, play, and learn. Interviews and observation of children ages 12 to 14 years in the city of Barcelona examine how family, peer group, children’s culture, urban context, and previous media experience shape the use of the Internet. The results show a natural integration of the Internet into the classic elements of children’s culture, and a self-learning process for the acquisition of skills in the use of the Internet itself. Children tended to use the Internet as a source of information only when completing school assignments. Albero-Andres identifies gaps between school proposals for the use of the Internet and the interests, motivations, and knowledge of children using the Web.

Kline explores the impact of interactive media from the vantage point of media theory by tracing how the hybrid between computers and television has changed Canadian children’s media preferences and use patterns in the home. Kline characterizes the broad patterns of adolescent media use, their genre preferences, and their stated motives for using different media.

Linderoth, Lindstrom and Alexandersson offer a more sanguine view of new media than Kline, presenting an analysis of video recordings of children ages 6 to 11 playing different computer games in different settings. When children do not have the necessary resources, such as prior experience, for making sense of the represented phenomena, the content of the game stays on a virtual level, and representations obtain their meanings only from the function they have in the game context. These authors describe the implications of games in educational settings, for instance, the educator’s need to offer the proper resources to support the learning process. This also has consequences for designers of educational games, who can use different game elements to support or undermine the child’s understanding of content.

In part 3, the focus is on how technological developments influence children’s play. “Smart toys,” those that contain microchips or interface with computers, are investigated in four chapters.

Most toy and game design and development have focused on visuals, audio, and electronics. There is little evidence of “haptic” (touch) design. Mark Allen (Tangible Interfaces in “Smart Toys”) observes that the sense of touch and its ability to produce pleasure have been overlooked. Allen observed a group of 20 children ages 5 to 9 years who were given toys with varying degrees of electronic interactivity. Video evidence was combined with structured interviews involving 14 of the children and their teacher. A disparity was found between the child’s favorite toy and the one the child found most haptically stimulating. The children did not discover the full functionality of the toys.

Doris Bergen (Preschool Children’s Play With Rescue Heroes: Effects of Technology-Enhanced Figures on the Themes of Play) studied prototype prosocial action figures developed by Fisher-Price. Although technology-enhanced “talking” toys have become increasingly popular with parents and children, there is little research on how children play with such toys. Also, little is known about the themes of pretend play in which children engage using realistic replica figures of fire and police personnel, especially with regard to prosocial helping behaviors. This question is of special interest since the September 11 disaster. Preschool boys and girls ages 3½ to 4½ years played with Fisher-Price Rescue Heroes that “talk” (with computer chips) and with similar Rescue Heroes that do not talk.

Lydia Plowman and Rosemary Luckin (Children’s Interaction With “Smart” Toys) describe the Cachet Project (Children and Electronic Toys), which aims to explore and map children’s interactions with digital interactive toys, in this case Microsoft Actimate...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FOREWORD
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: TOYS, GAMES, AND MEDIA
• PART I: TOY CULTURE
• PART II: CHILDREN AND DIGITAL MEDIA
• PART III: HOW TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCES PLAY