iCarly vs. Shaun the Sheep

Swedish kids younger than 7 years old are devoted to public service children’s TV-channel. There is not really any competition. The public service is the only provider of programs for children from 6 am to 8 pm in Swedish. Other Swedish channels broadcast programs for children an hour at most in the morning and one in the evening. Then there is Nickelodeon and Disney Channel dubbed to Swedish and broadcasting all day, BUT with commercial breaks and other hidden agendas.

Swedish parents choose public service for their kids, produced especially with Swedish children… and Swedish parents in mind. I do, and everyone I know do too. Overall this means programs that are for example gender neutral and diverse and that we think are suitable for kids. There is obviously a gap in the commercial alternatives and what parents want for their kids that public service fills up.

When the kids turn 7 they get the power to choose themselves, and most often they switch channel to Nickelodeon. They think of public service as fun and exciting, while Nickelodeon is considered to be more cool (though also fun and exciting). I’m not sure this tells me very much. Kids say that any program they watch is fun, no matter what the content is.

I tried at home to ask my Nickelodeon watching 7-year old girl to explain why she prefers Nickelodeon. My personal guess is that it presents cool girls and boys (not grown ups, but not kids) and their social relations. It has some sort of romance and what to come mystery about it. I cannot come to think of any specific word that would represent all this to a 7-year old girl and my test object replies – because it’s more fun. It is also self-chosen and completely free from obligations and expectations. Is it fun only maybe?

Then I try ‘What’s the most fun program on the public service channel?’. ‘Shaun the sheep’ she answers and in that battle iCarly is apparently the winner.

My 9-year old has left TV completely since about a year. It’s all the Sims, moviestarplanet.com and Stardoll to her. And to her friends. They are not interacting online yet, but they play it together either several girls by the same computer or via phone. Yet most of the hours she spends alone decorating her virtual suit or creating a movie.

With the immense and immediate popularity of iPad and iPhone amongst very young children the commercial opportunities within the edutainment business is growing fast. Finally we see high quality both fun and educational productions for kids available at very small costs. How much timespent will these alternatives steal from traditional TV for the younger children? How will the needs for and requirements on public service change with that? And the older kids, will they ever return from the computer?

Social network games challenges

Yesterday I met a group of studens from the current Media Manegement course on Stockholm School of Economics. Robin Teigland has challenged them to study value networks and we narrowed the task down to an area per group. One group is challenged to analys the Turkish market and another will focus on the impact and risks of the Facebook and iPhone/iPad dominance. I thought it's good they focus on what's now and tomorrow instead of what was yesterday. There are many questions, but very few answers...

Turkey is an interesting market when it comes to social media due to their Facebook presence. At least 70% of their technographics have an account (I have seen higher figures before). Is it possible to break in to Turkey without using Facebook as the platform?

Facebook filters what is accessable on their platform both by the age limit, rules on gambeling and other american ethic ruled content. Will we be stuck with Farmville gamedesign forever?

iPad and iPhone are offering new habits of gaming - you can play social games where ever you are and will soon not have to sit by your computer - why would you then? How are the present flash-based online social games going to compete with new portable game offers?

For example World of Warcraft had their name very stable on the map even before the Facebook era and some of these games have made themselves social also outside the computer. These phenomenas seem hard to break, they have managed to keep their community outside Facebook through being something much more than only an online social activity. Is it possible to introduce a social game outside Facebook again? Is it only possible by adding a real life experience on the game maybe?

PS3 Games - E3 2011 - Guitar Hero 5

Pay for Minecraft if you like it is one story of success.

Read about social StarCraft in Swedish by Simon Sundén.

Wonderful Drawn on my own

Wow! Drawn - What a game. There are not many games I like to play on my own, with no company, but this I do. I want to solve the puzzles and riddles and patterns on my own. I want to be the clever one finding my way through it. There is no time pressure, a few hints to help me solve the tasks if I need to, objects to save for later tasks and wonderful magic graphics to melt into. It is creative, letting me be creative too.

Take care of the smurfs for me today

When I started to play Farmville I got that 'aha' feeling. This is how it should be done. Today I say ok, every game can't be done exactly the same, it's not fun in the long run. But here is a version with those additions making it wonderful. The foundation is the same but as the Smurfs got a known history there are so many stories to build on. The presentsmurf brings me presents ever day, the firesmurf puts things on fire. There are different houses to buy/build for different effects and reasons. This is to me an improved and updated version of Farmville. Plus that the smurfs are lovable and always have been.

Smurf's Villag is for free on iTunes AppStore

More on the Farmville Aha feeling

Additions: Several blogs are reporting on the payment issue - when assigning you add your ITunes account and the kids easily make the money just click away...

Farmville for kids

Both Stardoll and Girlsgogames have lost quite a bit of traffic the last year. To Facebook??? Many of the users are too young though and there are more parents than I who know that Facebook was made for an older audience and that it is most uncertain whether it's suited for kids. But there is unexpected competition anyway.

My 8 year old girl used to stay a lot on both Stardoll and Girlsgogames. She's not anymore, she plays Farmville. But then you need friends on Facebook? Says who?

She plays it mostly on the iPad somewhere around us where we are at the moment. We can hear her comments and questions and easily help her out when required. And then her dad forwards messages from her neighbour - the son of a colleague at work. He thinks she's not working enough to enlarge her farm. She replies through the dads that he should make his farm look a little nicer. Back and forth it goes. They've been playing for some weeks now. Through their dads accounts without ever seeing Facebook.

The image from Mashable provides great figures on Farmville usage.

iPadlekar för 2 åringen - och för mamma

Som innehavare av en iPad och tre barn - 2, 6 och 8 år gamla - kan jag bekräfta att iPadden är en underbar leksak för oss alla. Mest spännande är kanske att 2 åringen Zack så lättvindigt spenderar timmar med flera appar. Dessutom försöker han sedan på samma lite världsvana touchscreenmanér få den stationära skärmen hemma att interagera med honom. Och blir lite irriterad när den inte svarar hans söta fingrar. Känns som ett krav för den kommande generationen.

Förutom klassiker som att färglägga, memory och finn fem fel finns en helt annan sorts lekappar som är oslagbara för den minsta, och även tidsfördriv för de äldre.

Veggie Samurai (22 kr)
Dela grönsakerna som någon kastar upp i luften minst ett par gånger och akta dig för giftflaskorna för annars dör du. Hela familjen kan spela länge och väl, men Zack är den enda som vaknar med orden 'Jag vill hacka grönsaker pappa'.


Art of Glow (7 kr)
Lite knepigare att komma igång, men färgeffekterna när man väljer form, tempo för blinkningar och upprepningar av fingerdragen, är iögonfallande. Med tiden vill man försöka forma något realistiskt också, men för Zack räcker det med vackra neonmönster som rör sig över skärmen. Touch - respons räcker långt.


MewMew Tower Toy (22 kr)
Stapla katter på varandra tills stapeln vinglar och katterna hoppar ner. Högst torn vinner. Tjock katt, liten katt, svart katt, och alla jamar lite irriterad när man släpper dem. Evighetslek. Tar aldrig slut. Ren avslappning för hjärnan.


Koi Pond (Gratis)
Var de äldre tjejernas favorit redan på iPhone. Man flyttar runt fiskarna lite i dammen... och det blir fint. Titta mamma. Jag vet aldrig vad det är jag tittar på, ser likadant ut jämt för den som inte har lagt tid på det.


Den här typen av lekar är kanske inte jordens mest utbildande, men roliga, eviga och trevligt långsamma.

Det som saknas mest bland apparna är det som kanske Stardoll borde vara bäst på - dekorera rum, styla, sminka, gör egna mönster och kläddesigns, sätta ihop scrapbooks... mmm scrapbooks i iPad... finns mycket att drömma om för både mig och barnen.

Eva Wieselgren rekommenderar några iPhone appar för barn.

Vad är det som är så bra med iPad?

Merge magazines and online shopping

Net-a-porter is taking a huge step towards what all magazines must become - and maybe all fashion online shopping devices as well. This is what you really want a traditional magazine to be, that has not been possible in print, but is online. It's a merge of instant online shopping and a glossy fashion magazine.

All images you see, even the ads, are linked to a shopping layer.

For navigation you both have the glossy cover, an image overview and the number of pages to flip from 1-49. All those versions are needed to find your way back to where you were, to get a grasp how much you have left of the experience and to get the full magazine feeling that you don't want to miss.

There are of course few articles, net-a-porter is an online shopping site, but those added are great presented, they are on fashion and illustrated with lots of images, more than in a traditional magazines as that many images would take too much space in the layouts.

Now I only long for additions of/from users - possibilites to add comments on everything as well as blogs and uploaded personal images according to each garment and article.

Let's Create! Pottery app

I'd say Polish Infinity Dreams had a female gamer in their mind when developing this great iPad app.

It's great looking, full of extra graphic elements that make me happy. It's not just to create your potter, but also to see polaroids of them, to sell them and to buy new beautyful patterns to decorate them further. It's the full dream, not only a small part of it made because someone discovered the technical possibility.

Introduction and pushing me further in the game play is made through a fake e-mail conversation with the game that encourages me to take step after step, just the way I'd like to be involved in any social community with too many details to learn at first visit. I learn it at the time I'm ready.

Also it's not crucial that my copy gets identical with the suggested original. I don't have to start over, and I don't loose anything. It's fun just to create, and I get rewarded with money to buy new patterns for if I can make it identical. This is probably one of the issues that is the most female friendly feature.

More about girls' games later...

Full summary from toucharcade.com
Let's Create! Potter in iTunes store

Girls' Games II - 2010

In 2010 7-10 years old boys play football and/or hockey. Girls too, 'it’s so good with team sports'. Then girls also do the gymnastics, ride horses and dance. No boys do that. Obviously it’s not considered important for the future.

Girls’ and boys’ outfits are more clearly separated both in colors and styles than back in the 80s, and the toys provided are still different according to current gender. Girls play with Littlest Pets and boys with Star Wars dolls, sorry figures, and Pokemon collectibles. Barbies are often passé already by 7. The ‘throw ball on the wall’ game has completely vanished. There were of course little commercialism in that, and no status gained.



But even though girls and boys seldom mix, the love games appear in the same age as before, around 7 or 8, and offer opportunities to spend some time together. Otherwise it’s only in computer games that I see girls and boys unite.

Today the computer experience starts a lot earlier though. Seven years ago we played on Disney.com with our one year old daughter. Today our youngest boy’s first words in the morning are ‘I want to play the veggies’ (veggie samurai for iPad).

My girls and their girl friends join at someone’s place playing Indiana Jones or Wii , and iPet. The family favourite is Little Big Planet. The girls spend most of their gaming time customizing their sackboy while dad is running the game forward.


The girls also play online. I’d say none of their male friends would ever join in the favourites girlsgogames or Stardoll, but otherwise it’s both online and by the consoles that they and their class mates find a common interest that today is gender neutral. The girls sit in the phone with Eliot and Linn while playing Panfu. They suddenly spend a couple of hours at the boy next door – playing Star Wars – a game they would not choose themselves, but that is fun enough and the console itself is not a problem.

Somewhat we’re back to the start of the games. I’d say many children don’t see the games, computers and consoles as male gendered. They don’t see them as techniques or machines, but as media for entertainment. They are not afraid to handle a joystick, even though I admit that the girls still want to watch for a while before trying a game, while the boys just jump into the game giving it what it takes.

Why this has changed lately? Both computers and consoles have become a standard in our life style? Lots of dads (and some moms) keep buying new consoles and want their kids to play too? Computers are both tools, entertainment and communication today?

I know I generalize a lot. Also there are more local preferences today as the supply is much wider than 30 years ago (at least in Sweden who has shifted from a social state to a capitalistic model), but I have also run communication with millions of girls word wide for the last 5 years, why I believe there is some truth in these generalizations.

There are some stronger separations in real life toys and spare time occupations than 30 years ago though and there are yet not many games that are built for girls by girls, or even for boys and girls, by girls. And why don’t women play as much in the middle of their lives and returning stronger than men later on. And what do the girls find so great about the sackboy? To be continued…

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