1. family and parenting
2. children

Children's Computer Culture
Three essays on Children and Computers
Carsten Jessen
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The three essays, written respectively in 1995, 1996 and 1998, are reflecting the stages in the authors research within children’s computer
culture: “Children’s Computer Culture” outlines the basic aspects and
explains, that new competences are being evolved around the computer. “Girls, Boys and the Computer in the Kindergarten” elaborates on
the issue and amongst other, it sketches out a model, where culture is
viewed due to the gender related differences. “Interpretative Communities” folds out children’s computer culture in full scale and emphasize,
that the activity around the computer is a concrete social community,
driven by the children’s urge to explore and interpret the computer games.
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Carsten Jessen:
Children's Computer Culture
Three essays on Children and Computers
W orking Paper 8. Child and Youth Culture
The Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies
Odense University
Copyright by the author
Edited by Jørn Guldberg, Flemming Mouritsen and Torben Kure Marker
Layout and DTP by Torben Kure Marker
Cover design by LAMA grafik
Printed by Odense University Printing Office
ISBN: 87-89375-79-3
ISSN: 1601-1791
Published by the Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies
The University of Southern Denmark. Main Campus: Odense
Campusvej 55
DK-5230 Odense M
Tel. + 45 65 57 34 30
Fax + 45 65 93 06 72
E-mail: [email protected]
Selected Working Papers are accessible on the Internet:
Http://www.hum.sdu.dk/center/kultur/arb_pap/
Typeset: Verdana, Arial Black and Bookman
Printed in Denmark 1999
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Children's Computer Culture
Three essays on Children and Computers
Carsten Jessen*
Contents:
Children’s Computer Culture
(1995)
Girls, Boys and the Computer in the Kindergarten
When the Computer is turned into a Toy
(1996)
Interpretative Communities
The Reception of Computer Games
by Children and the Young
(1998)
*Carsten Jessen, associated Research Professor at The Department of Contemporary cultural Studies, at the University of Southern Denmark until
1999, now an employee at the Royal Danish School of Educational Studies.
The main objective of his research project is to study child and youth
culture primarily related to children's use of computers and the way the
media affects is incorporated in the existing play culture. Carsten Jessen
has been attached to the research programme Childhood and Child Culture
at the University of Southern Denmark. The articles in this working paper,
and a paper called „Children use TV“, are available online (www. hum.
sdu.dk/center/kultur/buE/articles.html).
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Children’s Computer Culture
The computer has in recent times become an important element in educationalists’ discussions of the development of
the state schools. However, that is only an indirect concern
of this article, which instead describes what children do with
the computer in their leisure time, when they decide for themselves. All the same, I will start with an account of an event
from a maths period I observed recently.
That day thirteen-year-old Søren had to admit shamefacedly
to the teacher that for the umpteenth time he had not done
his maths homework. He was thoroughly ticked off for this,
and after an extended monologue by the temperamental maths
teacher about the scourge of idleness and how Søren himself
was also responsible for his own future (...which isn’t handed
to you on a plate, is it? And you’d like to have an interesting
job when you grow up, wouldn’t you?), came the question:
“What on earth were you doing all that time?”
Søren was clearly not happy about answering, but in a faint
voice came the answer:
“I was playing a computer game....”
The reader will have to imagine what the reaction to that
answer was, but the indignation over the fact that Søren wasted his time in front of the computer screen was certainly obvious from the teacher, who after the period said to me accusingly:
“- And you say that computer games don’t make children
stupider! So what happens to them when they spend time on
that kind of thing instead of something sensible?”
You cannot answer a question like that briefly and definitively. Of course you could talk about when you were that age
yourself and wasted your time reading thrillers instead of doing homework; and claim that it had been important to your
development, – and that it certainly hadn’t done you any harm!
The result would probably be an icy, contemptuous look. Or
the reply:
“If only Søren did read books....”
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It never occurred to the teacher to ask Søren what sort of game it was that kept him from his pencil, ruler, maths exercise
book and squared paper. That question is almost inconceivable
in such a situation, where the point is to get Søren to grasp
some tiny notion of the necessity of work. Nor is it likely that
Søren’s answer would have meant anything at all to the teacher. For him computer games are undifferentiated “computer
games” and synonymous with wasting time – in fact simply a
sign of idleness.
So Søren’s teacher never finds out that Søren is currently
deeply fascinated with “Transport Tycoon”, and that many of
the boys in the class share this fascination and meet at Søren’s place in the afternoon to play it. This creates a pretty
absurd situation in this specific case, because in school the
teacher is doing his level best to teach the children about
buying and selling, profit and loss as vividly as he can with
words, blackboard and chalk. Back home Søren and his
friends are running a worldwide transport conglomerate. They
buy buses, trains, ships and aircraft, set up new transport
routes and sign freight contracts on which they make profits
or losses – depending on whether they do things right or wrong.
They have had to learn it the hard way by trial and error, deciphering the English instructions and going bankrupt the
first 25 times. But they persist and gradually make a success
of it; so the last thing you can call them is idle.
Computer games in children’s culture
I have not told this story to try to persuade anyone that as
long as children play computer games they will probably learn
what they need to know about information technology – or
about arithmetic. Of course the story does have a point, which
I will return to below. At this point it is just an example of the
way reality looks today. While we have been discussing for
years how we should be teaching children to use computers,
many of them have long since taken them up themselves and
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created their own “computer culture”. This mainly involves
playing computer games, which have become very widespread
in recent years. Computer games have one of the steepestrising sales curves in the entertainment market today, and
the games are taking over an ever-increasing share of this
market at the expense of books, films and TV. According to
the latest Danish survey, based on figures from 1993, over
half of Danish boys between 10 and 15 have a computer or a
games machine in their rooms. The computer games are today a part of children’s and youth culture in line with other
media like records, books and video.
Computer games are generally regarded with great suspicion. Among other things, it is thought that they are violent
and make children stupider, and although it has to be conceded that there are quite a few terrible games on the market,
this is far from the whole truth about the medium. Today
there is a wide range of different genres and qualities, just like the range we know from books and films. Children and
the young play violent games, just as they watch violent films,
but they are just as likely to prefer other genres, for example
games of the same type as “Transport Tycoon”, which has no
violent elements.
The suspicion about the content is however only one side of
the widespread scepticism about computer games. Another,
far more serious criticism is levelled at the influence of the
medium on children’s social relations. It is a common assumption that computer games lead to children becoming
socially isolated, all in their separate rooms where they engage in a lone struggle in the artificial universes of the games.
In other words, the computer destroys social relations and
playing.
Fortunately that is not so. In fact children rarely play alone,
and computer games are about more than the actual game.
Contrary to appearances, the computer and the games are
absorbed into the existing children’s culture. This happens
very much on that culture’s own terms – and often in ways
that are quite contrary to the interests of the toy market. For
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a good game can easily cost Kr 400-500. Few children can afford this, yet almost every child with a computer has a wealth
of games. For computer games have the indisputable advantage than they can be copied and given away at almost no expense. Although this is not always legal, it still happens to a
great extent. Swapping games (and other programs) is such
an essential part of the computer culture of the young that in
my view one is barking up the wrong tree if one sees the use
of the computer solely as a matter between the game and the
player. Children and teenagers (and not a few adults) are willing to make long trips to get new, interesting games, and social networks arise around the exchanges.
But the social relations do not end with the swapping of the
games. In institutions, libraries and schools which have computers you will often see children flocking around the computer when games are being played. Those who know the
game hand on good or less good advice. Those who don’t absorb knowledge over the shoulders of the players. This too is
typical. There is widespread swapping of knowledge, tips and
tricks around the computer, and the computer games form
part of children’s social relations just like stamps, cards, stickers, jokes, games etc.
In this sense computer games are a social medium that
children can share, and it is tempting to imagine that this is
the reason for the success of the medium among children
and the young. The games fir better into children’s play patterns than books – which one is alone in consuming.
Exploration
Exchanges of tips and tricks are of course most important for
games that are not quite straightforward, but require you to
use your head. At first glance there are many games that
look quite simple – the so-called “action games” where you
either shoot at will or fight with fists or swords. You only have
to press the right buttons fast enough. It can be hard to under7
stand that the children play this kind of game over and over
again – after all, there is no “development” in it (and as a rule,
too, it’s the boys who play them....). The competition element
plays an important role here. The one who can get most points
acquires status, just as in other games.
But the games are not always as simple as they look. You
discover that when you get you own fingers on the keyboard
or joystick. The games require not only fast reactions, but
also thinking. Very often the player has to have an overview
of four or five figures at once, each with its own behavioural
pattern. It can be compared to the kind of overview you need
for example in traffic.
The action game is today far from monopolizing the market. Strategy games like “Transport Tycoon”, or adventure
games, are at least as popular among older children. In these
games it is other competences than fast reactions that are
important. Each game has its own set of rules that has to be
learned, and unlike board games these rules are not revealed
before the game begins. They have to be worked out along the
way. That is the basis of the fascination. Once the rules have
been worked out and “overcome” the game becomes boring,
and the player seeks new challenges in new games, preferably more complex ones – just like detective stories.
At the start of the game the player is faced with a problem
that has to be solved (and here one often needs ideas from others). It all happens in a special universe that you have to explore – a universe that is like blank spots on a map of a new
country. You discover things and connections while, display
by display, you move around in this special universe which
only exists in the computer, or rather in your own imagination. You might for example have to move some books on a
shelf to find a lever that can open a secret trapdoor in the
floor, or you might discover that things have to be given away
to achieve something – it is in other word all in the best traditional fairytale tradition. The difference from the book is that
the game requires active participation, independent actions.
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Some of the universes are so complex that the players have
to draw maps before they can get a general idea of them.
New “reading skills”
Strategy and adventure games are all about exploration, which
clearly attracts many children (and quite a few grown-ups).
The quality aspect of this type of computer game is in the social relations created around the game. Here the children are
on a journey of discovery together – in a shared exploration
project where they get ideas together, exchange them and
discuss them. This is a quality in itself, one that can of course
be found in many other areas than computer games. But it is
certainly here too..
Exploration can be seen as good training in familiarizing
oneself with new, unmanageable contexts and systems, and
this is a skill that is becoming more and more necessary in
our society. It is in this light that the story of Søren, told in
the introduction, should be seen, for perhaps Søren and his
friends are in full progress developing a new “reading skill”
which will become very important to their future. Perhaps in
fact it is better that Søren spends his time playing computer
games with his friends than concentrating on his maths exercise book and the squared paper?
I don’t know the answer, but I do think that it is important
that we ask the question, which at bottom is a question of
which competences children need to develop to make their
way in the future. By this I do not mean that computer games
can replace maths teaching – or for that matter that children
play computer games because they unconsciously feel that
they are learning something important. They play because it
is fun and it is a challenge, and in so doing they exploit some
very central human competences that surface when people
deal with something they consider exciting (cf. also Seymour
Papert’s articles and books). The children are driven by curiosity, they use their imagination and creativity, they experi9
ment and try out ideas – together – and this enables them to
grasp and order the unmanageable, chaotic universes that
computer games are when they start on them.
It must be emphasized that the point is not that these competences appear because of the computer. Imagination and
creativity are not faculties that arise out of a PC or information technology; they grow out of playing and other creative
activities. The point is that these faculties are crucial when
one is dealing with information technology, and perhaps we
should look a little less at the computer itself and much more
at the play element when it comes to preparing the children
for the future.
What about the girls?
The attentive reader has probably long since worked out that
what I have called “computer culture” is very much a boys’
culture. Boys have their own computer culture, in which computer games play a leading role, and very few girls are involved in these. One also finds the difference among adults,
where men have their own computer circles, in which only a
minority of women are involved. In other words, girls and
women do not quite fit into today’s computer culture.
This is not only a matter of the computer or the computer
games per se. If computer games are played by far more boys
than girls, then one of the reasons is of course that most of
the games on the market today appeal to boys. But that is
not the whole explanation. The computer culture is not exclusively dominated by the computer games, the pirate copies and the exchanges of tips and tricks. When boys take an
interest in the computer it is often as much the hardware
and the technology themselves that are the main thing.
Boys of all ages can spend lots of time discussing computer
technology for the sake of the discussion and the talking.
What is inside the box, what the latest computer on the market can do, and whose computer is biggest and fastest, are
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quite simply good topics of conversation. By contrast the technology very rarely interests the girls. They are more interested in what the computer can be used for in purely practical terms. Although computers have become more userfriendly in recent years, so that the technology is taking more
of a back seat, this does not alter the fact that the interest in
technology is an important part of present-day computer culture, so the computer is still the domain of the boys – and the
men.
This isn’t because the girls can’t be bothered using the computers for things like games, drawing etc. If they are given
the time and space for it, they are in fact just as enthusiastic
as the boys, but as long as computers remain a scarce resource in Danish schools and institutions it is hard for the
girls to find a place on their own terms. In libraries, schools
and day-care centres the girls often give the computers a wide
berth, not because they are technology, but because the hardware is monopolized by the boys, so the social relations around
them are dominated by the boys’ conventions.
Girls and boys have two very different ways of interrelating, and from at least the beginning of school age we can talk
about a girls’ and a boys’ culture, each with its own “language”. The girls prefer groups of two or three friends, while
the boys are often together in flocks – for example around the
computer; and their way of talking is cruder and less polished than that of the girls. If a girl sits down in front of the
computer she often has to listen to derogatory comments on
her performance from the boys. Among boys this is in fact an
ordinary way of talking and relating to one another which
normally does not cut very deep. But a girl will often take
these kinds of comments very personally and will be hurt.
Experiences like this of course confirm the prejudices that
girls already have about themselves. Not surprisingly, studies have shown that girls notoriously assess their own abilities with the computer more poorly than the boys’, irrespective of the fact that they are demonstrably just as good. The
boys, for their part, are in no doubt about being the best.
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This sort of thing can be changed by a determined effort. A
few years ago I was involved in a project whose aim was to
make the girls at a children’s recreational centre the computer experts there. This was tackled seriously by sending a
group of nine-year-old girls on an extended computer course,
and it was a huge success. The girls were both interested and
became better than the boys at the centre – and they knew it.
They radiated self-assurance when they sat in front of the
monitor, while the rest of the children looked on; and putdowns from the boys were met with a silent, supercilious stare.
As a rule, that was enough.
But of course computer expertise in itself does nothing to
change the actual gender roles and prejudices. It was for example impossible to get the bigger twelve-year-old boys to
admit that a nine-year-old girl could teach them anything,
and certainly not about computers! Nor did it change the
girls’ lack of interest in the technology, and thus in computer
culture in the form it takes today. If we think it is important
that the girls work with computers, then positive discrimination is necessary. This should not mean that we try forcibly
to change the boys’ way of acting at the computer to make it
more like the girls’. Neither of the parties would benefit fro m
that, and the result would probably simply be that the boys
would disappear. Instead we have to accept and make ro o m
for the differences, and the first task is to make space for the
girls at the few computers there are – for example by introducing special “girls’ days”, or one computer for “boys activities” and one for “girls’ activities”, something we already see
in many day-care institutions.
This may seem to consolidate the gender divisions, but in
practice the result will often be the opposite. Once the girls
are given the opportunity to work with the computer on their
own premises and learn about its potential, then there will
still be many areas where the girls and boys turn out to have
common interests and something to talk about in front of the
computer.
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References
Greenfield, Patricia: Mind and Media. Cambridge 1984.
Jensen, Jens F.: ‘Computerkultur’. Kultur og Klasse no. 63, 1988.
Jessen, Carsten: ‘Ingen læring uden leg. Om legens nødvendighed’. B U K S
no. 6. 1986
Jessen, Carsten: ‘Barnet og kreativiteten’. B U K S no. 10. 1988.
Kinder, M: Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games.
Berkeley 1991
Loftus, E. and G.: Mind at play. New York 1983
Nissen, Jörgen: Pojkarna vid datorn. Stockholm 1993.
Papert, Seymour: The Children’s Machine. New York 1993.
Turkel, Sherry: Dit andet jeg. Copenhagen 1987.
Printed in Dansk Pædagogisk Tidsskrift No. 5, 1995
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Girls, Boys and the Computer
in the Kindergarten.
When the Computer is turned into a Toy
I would like to start this paper with a brief presentation of the
research project I am currently working on. The title is “children’s computer culture”, and this should already make it
clear that my project is not mainly about how important it is
for children to use computers in school or at home. Nor is it
about how important it is for children to learn how to use
modern technology. That aspect of the matter is of course
important, and in recent years there have been innumerable
studies in the area.
My interest in the subject of children and computers focuses
on another, often neglected side of the subject, children’s own
use of the computer. As we know children and the young
have long since adopted the computer as a toy. My project
aims to survey children’s use of the computer, to study how
the computer medium affects and is absorbed in the existing
culture of children, and to discover the significance of the
computer for children’s ways of playing and interacting.
In an earlier phase of the project I studied computer culture
among children aged 7-14. I will not go into more detail about
that today, but will briefly state that it quickly became clear
to me that the prejudices that many adults have as regards
computer games in particular were unjustified. Computer games are for example rarely an asocial or individual activity.
They rarely place a child alone in front of a computer screen.
On the contrary they are very much a social activity. Children
play computer games together. They swap games, and they
swap tips and tricks for the games. One could say that the
computer has become part of children’s play culture and that
it has done so very much on this play culture’s own terms. In
that sense the computer is “The Children’s Machine”, as the
title of a book by Seymour Papert suggests.
As part of my project, about a year ago I carried out some
studies in kindergartens. In Denmark and the rest of Scandi14
navia the computer is still a rarity in kindergartens, for pedagogical reasons. Danish kindergarten teachers are not exactly
enthusiastic supporters of modern technology. In fact it was
only possible to find one kindergarten which had owned a
computer for a long time, and where the children also had
free access to it as to other toys. On the other hand it was
easy to find kindergartens where it was possible to study what
children made of a computer when it was a brand new phenomenon. It is primarily this I have studied. In practice the
study took the form that two computers were installed in the
kindergartens. The children were given a very brief introduction to the programs used, and then the computers were in
principle left to the children themselves.
It is probably necessary to point out here that Danish kindergartens are different from those familiar in most parts of
the world. The children are in kindergarten from the age of 3
until they are 5-6. Danish kindergartens are pre-school in
the most literal sense. There is no formal teaching or training
and the children do not, for example, learn to read. This does
not happen until the children go to school when they are
about 5-6. This is not due to a lack of knowledge or resources,
but is a very deliberate pedagogical choice, based on a belief
that formal education does not further the development of
the youngest children. Instead an effort is made to strengthen
the artistic and creative sides of the children’s development
by arranging informal activities like drawing, music, theater,
reading aloud and to a great extent also free play which the
children themselves organize. There is relatively great emphasis on the children learning to control themselves in their social relations.
Coming back to my study, for a period of three months the
children’s activities with the computers were closely observed
by means of regular video recordings which have subsequently
been analyzed. The main emphasis in these analyses was on
the children’s own interaction.
An analysis of the significance and influence of the computer
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might have its natural point of departure in the computer itself as a medium and in the structure and content of the individual computer programs. These are of course important
aspects of the matter, but there is a definite risk in such an
approach: today the computer has a quite special status for
us, and not least for that reason we have a lot of notions
about how the computer affects children and the young. In
experimental projects and research we often assume uncritically that the computer has some particular effect which we
then set about demonstrating. These notions, which have their
background in a general but often unconscious assumption
in educational thinking that knowledge comes to the children
from the outside (in the case of the media often as “impressions” or “imprinting”), make it difficult to see that the computer perhaps does not constitute a special factor of influence.
When we concentrate our attention on what the computer
does to the children, it obscures the fact that children often
do things to the computers which lie outside the scope of our
general notions. I found one of the best examples of this in a
book from 1980 where Levin and Karev describe how two
boys use a computer game in a rather unconventional way.
The boys had a picture with a lot of points on the screen. They
carefully moved the cursor from one point to another. Then they
ran from the living room into their room, where they played for
a while. After this they ran back to the com-puter and carefully
moved the cursor over to a new point and ran back to their
room. They repeated the procedure several times. Asked what
on earth they were doing, they explained patiently that they
were playing “Star Trek” with the computer as the control panel
in the control room. They were warping from planet to planet
and beaming down to explore the planets (their room).
The following two examples are taken from my own study.
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Tobias, aged 3, is seated alone at the computer with the program “Millie’s Math House”. This program, of the “edutainment”
type, is divided into several rooms with different tasks. On the
screen is the “shoe shop”, where there are three figures of different sizes, and the idea is to give the figures shoes of the
right size, so you can learn something about size relationships.
Tobias, who is new to the kindergarten and does not know
much about computers, clicks around on the screen with the
mouse. The girl Line (aged 4½) comes by with a doll in her
arms. She sits beside Tobias, looks on and says after a while:
- The big one’s the daddy, isn’t he? Tobias doesn’t really
answer, but he doesn’t protest either. Line takes the mouse.
- The little one’s the baby (= the child in a role-playing game),
that one’s the mummy (she points on the screen with her finger).
Then she starts a typical role-playing game.
The next example:
Two five-year-old boys are playing a game of the Space Invaders type on an oldish computer. With the cursor keys they
can move a figure round the screen which mainly consists of
small and large dots and lines. They are hunted by the “invaders”, but the tempo is moderate. They take it very easy, chatting a little about what they have to do. At one point they are
cornered and have difficulty getting out. The boy with the cursor
keys says: - Stuff it, we’ll take a taxi!! - Yeehh! We’ll take a
taxi, taxi... They move the figure to one of the big dots on the
screen, where it disappears and pops up somewhere else
(connoisseurs of Space Invaders games probably wouldn’t use
the word “taxi”, but “teleport”; but “taxi” is a fine name for it:
you go in one place to come out somewhere quite diffe-rent.
Incidentally, Danish children are not familiar with TV series
like Star Trek).
These examples could of course be viewed as children’s “misinterpretations” of the programs and thus as an indication of
a shortcoming. But such an interpretation views the situation
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from the outside, and attributes intentions to the children
that the program or the observer has. Viewed in the context
formed by the children’s everyday life with one another in the
kindergarten (play culture) the “misinterpretations” are not
mistakes, but correct and productive. They establish a basis
for creating games, and it is clear that the children themselves
supply the imagination and the stories. Playing with the
computer programs is thus not one-way communication, but
an interactive process.
The examples also demonstrate that computer programs
are materials that can take on many different functions in
play. It is not particularly surprising that computer programs
are used this way. The same thing happens with other materials. It can only be surprising if we expect the computer to be
some-thing different and special. This does not mean we
should forget that the computer is a special kind of material
which like all other materials of course has its own nature
and logic; but the result of its influence cannot simply be
read offfrom the material. It depends on the context.
It is clear from the study that the children are little influenced by the general adult views of what a computer is and
what it is used for. In other words the machine is not embedded
in a value system which delimits and determines the actions
the children can perform with it. The computer is without a
ready-made context for the children, and it has the character
of a brand new kind of material to be explored not only for
the potential activities the programs formally and directly offer,
but just as much for its potential as part of the play in the
kindergarten. I would like to illustrate this with an example.
Exploration and play
During the study period the children developed a store of
knowledge and competence related to the computer. In some
cases knowledge was taken from outside the group, for
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example from older brothers and sisters and parents, but
much was developed by the children together when they
explored the potential of the computer and programs. However,
this did not take the form of a goal-oriented learning process,
but as a mixture of exploration and play, as in this example.
Hey, they’re kissing...
Two five-year-old boys, Thomas and Johan, are seated one
morning at the computer. For the first time they are alone exploring the drawing program KidPix, which they have seen
two six-year-olds using earlier in the morning. They have seen
two functions used that they consider exciting: a function
that clears the screen, which in KidPix is a “bomb”, which
makes the screen explode in various ways; and a function
that allows them to choose a number of standard clips with
figures like animals, people, faces, cars, trains etc.
Thomas and Johan spend a quarter of an hour learning
about the program and among other things use the “bomb”
quite a lot. Then the observer intervenes and shows them
how to make the clips bigger, and this intrigues them. They
begin playing with the figures they find in the clips for example
making animals sounds and making up an ultra-short story
about the figures: the dinosaur roars at a cat, which answers
with a weak, scared kitten-like voice.
They carry on this way, jumping from subject to subject.
Only when they reach the clips with people in them do they
stick to one subject:
- That there, that’s the mummy and the daddy, that’s the
big brother, that’s the baby. He’s asleep, says Thomas.
- Yes, says Johan.
Just after this they find a television, which they insert. They
find two face-like clips, which they place opposite each other.
- Hey, they’re kissing! says Thomas.
- Yes! says Johan. Both laugh.
- The girl, she’s kissing the boy on the lips, isn’t she?
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- Yep.
Thomas moves the figures.
- Look at that now, now they can’t kiss each other, he says.
A little later they use the clip function to put a cup on the
screen:
- That’s their coffee, isn’t it, says Thomas.
- Yes, replies Johan and makes slurping sounds.
They continue playing for over half an hour, interrupting it
sometimes by trying out new functions and clips.
It is typical in such a mixture of exploration and experiment,
as well as fun and games, that the children develop a knowledge of the programs as such. This is not goal-oriented work,
but play, and it is the rule more than the exception that the
children fluctuate back and forth between what could be called
exploration and what could be called pure play. It is characteristic of this “computer play” that it is productive, in the sense
that the children use their imagination and produce games
and “stories”, which is typical of this age, when role-playing
games and the play of the imagination dominate play culture.
So these are not construction games, manipulation games or
pure experiments with the objects on the screen. Construction,
manipulation, experiment and problem-solving are all present
during the game, but they are subordinate to creating play or
a “playing space” together.
The computer and the program supply a framework and
often also a kind of draft for the play theme, while the children
flesh out this framework together and give the computer a
role in the play. However, it is worth noting that the program
only to a small extent determines the content of the playing
activity. It is the children themselves who in the end define
the space and the content of the play, and they often do so
irrespective of the explicit aims of the program. KidPix is a
drawing program, but it is not used directly for drawing.
This way of using materials in play is similar to Sutton-Smith’s results with toys. It does not control children’s
play and imagination, but: “Rather, the toys are transform e d
20
by the experienced players to suit their own imaginative convenience. The toys are an agency for the imagination; they do
not make the imagination their victim as is implied by much
intellectual prejudice.” (Sutton-Smith 1986).
It is incidentally typical that the children start by acquiring
a few basic skills in operating the programs (e.g. clipping figures in KidPix), and then go on to use these skills in a playful
way. We can say that the skills are a kind of “formulae” with
which the children improvise.
As mentioned earlier, the way the programs are used can
be interpreted as “incorrect” use, viewed from the outside. In
the context of play culture, though, the situation is different.
The children explore the programs, not with the aim of simply
familiarizing themselves with them, but with play as the
ultimate goal. While from the outside one first and foremost
sees that they acquire skills in operating a program and at
the same time in operating the computer as such, there is
also a more latent acquisition of the computer, as an integrated
part of social interrelations and of the play culture of the
kindergarten. The themes and content of the computer play
are things the children bring with them from other types of
play, and they superimpose them on the programs. One could
claim that they are primarily trying out the potential of the
computer as part of the play which is traditional in the kindergarten, for example Daddy, Mummy, and Baby games. To
put it differently, they sit down at the computer and explore
KidPix in order to extract the play potential from the program,
and this way they acquire the computer skills by integrating
them in the existing play culture.
The computer is thus not passively received by the children,
nor is this simply a matter of “decoding”. There is an active
processing of the computer and programs, which transform s
them and adapts them to the children’s play universe. And
only here in the context of play does the computer take on its
true role and its significance. This is of course not something
exclusive to the computer. Just think about a tricycle in the
21
kindergarten. It is not a means of transport for the children,
but a tool or instrument of play.
One could justifiably claim that this conclusion is obvious
and nothing surprising. I will gladly concede that. But when
it comes to computers and modern technology, and new media
on the whole, it is my experience that it is important to demonstrate that these media do not have a one-sided effect that
they force on the recipients. The recipients/the children are
not passive victims of the manipulation of the media.
What I have said does not meant that we can claim the
computer has no influence on the children’s play. The computer for example organizes their relations in a particular way.
It is stationary, so they cannot run around, cannot get away
from other children or from the adults, and in reality there is
only room for two in front of the screen, while other children
(for there is often a small group around the computer) more
have the role of spectators, which does not necessarily mean
they are passively involved. In this sense the computer and
the computer programs, like other media, form a setting that
initiates certain activities and sets limits to what the children
can do. It would take a more detailed analysis of the children’s
play with the computer to find these limits, but this has not
been the aim of the first part of my studies.
Girls, boys and computers
There are differences between girls and boys when it comes
to interest in computers, and this too emerged from my studies. It is generally experienced that the boys happily and
energetically plunge into playing with the computer while the
girls are more reserved about it. This difference is already
clear at the pre-school age, when the gender roles play an
important part in the “computer culture” the children develop.
The girls’ and boys’ different kinds of interest in the computer are usually explained in terms of the computer itself
for example by saying that the computer is logical, rational
22
and based on mathematical thinking. There may certainly be
some truth in this, but it is only one side of the issue which
does not allow for the context of which the computer forms a
part. The reason is so to speak located in the machine.
As we have seen the computer is a phenomenon which only
has its role and significance definitively established in its reception, when it is adopted and formed by the children in
their existing play culture. The play culture thus naturally
plays a major role in their interest.
A number of cultural studies have dealt with the way gender
roles and gender differences are expressed in children’s play
culture. All these studies show that, even at pre-school age,
there are clear gender differences. Children may not yet have
a fully developed gender identity, but they do have a clear
awareness of gender differences. This awareness is expressed
in the organization of play inasmuch as girls mainly play with
girls, while boys play with boys and in the differences in the
content and form of the play.
In a now classic Scandinavian study of gender differences
in children’s play at pre-school ages from 1969 Berentzen
demonstrated that the categories “boy” and “girl” form basic
reference points for children’s organization of play. These reference points are essential to the children’s evaluation of games, of toys, of one another etc.
Berentzen also demonstrated that the boys organize their
relations differently from the girls. The boys have bigger play
groups and they are usually hierarchically structured. The
boys’ play groups are also relatively open to the outside they
are more prepared to admit new members to the group without
much argument.
The girls’ play groups are smaller and they are often extremely exclusive. The girls organize their play and relations in
small groups of two or three, and for the girls it is a crucial issue whether one has or does not have somebody to be with.
They spend a relatively large part of their time confirming or
denying who is a member of the girls’ group and who is outside.
Treaties and alliances play a very important role as early as
23
the start of the kindergarten age.
These differences are general features, not absolute. Although there are differences in the play culture of boys and
girls, they can also share a number of activities, especially
those organized by the adults; but they also play across genders.
Berentzen carried out his study at the end of the sixties.
Since then there have been changes in the gender categories
in society in general, and one might expect this to have some
effect on the relations of the children. But later studies do
not seem to show that there have been any fundamental changes. Gender differences still play a very important role,
although there has been some softening of the boundaries
for example it is no longer so “forbidden” to play across gender
boundaries. The Norwegian Møklebust (1987), for example,
also finds clear gender divisions and sees the same traits in
the play groups as Berentzen.
Another feature that is important in relation to computers
is that the boys are more likely to organize around competitivetype play and game activities, while girls’ play could be said
to be more spontaneous, imaginative and free of structures
and rules. In their play and games it is typical that they take
turns. The girls, as mentioned above, are also often grouped
in pair relationships rather than in formalized play and games,
and they are involved as much in conversations as in actual
play.
My colleague Anne Scott Sørensen of Odense University
groups the differences in the girls’ and boys’ culture in the
following table:
Girl culture
Boy culture
Clusters of girlfriend
dyads and triads
Gang culture and
group membership
Shared identity
(recognition, confirmation)
Shared interests
(approval, admiration)
24
Informal, flat structure
structure
Formal, hierarchic
Hidden or random
organization patterns
Visible, rule-governed
organization patterns
Exclusive relations
Open, changing relations
Intimacy qualities
(relations, people and
situations)
Performance qualities
(actions, facts)
Chat-oriented,
phatic communication
Message-oriented,
emphatic communication
Existential theme:
being loved/not being loved
Existential theme:
doing well/not doing well
Dreams of metamorphosis
and beauty aesthetic
Dreams of conquest
and victory aesthetic
(Scott Sørensen, 1992)
According to Scott Sørensen the boys’ groups are characteristically “action-oriented interest groups”. Their activities are action-oriented, their motives are often instrumental and their
criteria are objective and principle-governed. Girls’ groups
on the other hand are dominated by a concern with the group
as such the roles, the relations etc. As a parallel to this Møklebust states that for the boys it is important to do something
together, while for the girls it is important to be together.
The gender research indicates that gender is extremely important, even at pre-school age, when girls and boys already
very much have their own play cultures, each with its own
content and goals; so there are also differences in what it is
in the play that is interesting and meaningful to them.
Research on the subjects girls, boys and computers general25
ly arrives at the conclusion that there are differences in girls’
and boys’ interest in and attitude to the computer and not
least in their confidence in their own abilities in that respect.
The differences are apparently established in connection with
the incipient establishment of the gender roles at the age of
3-4, and they are relatively firmly rooted by the beginning of
school age. There are of course many complex explanations
of what it is that creates these differences. But experiments
and studies with computers have for example been done since
the latter half of the eighties, when the software was generally
more technically-oriented than today (towards programming
for example). To this very day it is a widespread, but only
partially correct prejudice that the computer is “technological”
or “thinks mathematically”. Software development has meant
that there are many programs whose content also appeals to
the girls (drawing programs, word processing etc.). At the same
time the computer has become easier to operate, so it no longer
requires technical interest and insight.
All the same the computer is still very much regarded as
“masculine” by both men and women, boys and girls. This is
probably one of the most important reasons why girls do not
take an interest in it. The kinds of software or perhaps even
more so knowledge of the kinds of software that exist are of
course part of the issue, but not the whole explanation. Just
as important is the perception of the computer or, in other
words, the meaning it is assigned in our culture and in the
children’s play culture.
As Berentzen’s studies showed, girls and boys organize their
relations and games around the “boyish” and the “girlish”.
The perception of the computer as a “masculine” machine,
which dominates our culture at present, means in other words
that it is first and foremost a “boys’ toy”. When the machine
enters into play culture as such, the “boyish” image will, all
other things being equal, be reinforced. This is of course also
of great importance in teaching situations, where the
perceptions the children take with them from their play culture
and elsewhere cannot simply be suspended. Girls and boys
26
have different forms of cooperation and interests, and they
focus on different areas the objectively oriented as opposed
to the togetherness-oriented, for example. There exist strong
boy and girl cultures which are created and maintained by
the children themselves, which are passed down from child
generation to child generation, and which cannot be stamped
out by education.
The boy and girl cultures are extraordinarily important in
the life of children from pre-school age on, and they are also
of great importance for the way the computer is perceived.
The reason for the girls’ lack of interest should perhaps be
sought more here than in the computer as such or in the
software. In other words, the reasons for the gender differences
in relation to the computer should perhaps be sought in the
way the children view the computer, not in the way adults
view them. It is a question of what the children make of it,
not what the teachers, educationalists or parents make of it,
although it is of course also important which perception the
adults pass on to the children.
Girls, boys and the computer in the kindergarten
It will hardly come as a surprise that it was first and foremost
the boys in the kindergartens who adopted the computer in
the way I have described here. In general the study confirm s
the differences that gender research has demonstrated. There
are thus differences in the girls’ and the boys’ approach to
the computer, and similarly they organize their relations
around the machine differently. The older children (aged 5-6)
for example rarely gather round the computer across gender
boundaries. The younger children (aged 3-4) do so to a greater
extent, but here too there is some gender division.
But even on the occasions when boys and girls are together
around the computer, it is not necessarily a true shared activity. Often it is just a matter of the two genders happening to
bump into one another in front of the screen, and they each
27
have their own project and way of using the computer. The
following example indicates typical differences.
It is the first day with a computer in the kindergarten, and for
a couple of hours in the morning a real crowd of children has
been observing the events on the screen with curiosity. Some
time into the forenoon the first curiosity has abated, and there
are five boys and one girl (aged 6) left. Morten (aged 4) has the
mouse and is in progress with Millie’s Math House. On the
screen Morten has the “Shoe Shop”, where the task is to put
the right sizes of shoes on three figures of different sizes.
A couple of the older boys of six are the most active
participants. They keep urging Morten to put the wrong sizes
of shoes on the figures, and when he does so the whole group
is greatly amused. The type of play where the point is to do
something wrong in the program is something the children often
play later. They call it “playing silly”.
After about ten minutes it is the turn of the girl to operate the
mouse. She too is urged to put the wrong shoes on the figures,
but she won’t. Se wants to do it “right”, to solve the problem,
and despite all the urging she chooses the correct shoes. The
boys quickly lose interest in what is happening on the screen.
They try for a while to tease the girl, but stop when it has no
effect. Instead they begin to play and fight a little behind the
girl’s back. All her attention is on the screen, where she is
concentrating on trying the different shoes on the figures not
for size, for that is easy enough for her, but for type and color.
When she wants to change rooms in the program, the boys
stop their playing and turn their attention to the screen, while
trying to persuade the girl. several of them urge her:
- Helicopter, helicopter.... That’s the only one we haven’t tried.
This situation is typical: the girl does the “right” thing while
the boys experiment and have nothing against crossing the
limits. The girl is one of the few girls in this kindergarten who
is strong enough to stay seated in the group so she can try
out the computer, but she is not interested in joining in the
28
joint project of the boys, which is about exploring Millie’s
Math House, preferably all its corners and byways (this is almost archetypal for boys, and many people will probably recognize the same thing from men who find themselves in front of
a computer with a new program or game...).
On the other hand the girl in the example arouses no interest
from the boys when it comes to the appearance or color of the
shoes and whether they suit or match the figures. This aesthetic aspect does not interest the group of boys. There are thus
crucial differences in the way girls and boys approach the
computer, not least differences in the “project” they have with
the machine.
In other words, girls and boys each have their own agenda
infront of the computer in the kindergartens, and this pattern
confirms the above-mentioned research on gender and on
play culture. The boys apparently experiment most and are
interested in exploring the programs. In this connection, as
we have seen, they take great pleasure in deliberately doing
things wrong. The girls are more likely to follow the instructions of the programme and they take an interest in the aesthetic aspect, in the appearance, in the colors and shapes.
I must emphasize that I am drawing a very rough picture of
the gender differences and have chosen an example that shows
the difference clearly. In other situations it is less clear, but
the tendency is there. There are differences between what
boys and girls try to get from the computer programs. One
does not have to observe the children’s use of computers very
long to realize that it is to a much greater extent a “play space”
for the boys than for the girls. The boys are dominant in front
of the computer, and it is very much their machine. They are
dominant because they are more interested in the computer
than the girls are. They are more persistent and at first glance
more creative in their use of it. In short, it is much more interesting for them to use it, and when that is true, it leads to a
self-reinforcing process. On the one hand they monopolize
the machine, on the other they know more about the programs
because they spend more time with them and because the
29
computer plays a greater role in the boys’ culture. So they
also get more playing potential out of it. The computer in
other words becomes mainly a toy for the boys, but this is far
from saying that the girls are not interested (as is the case for
example with weapons, which the girls rarely touch).
It must also be emphasized that the dominance of the boys
is reinforced by the facts that computers are scarce in the
kindergartens. This means that it can be difficult for two or
three girls to have the computer to themselves, and may be
another reason why the girls do not use the machine to the
same extent as the boys. For the boys, however, this does not
mean so much. Their play groups can easily be bigger, and
the groups often include both older and younger boys. The
play groups leave room for the small boys, and this means
that competencies flow easily from the older to the younger
ones.
There can be no doubt that the content of the programs,
too, is significant for the differences in the interests of the
two genders, and that the great bulk of software for children
today gives the boys the best potential for play and experiment.
This is also true of the edutainment programs; whatever their
content, they at least also offer the potential for doing things
wrong (and it is perhaps typical of the programs that this is
what gives the children the greatest pleasure....). However,I
have tried to emphasize that the software is not the only and
not the all-important factor. In this context it is crucial that
we do not consider the computer in isolation from the context
in which the children use it. The computer can no more be
viewed outside the play culture than any other media or toys.
As for the gender differences, it is not unimportant that there
exists an informal computer culture or game culture among
boys, which includes both schoolchildren and pre-schoolers.
This computer culture is an integral part of the children’s
play culture, which as we know is very much divided into a
girl and a boy culture.
30
References
Levin, J.A. og Kareev, Y.
: Personal computers and education. La Jolla,
Californien 1980.
Papert, Seymour: The Children’s Maschine. N.Y. 1993.
Berentzen, Sigurd: Kjønnskonstrasten i barns lek. Bergen 1969 (1980).
Møklebust, L: Guttelek i barnhagen. I Brock-Utne (red): Når gutter blir menn.
Oslo 1987.
Sørensen, Anne Scott: Kønnets kultur. Tidsskrift for Børne- og
Ungdomskultur nr. 23, 1992.
Paper for International Toy Research Conference, Halmstad University
17.-20. June 1996
31
Interpretative communities
The reception of computer games
by children and the young
“The work of art only takes on meaning and becomes interesting
for the person who knows the code by which it is encoded....Those
observers who do not know these codes feel lost, they “drown”
in it; for them it appears to be a chaos of sound and rhythms, of
colours and lines with no rhyme or reason”.
(Bourdieu, p. 46)
For the uninitiated there can hardly be anything more chaotic
and unmanageable than computer games; the flashing speed
of the pictures crossing the screen alone often excludes the
possibility of grasping the point of it all. The games, which at
first glance look monotonous and seem to live up to all the
prejudices about lack of content and stupidity, are phenomena that can be just as incomprehensible as abstract paintings and modernist poems for the unschooled eye and ear. As
we know, that sort of phenomenon very often leads to misunderstandings, and since the first computer games appeared
on the market at the end of the 1970s they have been represented as dangerous to children and the young. Until just a
few years ago it was common that a strong interest in computers and computer games was suspected of being a sign of mental
deviation, for example in the form of an exaggerated desire for
strictly structured surroundings (1).
Such a view has become harder to maintain today, when it
is no longer a minority of young people who take an interest in
computer games and similar digital phenomena. They have
achieved a central position in the everyday life of the young in
line with a number of other media. This development has made
it an urgent matter to try to understand the inherent nature of
the digital phenomena instead of trying to explain the mental
structure of the players. This means not least that the computer games must be rescued from the foregone conclusion
32
that surrounded computers throughout he 1970s and 1980s,
when “digital” was synonymous with cold, rational, mechanical and unimaginative. Unless the majority of youngsters in
the western world have become unimaginative within a score
of years, then something else must be at play in the digital
world than what we can see at first glance. What is it the young
can see in computer games?
To try to answer that it is perhaps better to ask the question
the opposite way. Why is the interest of the young in digital
phenomena immediately seen as something negative by most
adults? Part of the answer can certainly be found in what the
American literary theorist Stanley Fish has called “interpretative communities”, something he has given a central position
in literary research by asserting provocatively that meaning is
not simply embedded in literary works as an essence (2). Art
and other cultural phenomena are not independent of the eye
of the beholder.
Fish uses a banal, but illustrative example of the role of the
interpretative process: at the start of one of his classes in literary analysis, quite by accident, there was a group of words on
the blackboard from a previous history class. The words were
above one another, and without further ado the students accepted them as a poem and interpreted the words within a framework of understanding to which they did not really belong.
Nevertheless, according to Fish, they could manage to make
an aesthetic interpretation with some success. Stanley Fish’s
point with the story is not that the students lack training, but
that training is precisely what they have. They are part of a
special interpretative community consisting of literary students
who know the right literary codes and can apply them to linguistic phenomena.
Electronic pets
W ith a term taken from Gregory Bateson (3), we can say that
the students in Fish’s example “frame” the words on the black33
board as literature, and that it is this framing that influences
their understanding in a quite crucial way. I believe a similar
situation applies when we try with adult eyes to interpret what
the new digital media mean to the young – as we have seen for
example with one of the latest phenomena of the type, the socalled “virtual pet” or “electronic pet”, an egg-shaped plastic
thing the size of a matchbox furnished with a miniature grey
display and three small buttons – the Tamagotchi. The toy,
which saw the light of day in Japan at the end of 1996 and has
later sold countless millions of copies all over the world, has
been a huge success among the young, and today is so well
known that it hardly needs any introduction. As most people
will know, the electronic “pet” has to fed, cared for, disciplined
and played with if it is to survive and also develop positively
(4).
When something is called a virtual or electronic pet, it must
of course arouse surprise and wonder, and the Tamagotchi
has stirred up quite a fuss, at least in the media. This is probably not exactly something the producers regret, but at the
same time it is not just a PR trick, for the Tamagotchi joins the
large number of digital phenomena that appear to break down
the well known boundaries between the “natural” and the “artificial”. If we take the Tamagotchi literally, it is a sign that something as genuine, warm and emotionally meaningful as the
relationship between a child and a pet is replaced by an artificial simulation. That sort of thing must naturally lead to a fear
of emotional damage to the growing generations, and if nothing else, the electronic “pet” has provided raw material for
new lamentations over the loss of natural childhood and is yet
another reason to criticize today’s unfeeling career parents who
will no longer give the children the chance to be together with
a real pet. “Give the children a dog”, we hear from indignant,
well-meaning grown-ups, who feel called to protect children
and childhood and who uncritically perceive the children’s interest in the Tamagotchi as a symptom of emotional impoverishment and a cry for help (5).
If you have had an electronic pet in your hands, you have to
34
wonder how anyone could confuse it with a flesh-and-blood
pet. The Tamagotchi has only a few formal features in common with a real pet, for example the fact that it has to be fed
and disciplined (6), but it completely lacks the aspects that
are important to children in their relationships with pets. Claiming that youngsters might confuse one with the other really
says very little about children and Tamagotchis, and so much
more about adults’ ideas of children and childhood. These ideas
are interesting enough, but have a limited truth value when it
comes to the meaning of the new media in the lives of the
young. The new electronic media always seem to fit rather too
neatly and completely into a community of interpretation where
modern childhood represents a loss and a decline compared
with the childhood of earlier times. “Electronic pets” or even
worse, “digital pets”, are eminently suitable as a new argument for such a view, for such designations must almost be
called self-contradictory.
Any owner of a Tamagotchi would probably agree, which does
not however mean that the owner cannot forge emotional ties
with the thing, just as one can with dolls, books, cars, paintings or other material things with a sentimental value, and
you can even cry over a “dead” Tamagotchi, as over other things
you lose (6). Undoubtedly you can go too far in your emotional
attachment to things, but that is not only true of digital products, and it does not make an electronic toy into a pet.
The Tamagotchi can hardly be seriously considered as a replacement for something else, something better, as implied by the
criticism of it, and by the general tendency to view the new digital media for the young in this light. The electronic “pets” are
just one of many examples of new media types that are immediately met with surprise and concern, because we too quickly
take the “content” at its face value. It is an indication of naive
interpretation when we equate what the digital phenomena simulate with what they actually are and mean to the media
users in the specific situations in which they are used. Thus
we confuse what the Tamagotchi imitates with what it is, and
35
it is placed in a context of understanding which is quite different from the context in which the young place it and use it.
Computer games
The reaction to and the interpretation of the electronic “pets”
does not differ much from the reaction to the first types of popular digital media. When the first home computer began to
appear around 1980, they give rise to a widespread fear that
youngsters would be “seduced” by the new interactive medium
and see the computer as a partner that could simulate and replace social interaction with others. A prominent example of
this fear was the American sociologist Sherry Turkle, who described in a successful book about computer culture in 1984
how adolescent boys could become very preoccupied – almost
obsessed – with computer games and could end up preferring
the well-ordered, rule-bound, controllable universes of the games to relations with others in a more chaotic reality (8). With
the greatest of ease she linked this preoccupation with the
mental and sexual development in puberty of the boys who
were interested in computers, and got the digital, rule-based
character of the computer games to fit beautifully with deviant
mental development and narcissism among the young, so that
her interpretation of the interest in computers could easily be
dovetailed into an interpretative community which in the mideighties included many teachers and carers in the child and
youth areas.
In theory – or perhaps in the light of certain particular theories – such an interpretation may look credible. It may seem a
plausible explanation of why boys can be so fascinated by computers and computer games, but this reading of the role of
computer games rarely stands up to an encounter with reality. Turkle bases her theory for example on a basic assumption that the use of the computer is an individual affair, which
agrees with the general view. Playing computer games has generally been regarded as an individual, more or less asocial ac36
tivity, but we need not go further than the nearest youth recreation centre, youth club or computer café to discover that
this is far from the case. On the contrary there is a wealth of
social activity around the games, which are closely integrated
in the social relations and cultural networks of the young (9).
The point of Pac-Man
Neither the traditional computer games nor morerecent types
like the Tamagotchi really make sense until they are placed in
the right context of understanding. An even more illustrative
example of this is the computer game Pac-Man, one of the
most popular, best known games from the early years of the
computer games, at the end of the 1970s. Like many other games from that period it is so simple that it seems incomprehensible that the young spent much time on it; but Pac-Man is
a genuine classic which many young people will also know
today. Viewed with today’s eyes the game is very primitive,
with crude graphics rather like the Tamagotchi. Pac-Man consists of one fixed display with a few small square dots distributed among horizontal and vertical lines, arranged in a pattern which with some good will can be seen as a simple maze
(10).
The object of the game is to get a round figure, Pac-Man, to
“eat” his way through the dots in the labyrinth. When this
has been done, the player gets a similar, but slightly more
complex maze on the screen and can start over again. Some
excitement and dynamics are added to the game by four triangular figures (often called “the ghosts”), who move around
the labyrinth in an apparently random pattern. If one of the
figures touches Pac-Man, he “dies”, and the game is over,
with the usual message “Game Over. Do you want to play
again?”.
If you take Pac-Man at face value, then there is not even, as
with the Tamagotchi, a story to get hold of, and it can be hard
to see any other point to the game than training the player’s
37
skills in moving around in labyrinths as fast as possible (10).
It is hard to find leverage for an analysis and to decipher any
meaning in it at all. Unlike other cultural phenomena, there
is no help to be found in a universal cultural background
(12), and Pac-Man clearly demonstrates the importance of
“interpretative communities”. You have to play the game before it will reveal its nature, and this is something that far
from happens to everyone. Some fall for it, others find it monotonous, boring and pointless, but whatever attitude one has
to the game, the interest rarely lasts very long. If one plays it
individually, Pac-Man may be exciting at first, but rather boring in the long run. The game only takes on a content in a
social context.
Cultural and social utility value
Many attempts to explain the meaning and influence of computer games have, perhaps for want of a better approach, taken their point of departure in computer technology and have
tried to deduce the meaning of the game from this. To date
this has not led to any convincing explanatory model – for
good reasons, I believe. This is really like starting with the
physical properties of a ball when you want to understand
football as a cultural phenomenon. In the physical sense a
ball can in principle bounce, roll or fly, but that tells us nothing about football; and from the physical properties it is at
any rate not easy to guess how the ball is the basis for many
hours of play for children and adults and for a huge entertainment industry. To add a description of a football pitch
and the rules of the game does not help much either. The ball
cannot be understood meaningfully outside the situation, the
social and cultural practice, in which it is used. The difference between the physical ball and football is purely and simply a shared culture, an interpretative community which form s
the setting for the game of football, and which of course consists of much more than the ball, the pitch and the official
38
rules. In that sense cultural phenomena are quite dependent
on living cultural, interpretative communities, and even if
there are many differences between football and computer
games, both are functions of social and cultural communities (13).
Above, I quoted a statement by Bourdieu that works of art
only become interesting when one can decode them. However, this is only one side of the matter. Just as important is
the fact that the decoding of a work is not simply the same as
the experience if it. Knowledge of the codes is rather just a
necessary condition (14). Even if one has learned the codes,
this does not necessarily mean that one can (or wishes to) do
something with the works. Often one “can’t use them”, a problem that any teacher with art and culture on the agenda knows
from pupils and students. One can possibly learn to find a
use for the art, but decoding and understanding are hardly
enough in themselves.
It is worth asking whether works of art and the phenomena
of popular culture actually differ in principle in this respect.
A poem or a sculpture does not reveal itself to us without some prior knowledge in the observer, but computer games and
music videos, for example, do not immediately reveal themselves immediately to the outsider either. Not that I would
claim that values and qualities in a modernist poem and in a
game like Pac-Man are one and the same thing. On the contrary they are precisely very different and incomparable entities, each belonging in its own register, something of which
we are perhaps not sufficiently aware. It is a prominent problem for example in teaching that the grown-ups of today not
only lack familiarity with the codes; they also rarely have “a
use for” computer games, Tamagotchis and music videos. At
the same time very few adults have personal experiences to
draw on that can correct misinterpretations of the phenomena. In the educational system, this is further reinforced by
that fact that one first and foremost has to deal with culturally formative work and thus with a particular kind of cultural quality, while the young freely use popular culture phe39
nomena whose aim is not formative – at least not in the sense
in which the educational system understands it.
When it comes to understanding phenomena like computer
games, it is first and foremost a matter of looking through
and beyond the filter constituted by formative culture, and of
seeing what the young in fact do with the media. Some of the
exercise consists of trying to stop focusing on the content of
the media, as it appears immediately to our “adult” eyes, and
looking instead at how they are used; that is, trying to see
how the young interpret the media in practice (15).
Play value
In one framework of interpretation the Tamagotchi appears
to be a simulation, to be “artificial life”, and thus a simplistic
mechanical substitute for the so-called genuine. But Tamagotchis are only in theory of interest as examples of “artificial
life”. They have not achieved their popularity because they
imitate real pets more or better than other phenomena, but
because they function and work in the social interaction among the young.
Similarly, games like Pac-Man or more contemporary action games like “Doom” and “Quake” can in one framework of
understanding undoubtedly be interpreted as simplistic and
extremely monotonous, so one has to wonder why some people
can play them again and again – and this wondering can
easily lead on the question of what it is in the games that
creates the “dependence” that seems to affect at least certain
young people (16).
The simplicity and repetitiveness of the action games is however an important reason for their popularity. In the context
in which the games are used, for example in video arcades
and amusement halls, the reason for the success is relatively
easy to see, for the games work fine as a basis for the social
interaction. They fit perfectly into the boys’ play culture (17),
where the competition to be “good” and preferably the best is
40
an important pivot of their relations. The games are easy to
learn, so you can quickly become part of the group, while it
can take long practice to become good. In the competitive
nature of these social relations we also have an important
part of the explanation of the girls’ lack of interest in the
common computer games. As a rule the games fit well into
the boys’ play culture, but less so into the girls’ social relations (18).
The more complex types of games, for example the so-called
platform games consisting of a number of “levels” (19), which
were mainly produced in the eighties for the popular Amiga
computers and today especially for the Nintendo, Sega, and
Sony Playstation, work in the same way as the action games,
but they go far beyond the arcades and the direct comparison of how many points you have won. Here you can compete
over which level you have reached. Since you only get through
the levels by solving a number of problems, finding secret
doors and the like, the games provide ample opportunity to
discuss approaches and to exchange tips and tricks.
In other words, the games have both play value and a kind
of exchange value, and the latter is an important part of what
could be called the computer culture of the young, which
from the outset has also included other types of games than
the fast action games, for example the so-called adventure
games, where the games are a kind of voyage of exploration
into the adventure universe of the game. One of the first in
this genre with very simple, primitive graphics, was “Castle”,
which is almost as old as Pac-Man, and for that reason makes
the principles clearer. More recent games of the same type
have the same structure and the same type of plot, but also
have exuberant graphics and pictures which tend to divert
the attention of the player. Connoisseurs of the genre can appreciate whether the graphics are impressive, but they do
not confuse this with the game itself, and it is an important
point that the old games were played with the same enthusiasm in their day as the more recent flashy types of today. In
41
other words, it is hardly the appearance of the game that is
crucial to its popularity.
“Castle” is not about being fast, but about finding your way
around a castle of three storeys, each with twelve rooms. On
the screen the rooms appear as from above with quite primitive patterns for walls, markings of doors and stairs, a few
items of furniture and enemies, which may for example take
the form of a minimalistic rhomboid or triangle. The players
have to fight various kinds of enemies, find secret doors and
routes, so in the end they can escape from the castle. The labyrinth is not manageable at first glance, for you only see one
room of the castle at a time, and it is not possible to get an
overview map. So it can be hard to keep track of the 36 rooms
spread over three storeys.
A few years ago I observed a crowd of children who played
Castle over an extended period, both at home and in their
club. They solved the problem by making an overview – by
mapping the castle room by room, storey by storey. This alone
took a long (and pleasurable) time, but in itself it was not
enough to get through the game. The boys often came to a
halt, for example, when they could not find a secret door or
how to get past a vampire. In this case the social network
helped with ideas (20), and for a period the exchange of tips
and tricks was a central element of the social relations in the
group of boys mentioned. A good tip was of great value, and
was not simply passed on; it was often held back as a secret
until the right moment.
So computer culture comprises much more than the actual activity in front of the screen. The games for example
provide raw material for exchanges that bear up the social
network. Moreover, this need not be limited to games; it may
concern the computer itself. For some adults, children and
teenagers technology can be good material for conversations
and discussions of bits and bytes, Megahertzes and RAM,
matters about which the uninitiated of course understand
very little. As conversational material, as a basis for the exchange of tips and tricks and for social relations, computer
42
technology has played a central role since the first home computers appeared around 1980, and the great “computer interest” of the young, which as we have seen is often regarded
with concern, has in most cases perhaps not to any great
extent been about interest in the technology. Viewed in this
light, interest in computers and interest in computer games
are two sides of the same social coin.
Computer culture – interpretative communities
Computer games are today sophisticated, and above all they
have far better graphics. It is no longer squares and lines you
find on the screen, but three-dimensional figures with natural movements and so-called artificial life, and the images of
the computer games are more and more like those we see on
TV and in films. The games are far richer in their pictorial expression and they are more complex than Pac-Man and Castle.
This development could easily make one regard Pac-Man and
Castle as the first primitive attempts to create a new medium, and as a thing of the past. This is not least tempting
when the new games provide far more opportunities to go to
work on content analyses of the games as texts. Here we have
stories, characters and images for which we have traditions
and tools for characterization, analysis and interpretation.
W ith the above I have tried to argue that with this type of
analysis, we place the games in the wrong framework of interpretation, because computer games primarily acquire their
meaning and content through their concrete use in concrete
situations. In this sense they are more a kind of tool for social relations than a means of communicating the messages
one normally looks for in the media. This should not be seen
as a claim that there is no content in computer games, or
that this does not matter; it should be taken as an indication
that we cannot interpret a content outside the concrete practice which also provides the framework of understanding. For
example, something that might on the face of it look extremely
43
violent on the screen may in practice have quite a different
function. The players might for example blast one another
and everything else in a violent game like “Doom II”, while at
the same time enjoying extremely peaceful, playful relations,
as is in fact usually the case in war games (21).
This is not to say that the content of computer games is of no
importance. But the question of what the “content”, the “message” and the “meaning” actually are should be answered
within the relevant framework of interpretation. The computer
games exist in and are dependent on a context which is at
once a concrete social community and an interpretative community. In this sense one could speak of a “computer culture” or a “computer games culture” which is an integral part
of the everyday life of the young – a more central part, of
course, for some than for others. This computer culture neither arises from the computer games nor from thin air. It
builds on young people’s play culture, which shapes the use
of the games (22).
The function of the computer games as a basis for and tools
for social relations does not differ in principle from the role
that TV and video can have, for example for a group of boys
who watch violent action films together, for a group of kindergarten children who play “Turtles”, or for a family that
uses TV as a setting for being together on a Friday evening.23
In this context, quiz shows for example have some important
qualities and can do something quite different from the socalled quality programmes, which are a hopeless flop on a
Friday evening in the bosom of the family. This type of TV
should, like computer games and other phenomena of popular culture, be evaluated on their own terms, as good or bad
tools, not as true or false messages.
Notes
1.
E.g. in Turkle 1984. The assumption was still central to research
44
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
projects at the beginning of this decade, e.g. in Provenzo 1990,
Nissen 1993 and Leu 1993, while it is however increasingly being
rejected as a relevant explanatory model.
Fish 1980.
Bateson 1972
For a more detailed description of the Tamagotchi and similar pets,
see Eisenmenger 1998. The Tamagotchi has been joined by a new
type, the “DigiMonster”, where you have to train your own little mon
ster to battle with other DigiMonsters. The battles are fought auto
matically when you link up the DigiMonsters.
Fyns Stiftstidende, 08.02.98
I.e. in fact the aspects that adults are often responsible for in
connection with the care of pets. Attempts have also been made to
sell the Tamagotchi as a kind of educational toy that teaches
children to care.
Children’s attachment to Tamagotchis however as a rule has
nothing like the same emotional nature as their attachment to
dolls, teddy bears or pets.
Turkle’s views are still important and very influential, and in her
latest book from 1996 she repeats a similar argument about digital
phenomena as a substitute for social relations in connection with
the Internet.
For further clarification of the social side of the computer games,
see Jessen 1990, 1993, 1995, 1997.
The illustration shows the simplest version of Pac-Man. The game
also exists with other figures, but the principle is the same, and the
simple version is no less fun to play than the others.
Studies have in fact shown that taxi drivers and pilots are best at
playing this kind of game, since unlike the rest of us they are used
to judging the relative speeds of objects (i.e. specifically the
“ghosts”). Greenfield 1984.
Many attempts have been made to analyse Pac-Man, for example by
Bent Fausing fifteen years ago (Fausing 1984). His article, not least
because of the interval in time, is a clear example of how a frame
work of understanding can shape an interpretation.
See note 9.
Which is in fact Bourdieu’s point.
Cf. the way the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) analyses
culture, and so-called media ethnography (see for example Drotner
1993).
As for example in a media debate on computer games and ludomania
in Denmark in the spring of 1997.
By play culture I mean here young people’s own culture and
cultural networks, which consist of both expressive forms such as
games and forms of social interaction, as well as much more, which
provide the setting for an important part of their lives with one
another. It is not usual to regard the social interactions of youths as
45
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
play culture, but it seems fruitful to me. For a thorough
introduction to the concept, see Mouritsen 1996.
See Jessen 1995a and 1997a.
Readers with no knowledge of the genre can imagine the levels as
something like the “cartoon films” you can make with a shoe box
with holes and long strips of paper. The levels take the form of long
“strips” of landscape on the screen and along the way the player
has to solve problems and fight enemies.
Such networks around computers and games today consist almost
solely of children and older boys, but when the computer games
were a brand new phenomenon, they included children, youths and
adults.
See Faurholt & Jessen: “Doom II i Havnbjerg”, 1996, and for war
games Mouritsen 1996.
See Jessen 1995a and Faurholt & Jessen 1997.
The role of the action films as tools is something I read out of
Arendt Rasmussen 1995, while the example of the TV quiz in
families with children was taken from my colleague, the research
fellow Jesper Olesen.
References
Arendt Rasmussen, Tove (1995): Actionfilm og drengekultur. Aalborg:
Institut for Kommunikation, Aalborg University.
Bateson, Gregory (1972): “A Theory of Play and Fantasy”, in Steps to an
Ecology of Mind. New York.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1995): Distinksjonen. En sociologisk kritikk av
dømmekraften. Oslo, Pax.
Drotner, Kirsten (1993): “Medieetnografiske problemstillinger – en
oversigt”. Mediekultur no. 21.
Eisenmenger, Ricard (1998): My little Cyberpet. London: Prentice Hall
Faurholt, Lis & Jessen, Carsten (1997): “DOOM II i Havnbjerg.
Computerspil, legekultur og uformelle kompetencer”. Tidsskrift for
Børne- og Ungdomskultur no. 38/39
Fausing, Bent (1984): “Fascination – sæt verden ikke mere er til” in
Holst, Nina et al. (eds.) (1984): N.I.T. – problem og løsning. En
opslagsbog om Ny Informations Teknologi. Copenhagen: Christian
Ejlers’ Forlag
Fish, Stanley (1980): “Is There a Text in This Class?”, in Is There a Text
in This Class? The Authority of Interpretative Communities.
Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Geertz, Clifford (1973): The Interpretation of Cultures. N.Y.
Greenfield, Patricia (1984): Mind and Media: The effects of television,
Video games and Computers. Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press.
Jessen, Carsten (1990): “Børns kultur i en computerverden” (2nd ed.) in
Jens F. Jensen (ed.): Computerkultur – computermedier –
46
computersemiotik. Nordisk Sommeruniversitets Skriftserie 32
Leu, Hans Rudolf (1993): W ie Kinder mit Computern umgehen.
Studie zur Entzauberung einer neuen Technologie in der Familie.
Munich: DJI Verlang Deutsches Jugendinstitut.
Mouritsen, Flemming (1996): Legekultur. Essays om børnekultur, leg og
fortælling. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag.
Nissen, Jörgen (1993): Pojkarna vid datorn. Unge entusiaster i
datateknikkens värld. Stockholm/Stehag: Symposium Graduale.
Provenzo, Eugene (1990) Video Kids. Harvard University Press.
Cambridge, Ma.
Turkle, Sherry (1987): Dit andet jeg. Computeren og den menneskelige
tanke. Copenhagen: Teknisk Forlag. (Eng. 1984).
47
W orking Papers
The publications can be collected or ordered at the Department of
Contemporary Cultural Studies as long as editions are available.
1.
Jørn Guldberg: Tradition, modernitet og usamtidighed.
Om Børge Mogensens FDB-møbler og det modernes
hjemliggørelse (not available).
2.
Flemming Mouritsen: Child Culture - Play Culture.
3.
Niels Kayser Nielsen: Madkultur mellem det lokale,
det nationale og det globale (not available).
4.
Henrik Juel: Form og fortælling i lyd/billed-medier (not available).
5.
Carsten Jessen: Det kompetente børnefællesskab. Leg og læring
omkring computeren.
Computerspil og legekultur. Skitse til en tolkningsramme
6.
Ning de Coninck-Smith: Natural Play in natural Surroundings.
Urban Childhood and Playground Planning in Denmark, c. 1930 –
1950
7.
Jesper Olesen: Children and Media Risk
8.
Carsten Jessen: Children's Computer Culture
Three essays on Children and Computers
48
UDSPIL
Previously published:
UDSPIL
1:
Jørgen Gleerup: Opbrudskultur.
Odense 1991, 5. oplag 1997.
UDSPIL
2:
Lars Qvortrup: Kedsomhedens tidsalder.
Odense 1991, 2. oplag 1993.
UDSPIL
3:
Niels Kayser Nielsen: Krop og oplysning.
Odense 1993.
UDSPIL
4:
Jørgen Gleerup og Finn Wiedemann (red):
Kulturens koder - i og omkring gymnasiet.
Odense 1995.
UDSPIL
5:
Lars Qvortrup: Mellem kedsomhed
og dannelse.
Odense 1996.
UDSPIL
6:
Flemming Mouritsen: Legekultur.
Odense 1996, 2. oplag 1998.
UDSPIL
7:
Niels Kayser Nielsen: Krop og kulturanalyser.
Odense 1997.
UDSPIL
8:
Jørgen Gleerup: Organisationskultur som læreproces
og kommunikation. Svendborg Fingarveri 1931-1990.
Odense 1998.
Odense University Press:
Tel. +45 66 15 79 99 - fax +45 66 15 81 26 - e-mail: [email protected]
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