Girl Meets Geekdom

Last Friday the Game Initiative at Cornell hosted a lab session for a group of pre-freshman women in engineering, where they had a chance to play the student games that have been made at Cornell. Unsurprisingly, none of the women considered themselves “core gamers” but it seemed that most of these women hadn’t played a game at all in the recent past, Solitare included. Even more surprising was the fact that , the game I expected to be most popular with this particular group, proved to be rather problematic with many of the girls.

Sure, is not exactly an easy game, but when it comes down to dealing with the core mechanics, some women just can’t jump. And when I say can’t jump, I mean they REALLY can’t jump in any of the games that required jumping. Watching some of these women was like watching a first-time pianist attempt Moonlight Sonata. These people had difficulties timing their jumps. When they got stuck, they would carefully position themselves for a jump, then press the arrow and spacebar at the same time, thus missing their mark. At one point, one group of girls gave up and requested to try out a game without jumps.

In a recent lecture at Cornell (that I missed), one researcher in cognitive studies noted gender differences in perception as a way of explaining the gender gap in video game audiences. Women, for example, tend to face more difficulty perceiving 3D rotations, and therefore tend not to play first-person shooters. Is the difference in cognitive skill the reason why a game as simple as Penguin Adventure can cause so much trouble for some women?

I had always considered platformers to be a gender-neutral genre. For that reason, the game we submitted for the competition was a platformer. Now, all of a sudden I’m wondering how girl-oriented our games is. Was this not able to jump phenomenon specific to this group of girls because of their inexperience with gaming? Or is there some gender difference in terms of cognitive skill that effect these women’s ability to time the jumps? Are platformers really as gender neutral as one would expect?

In article I named my three guesses for the animations that will be nominated for Best Animated Feature this year. I got two out of three. The nominees are Wallace and Gromit, Corpse Bride, and Howl’s Moving Castle (I guess Madagascar instead, but I’m glad it did not get nominated). Unfortunately no CG animations this year, but still a good selection. My guess for winner? Wallace and Gromit…but I still have yet to see Howl’s Moving Castle, so we’ll have to see.

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Call me skeptical. As a die-hard fan of the 5-hour BBC version of Pride and Prejudice

featuring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, you can hardly blame me for thinking it impossible for capturing the scope of the story in a mere two-hours. After having seen the new film, I can fairly say it does not capture the scope of the entire story, but this new Pride & Prejudice

can certainly hold its own grounds.

This 18th century costume drama runs on a pace to match that of a modern suspense, but settles down comfortably enough. For those less familiar with the classic story, the film centers on the Bennets, a family with 5 daughters who face a life of poverty upon their father’s death. Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) dedicates her life existence to marrying off her daughters. The film opens as a young man of good fortune, Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods), moves into the county and quickly takes a liking to the eldest of the Bennet girls, Jane (Rosamund Pike). Around the same time, the second eldest, Lizzie (Keira Knightley), takes a strong disliking to Mr. Bingley’s friend, Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFayden) who finds her too plain to tempt him. As the story progresses, Lizzie finds herself drawn to Mr. Wickham, a man who claims to be wronged by Darcy in the past, and the object of Mr. Colins, the foolish-minded heir of the Bennet estate. Ultimately, it is a love story between Lizzie and Darcy, one about overcoming prejudices and class barriers to reveal the true characters of two people who were meant for each other. Of course, we rush through it too fast to get that much, but it was an honest attempt.

What saves the film is the fact that director Joe Wright focuses far less on the theatrical absurdities of the story but instead takes a much more sensitive approach to the characters. The script lacks wit and is the low point of the film, but Wright makes up for it by brilliantly playing with the nuances of its characters and situations, especially in terms of their resulting awkwardness. Most of the film resides purely within the subtleties of every character, something which no other adaptation of the novel has accomplished to date.

The tone of the film is refreshing. There is a certain raw beauty in its cinematography, something Hollywood films consistently lack. Everything from the overexposed exteriors, to the stray farm animals, or the stringy curls of Keira Knightley’s hair adds to a certain realism of the English countryside.

For the fans of the BBC production who were wondering – yes, the film is as sexually tame as the BBC; no, you will not see Mr. Darcy emerging from a pond dripping wet; yes, Keira Knightley is a convincing Lizzie; no, Matthew MacFayden is not as good as Colin Firth (He keeps reminding me of a young Alan Rickman for some reason). The film lacks the intricacies of the BBC miniseries and skips out on many of the subplots, which is hardly unexpected given the length of the film. Minor characters such as Mr. and Mrs. Hurst, Mary King, and Mariah Lucas were left out completely.

The film is a worthwhile effort but, in the end, Wright attempted to capture more that a mere two hours would allow. I enjoyed the BBC version over this one, but, to be fair, if you take away comparisons to previous versions, this film on its own proves to be a beautifully delicate interpretation of Jane Austen’s masterpiece.

In General:

B  Movie
A- Performance
C- Script
A  Love Story
C+ Execution of Love Story

Have you ever wondered why most game dialogue has to be so cheesy? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we’re given a lot of time to think about the dialogue. I was reading Roger Ebert’s essay on the 1977 movie Annie Hall