Description
Book SynopsisDigital Playgrounds explores the key developments, trends, debates, and controversies that have shaped children’s commercial digital play spaces over the past two decades. It argues that children’s online playgrounds, virtual worlds, and connected games are much more than mere sources of fun and diversion they serve as the sites of complex negotiations of power between children, parents, developers, politicians, and other actors with a stake in determining what, how, and where children’s play unfolds.
Through an innovative, transdisciplinary framework combining science and technology studies, critical communication studies, and children’s cultural studies, Digital Playgrounds focuses on the contents and contexts of actual technological artefacts as a necessary entry point for understanding the meanings and politics of children’s digital play. The discussion draws on several research studies on a wide range of digital playg
Trade Review
"In framing the implications of her inquiry around questions of children’s rights, Grimes’ work models the attention that these topics warrant and highlights the urgent stakes of children’s online play. This book charts a history and a theoretical framework that establishes a new and higher bar for children’s media research. It is a foundational text in contemporary children’s media studies and will remain so for the foreseeable future." -- Meredith A. Bak, Rutgers University-Camden * Media Industries Journal *
Table of Contents
Introduction Digitizing Playgrounds and Technologizing Play What This Book Is About Why Looking Back Helps Us Move Forward Building a Children’s Technology Studies Framework Chapter Overview 1. The Importance of Digital Play Conflicting Views of Children’s Play Conflicting Views of Mediated Play Licensed Toys and Media Supersystems Digital Game Controversies and Dichotomies Dangerous Games and Risky Gamers Games for “Good” Girls Bad Game(r)s, Good Game(r)s Moving Forward Looking at “Stuff” and Structures Resituating Children’s Play Conclusion 2. Small Worlds and Walled Gardens A Brief History of Children’s Digital Playgrounds Online Games: Portals, Arcades, and Environments, 2003–2005 Neopets The Virtual World Boom, 2005–2008 Design Trends and Disparities Beyond the Computer Screen Web-Enabled Consoles Connected Games Go Mobile Toys-to-Life and Cross-Platform Games Conclusion 3. Commercializing Play(grounds) Revisiting Supersystems and Structures Texts and Contexts Affordances and Design Limitations Commercializing Gameplay The Velvet Rope Cross-Promotion and Branding Immersive Third-Party Advertising Brand Ambassadors When Stories, Designs, and Commercial Priorities Align Conclusion 4. From Rules of Play to Censorship The Primacy of Rules in Digital Games Design(ed) Rules Written Rules, Rulebooks, and Codes of Conduct Who Follows the Rules Anyway? Why Breaking Rules Is Important Negotiating Encoded Rules Children Bending, but Not Breaking, the Rules Ice Goths and BarbieBoys Flash Mobs and Copycats Playing in the Margins of Manoeuvre Conclusion 5. Safety First, Privacy Later Children’s Data and Privacy The COPPA Rule Revised Reframing Privacy Protections as Safety Mechanisms Privacy Policies “Safety” by Design Safety as a Key Selling Point Freedom of Expression as a Collateral Cost of Safety Secret Spaces and “Unsafe” Places Unsafe and Risky Play Conclusion 6. Playing as Making and Creating Playing and Making Digital Games Children’s Literacy, Agency, and Cultural Rights Terms of Service, Terms of Play Who Owns Children’s Content in Digital Playgrounds? New Creative Opportunities, Same Old Terms User Rights in Minecraft Fandom and Fair Use as Consumer Practice Conclusion 7. The Politics of Children’s Digital Play Where We Are, and How We Got Here The (Four) Problems with Digital Playgrounds Privacy, Secrets, and Selfhood Censorship and Freedom of Expression Ownership, Authorship, and Copyright Commercial Content and Control The Digital Playground as Public Sphere Bibliography
