Dream Life

By: Olivia Stone

The artifact that I selected to analyze and discuss is the game ‘Dream Life’. I chose this game because it relates and exemplifies many of the concepts and topics that were discussed throughout the semester such as girls’ bedroom culture, girls as producers of cultural media, and the “can-do” vs “at-risk” girl. Dream Life was released in 2005 by the company Hasbro and is now discontinued and no longer being manufactured and sold by Hasbro. It is now still widely available on resell sites such as eBay and Poshmark. Dream Life was a plug & play game that had to be plugged into a television or computer and was controlled by a wireless remote control that came with the game. The console system for the game was designed to look like a portable CD player that can open and inside is a wireless remote which was pretty high tech for the time.

The Dream Life game is a simulation game that follows the life of a high school girl for 60 days and 3 seasons. The object of the game is to maintain the 3 point bars that are at the bottom of the screen which are Friends, Lifestyle, and Fashion. While maintaining these bars the player also has to go to school and complete assignments by specific due dates. Once the player is past the introduction stage of the game there are multiple options of activities to do in the game. In the house, the player can visit the girls’ bedroom, the kitchen, and there is access to the closet which allows the player to change the outfit on the avatar.

This plug & play game was released in 2005 by Hasbro and this can tell us about the game's purpose because we have more cultural context by knowing the year it was released. 2005 was the era of Juicy Couture velour tracksuits and the crop top with low rise jeans and this game reflects that with the outfit choices the player can pick and also buy at the mall.

The intended goals or aims of the artifact was to provide a fun game for girls between the ages of eight and fourteen to mimic a “dream life” for a girl. At the time that it was released technology was not as advanced as it is currently and plug & play games were more widely popular than the larger gaming systems that are popular now. Other games that were also popular at the time were Tomagotchi’s as well as Pixel Chix’. These two games were similar because they were electronic games that were simulations of everyday life with a twist that would appeal to young girls. Dream Life has shopping, talking to friends and boys, doing activities in their rooms; which in 2005 were all seen as stereotypical activities that girls were interested in.

This game relates to girlhood as a devalued subject because it has connections to the “Can do vs at-risk girl” article that analyzes the constant tight rope girls walk on from being a “can- do” girl or failing and being considered an “at-risk” girl. The moral panic when girls step outside the box that society has them in devalues girlhood because it shows that if a girl is not a “can-do” girl then she has no value and this game having elements that reflect this helps it relate to girlood as a devalued subject.

This relates to the field of girlhood studies because there are different aspects of the game that relate to topics discussed throughout the semester in class and in the readings such as bedroom culture, girls and their use of media, as well as the notion of the “can-do vs the at-risk” girl.

The bedroom is one part of the game that is visited every day and it is where you can study, do activities, chat with friends, and change your clothes while playing the game. We discussed bedrooms and bedroom culture during the semester so when I saw the bedroom in the game there were many elements that stood out to me to address. In the article “Productive Spaces: Girl’s bedrooms as sites of cultural production” the author states, “later generations of girls have similarly used their bedrooms as dominant sites for cultural engagement, McRobbie and Garber devoted the last section of their essay to ‘‘teenyboppers,’’ the young female fans of pop stars”(Kearney,127). This article by Kearney analyzes girls' bedrooms and how they contribute to girls' culture and this game is an example of many of the points highlighted in the article. This quote also relates to the game because the design of the game is quite literally a portable CD player which would have been used by teenage girls to listen to the music they were fans of and considered “teenyboppers” for. The term is meant for younger girls that are big fans of a particular band or artist. The bedroom in the game is a site for cultural engagement because this is where the radio and phone is as well as the activities that were selected from the Rec Center. When you select activities to participate in from the Rec Center the supplies for the activity shows up in the bedroom and this is where you can click on and interact with the activity. Doing these things in the bedroom supports the statements made in the article because the bedroom is where Dream Life has programmed for girls to do these culturally engaging activities, in the privacy of her own digital room.

Another concept mentioned in class that is exemplified in Dream Life is the “can-do” versus the “at-risk” girl. In the article “The “Can-Do” Versus the “At-Risk” Girl” by Harris, the author states, “while can-dos are optimistic, self-inventing, and success-oriented, other young women’s behavior has become a focus for a more general moral concern about juvenile delinquency, nihilism, and antisocial attitudes”( Harris,24). The Dream Life game relates to this because at the beginning of the game the first time the player clicks on the pile of books in the bedroom, the prompt that reads: “Everything you do takes time. Will you spend your time shopping, making friends, playing sports, or studying?The choice is yours!” The vibe that is emitted from this makes it feel as though studying should be of importance but the other aspects of the game will dangle over the players head along with the need to study. Aspects of Dream Life that also relate to the “can-do” vs “at-risk” of the interactions the game prompts girls to have with other characters as well as the different activities the player has to complete each day.

One aspect of the game that stands out to me as a representation of the “can-do” versus the “at-risk” girl is the point bars that are at the bottom of the screen for the whole game and they represent Friends, Fashion, and Lifestyle and these are maintained by interacting with friends and answering prompts correctly, buying and changing the clothing on the avatar, as well as doing the activities that are available at the Rec Center. Girls that do not do the activities that they are supposed to be doing such as homework and their chores are viewed as “at-risk” for being a delinquent and becoming a young mother. Of course, in the game, the player does not become a delinquent or a young mother if they do not maintain the point bars but it is a lot harder to achieve things in the game such being allowed to purchase a phone or a tv from your parents in the game.

Another part of the game exemplified the concepts discussed in the article “Learning to be A Girl, Learning to Be A Women” is the dialogue that is used and the underlying social cues placed throughout the game. In the article the author states, “Children learn what is considered “normal” by observing the world around them—whether it’s that mothers care for kids while fathers (if present) leave in the morning to go to work, or the other way around. These are the messages their open minds take in”(Lipkin 12). The underlying messages in this game that girls can pick up on while playing is the element of when the game has you create your own best-friend, they can also only be a girl. This sends a message to the girls playing that they should only be friends with girls because that’s what other girls do. Another underlying message in the game that girls can take in would be the chores in the kitchen being one of the only activities that can be completed in the house. The chores are to clean the dishes, set the table, sweep, and feed the dog. This is also something that can be used to understand how the game relates to girlhood because doing chores in the kitchen is typically viewed as being a female's job and it is also telling that the chores are to do the dishes and to set the table instead of to take out the trash.

The Dream Life game helps us understand girls and girlhood more because it represents a plethora of different interests that young girls have. It also has many underlying elements that are known to be things that girls are supposed to be into like going to the mall and only having female friends. All of the elements of the game such as the layout and daily tasks, the map destinations, clothing selection, choices of activities, what types of friends the player can have, etc., working together helps to show the activities that girls in 2005 may have been interested in. The game is a useful tool for Girlhood studies researchers to look at and analyze to understand girls and girlhood and what that even means.

In the article, “Girlhood- It’s Complicated” by Franz, the author states one of the reasons for creating a Girlhood exhibit was because, “We also wanted to signal to girls today (and those who experienced or witnessed girlhoods in the past) that the museum acknowledges the substantial obstacles they face or have faced while also celebrating their creative responses to these obstacles”(Franz, 139). This also can relate to this project and why Dream Life should be part of a digital exhibit and why it matters to the history of girls’ culture. One day in the future there will need to be evidence of what girls were doing in their spare time and this game console will be a piece of evidence that shows things that girls were interested in or at least expected to be interested in.

Dream Life belongs in a digital exhibit on girls’ culture because it has elements that portray how girls and girlhood were viewed during the time the game was released and can be a piece of insight into girls’ culture. People should know about Dream Life and its history and politics because it is a representation of how the culture of girls and girlhood was viewed and portrayed in 2005 and during the time the game was manufactured and sold. It is also important to history because at the time the game was released it was an increase from the plug & play already being sold on the market. Dream Life had a remote control that was wireless from the game console and another interesting part is that compared to other games on the market at the time it was fairly expensive (Billiam).

It is significant to our understanding of culture more broadly because it represents that girlhood is something that is similar for most girls between the ages of 8-14. There is a very specific niche this game fulfills and it is the stereotypical young girl who cares about having a dream life and wanting to play a game that simulates being able to have a “dream” life.

Someone who did not play this as a young girl or as a child if they were not a girl would be able to gain an idea of what girlhood culture is and what girlhood is in society. The Dream Life plug & play that was released by Hasbro in 2005 has many elements that represent girls’ culture and girlhood. Dream Life is important to showcase girls’ culture in a digital exhibit because it exemplifies many of the theories and concepts discussed in class during the semester.

Resources

Billiam. “Dream Life: Strange Plug & Play Simulation Game.” YouTube, Billiam, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/?watch=.

Franz, Kathleen, Nancy Bercaw, Kenneth Cohen, Mireya Loza, and Sam Vong. “Girlhood (It’s Complicated).” The Public Historian 43, no. 1, (2021): 138-163.

Harris, Anita. “Chapter 1: The ‘Can-Do’ Girl versus the ‘At-Risk’ Girl.” Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century, 13-35. Routledge, 2004.

Kearney, Mary Celeste. “Productive Spaces: Girls’ Bedrooms as Sites of Cultural Production.” Journal of Children and Media 1, no. 2 (July 2007): 126–41.

Lipkin, Elline. “Chapter 1: Learning to be a Girl, Learning to be a Woman.” Girls’ Studies, 1-

39. Seal Studies, 2009.