DollHouse

Game Theory.  That was the name of the shade of Essie nail polish that my mom wore every day on her toes when I was younger.  My twin sister and I would dread the padding of my mom’s footsteps ascending from the kitchen to the playroom.  Her vibrant, neon coral nail polish with pink undertones peeking through the door frame was a tell-tale sign that our fun for the day was being thwarted by broccoli and dino-nuggets.  DollHouse was our meat and potatoes.  

DollHouse, coined by my pigtail-wearing twin sister, was our favorite game to play.  We would hide in the playroom for hours with our Barbie dolls, creating fantastical narratives with plots, themes and even character arcs.  We were the prepubescent’s J.D. Salinger.  The game changed every time we played DollHouse, but the rules stayed the same: we were the only people who were allowed to play.  

The onset of my pink-and-Barbie-loving phase can be attributed to my parent’s purchase of a Barbie Dream House for our fifth birthday.   The five-year-old’s three-story paradise was equipped with a lofty master bedroom that connected to a private suite dedicated to makeup, music, and hair.  The only way for the dolls to access the second floor was to embark on a not so slippery journey down the outdoor water slide that connected to an outdoor hot tub on the second floor.  The outdoor queen-sized plunge bath was attached to a living room and bathroom, both containing faux, state-of-the-art appliances.  Downstairs was a luxurious kitchen decorated in rich hues of coral and imperial red, supplemented with a dining room fit for the perfect nuclear family.  There was even a garage for Barbie to park and refuel her magenta moped. 

DollHouse was the game, but Barbie Dream House was the blueprint.  We made the dolls settle down with family’s, create friendships, and even scour for romantic relationships accordingly.  We changed the game, but only within the bounds of what the game had already designed for us.  We had the power to tell the story, but DollHouse chose the genre every time.  

Every Sunday last year at 4:00 pm, my rose gold laptop was the setting and my remote research internship was the theme.  The plot: write literature reviews on social science research topics to build better education systems during the pandemic.  My chosen conflict of interest was gamification.  

Gamification, the application of game design elements in non-game contexts, is a pedagogy of training that facilitates play.  Game-theoretic settings require a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.  Players solve interactive, goal-oriented problems in an environment where the metric of success is closely tied to a low-level value chosen by the game designer, and their behavior is being modified according to the game design mechanics. Game design does not assume engagement and interest, but instead it seeks to generate it.  Gamification can serve as a useful tool in educational and marketing contexts, but raises ethical concerns for its use for behavior modification of players in various non-game contexts.  

The game design mechanics of DollHouse may have been childlike, but they permeated through our play.  Whether we realized it or not, our Barbies were our twelve-inch plastic life coaches.  Barbie and her Dream House equivocated to success of the game. The Dream House was a teaching tool of what we should attain, and our Barbies showed us how we should be in order to achieve it.  This knowledge was implicit but it was still present.  Dollhouse was entrenched in engagement and entertainment, and we were the players who changed our behaviors according to the game design.