

{"id":25537,"date":"2024-10-04T11:56:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T15:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/?p=25537"},"modified":"2024-10-04T11:56:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T15:56:13","slug":"driven-by-play-a-reflection-on-carmen-sandiego-freedom-and-games-between-1980-and-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/driven-by-play-a-reflection-on-carmen-sandiego-freedom-and-games-between-1980-and-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"Driven by Play: A Reflection on Carmen Sandiego, Freedom!, and Games between 1980 and 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I came to The Strong Museum to study Carmen Sandiego, the shadowy villain who stars in one of the most successful educational game series in video game history, but I left knowing a lot more about the early days of the educational game industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a Latinx literature scholar and lifelong gamer, whose research has been focused primarily on AfroLatinx literature and culture (<a href=\"https:\/\/utpress.utexas.edu\/9781477329146\/invisibility-and-influence\/\">my first book<\/a> came out in&nbsp;June 2024). My research on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/00064246.2022.2007345\">Miles Morales<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/across-the-spider-verse-and-the-latino-legacy-of-spider-man-205892\">the Latino legacy of Spider-Man<\/a> has been part of the journey to my second book project, which is currently titled <em>Gaming Latinidad<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being at The Strong has made me rethink aspects of my first book\u2014it\u2019s really clear to me how MUCH my love of play and the study of play influenced my approach to AfroLatinx life writing in <a href=\"https:\/\/utpress.utexas.edu\/9781477329146\/invisibility-and-influence\/\"><em>Invisibility and Influence<\/em><\/a> and how that book so seamlessly led to my game studies research. From my introduction (which focuses on Veronica Chambers\u2019 use of Double Dutch jump rope in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.veronicachambers.com\/mamas-girl\"><em>Mama\u2019s Girl<\/em><\/a> as a metaphor for her Afro-Panamanian girlhood) to my book\u2019s final chapter (which examines Ariana Brown\u2019s and Jaquira D\u00edaz\u2019s AfroLatinx girlhood), play invades nearly every chapter. I examine the playful, yet taut tension, of \u201cthe dozens\u201d in Piri Thomas\u2019s exploration of AfroLatinidad. My chapter on Marta Moreno Vega\u2019s memoirs and a short autobiographical essay by Lourdes Casal is all about a concept of AfroLatinidad that focuses on the playful interaction, rather than competition, between Blackness and Latinidad. Even in my discussion of the under-researched work of Pura Belpr\u00e9, I am drawn to her folklore and writing for children of color, areas that haven\u2019t been viewed as sufficiently scholarly or \u201cserious.\u201d It was too play-centered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This brings me back to Carmen Sandiego and my current book project, <em>Gaming Latinidad<\/em>. While I originally thought a love for thinking about medium and genre tied my first and second book projects together, I think both are truly united by thinking about play. And \u201cPlay\u201d is having a wonderful surge in scholarship. In particular, thinking about race, play, and identity can lead to many different conclusions, whether it is the Black phenomenological approach of Aaron Trammel in <em>Repairing Play <\/em>and <em>Privileged Play<\/em>, to the feminist approach of Shira Chess and Amanda Phillips, to queer game studies and Black game studies, and beyond. Kishonna L. Gray in <em>Intersectional Tech<\/em> and Arayol Prater, a researcher of Black Play and Culture at The Strong, are concerned with how objects are played with and the context of that play. Again, I think of the Double Dutch rope, which Prater so beautifully contextualizes in his Strong blog post, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/toyetic-oppression-black-toys-and-black-people\/\">\u201cToyetic Oppression\u201d<\/a>\u2014after all, it\u2019s just a couple jump ropes, if you don\u2019t present them without the cultural and gendered context &nbsp;of Double Dutch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in many ways, CONTEXT was the major takeaway from my hours spent in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library Reading Room. I learned more about the emergence of software companies and the specialization of companies into \u201cgame companies.\u201d By exploring the Br\u00f8derbund and Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium\/Corporation (MECC) collections, I saw the stunning changes that occurred in the software industry from their beginnings in the 1970s and early 80s to their unceremonious ends in the late 1990s. In addition, in watching media coverage preserved in the 1up Games media collection in the early 2000s, I feel like I better understand three decades of gaming history. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-1-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Image of a focus group report on a game called Africa Trek From the Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-25539\" style=\"width:265px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-1-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-1-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-1-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-1-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-1-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">From the Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>One aspect that drew my attention as a scholar of race and ethnicity was the incredibly limited attention to race and ethnicity in media coverage and marketing research within this time period. Both Br\u00f8derbund and MECC didn\u2019t really consider ethno-race (like people who identify their ethnic background as Hispanic [or non-Hispanic] and their race as Black, Asian, White, etc.) as a category worth tracking. The only major exception to this was when they were afraid of a potential controversy. In the MECC collection, I found a focus group report on a game called <em>Africa Trek <\/em>(officially published as <em>Africa Trail<\/em>) that brought together a handful of Black participants (and one white participant) to provide feedback to avoid the controversy that embroiled the earlier MECC game <em>Freedom!<\/em>, leading to the game being pulled from the MECC catalog. Of course, no other focus groups for MECC considered racial or ethnic identity, and I found that even market research surveys sent by both Br\u00f8derbund and MECC never asked for ethno-racial identity. I certainly grew to appreciate how much things have changed so that groups like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theesa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/ESA_2023_Essential_Facts_FINAL_07092023-1.pdf\">Entertainment Software Association<\/a> (ESA) now collect much more data on the identities of gamers and game developers alike.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-2-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration of the origins of Carmen Sandiego from the Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-25540\" style=\"width:238px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-2-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-2-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-2-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-2-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/RMills-Blog-post-Figure-2-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">  From the Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>This lack of ethno-racial category data has been a major difficultly in my research, and it feeds the common idea that there are few people of color who develop or play games. And this is why Carmen Sandiego, a character I grew to love as a child who watched the <em>Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Where_in_the_World_Is_Carmen_Sandiego%3F_(game_show)\">game show<\/a> in the 1990s, has been a bit of an obsession for me. Carmen has never really been a fully developed character (as most villains in video games aren\u2019t). But she is also one of only a few that, based on name alone, a girl might see as Hispanic\/Latina. The history I learned about Carmen at The Strong just further complicates it. First, I found the origins of Carmen Sandiego \u2014\u201cshe\u201d was supposed to be a \u201che\u201d: a male villain named Estaban Devious (of Andorra; first name misspelled to have two A\u2019s). One of the most significant discussions of Carmen Sandiego can be found in David L. Craddock\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Break-Out-Launched-Gaming-Revolution\/dp\/0764353225\"><em>Break Out: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Revolution<\/em><\/a> (2017), which I read at The Strong.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"638\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Picture1-1024x638.png\" alt=\"Archival documents from From the Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.\" class=\"wp-image-25545\" style=\"width:566px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Picture1-1024x638.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Picture1-300x187.png 300w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Picture1-768x479.png 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Picture1-1536x957.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Picture1-2048x1276.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">From the Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>In <em>Break Out<\/em>, interviews claim that Carmen Sandiego is not actually Hispanic. Gary Carlston asserts, \u201cWe came up with a back story about her maiden name being something Swedish to deflect concern about her being a bad role model for Hispanic girls.\u201d However, this history doesn\u2019t exist in the archival documents, where there is no discussion of making her Hispanic or Swedish or having a maiden name. In fact, most of the discussion is about a reluctance to make more Carmen games despite their wild popularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That makes one question: is Carmen Sandiego Swedish? Hispanic? Or just an \u201cexotic\u201d symbol with no past that can appeal to the \u201cany girl?\u201d At the same time, if she\u2019s not Hispanic, then why was Gina Rodriguez so obsessed with her that she spearheaded a revival of the character on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/80167821\">Netflix<\/a> (2019-2021, 4 seasons) which aimed to provide her a true backstory, solidifying her Latin American heritage (Argentinian, to be specific)? The main theme in that show (which is great, by the way) is that Carmen is misunderstood on all sides\u2014by the ACME agents and by the villain organization VILE. She is an orphan who doesn\u2019t know who she is, but that everyone else wants to use for their advantage. The Carmen Sandiego whose face is always shadowed by her red fedora has been projected on, for good and for ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know there is so much more to learn about Carmen Sandiego and the Latinx legacy of video games. I wasn\u2019t sure what, if anything, I would find at The Strong. I am so glad I came with enthusiasm and an open mind. While there might be a dearth of records on the very real presence of Black and white Latinos, Latinas, and Latinxs in video games, I continue to find our history in the gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>By Regina Marie Mills, Strong Research Fellow (Summer 2024)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came to The Strong Museum to study Carmen Sandiego, the shadowy villain who stars in one of the most successful educational game series in video game history, but I left knowing a lot more about the early days of the educational game industry.<br \/>\nI am a Latinx literature scholar and lifelong gamer, whose research has been focused primarily on AfroLatinx literature and culture (my first book came out in&nbsp;June 2024). My research on Miles Morales and the Latino legacy of [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"7228,7006,8007,11219,9333,7913","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,369,368,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-brian-sutton-smith-library-and-archives-of-play-at-the-strong","category-guest-blogger","category-research-fellow","category-video-games","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Driven by Play: A Reflection on Carmen Sandiego, Freedom!, and Games between 1980 and 2000 - The Strong National Museum of Play<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/driven-by-play-a-reflection-on-carmen-sandiego-freedom-and-games-between-1980-and-2000\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Driven by Play: A Reflection on Carmen Sandiego, Freedom!, and Games between 1980 and 2000 - The Strong National Museum of Play\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I came to The Strong Museum to study Carmen Sandiego, the shadowy villain who stars in one of the most successful educational game series in video game history, but I left knowing a lot more about the early days of the educational game industry. I am a Latinx literature scholar and lifelong gamer, whose research has been focused primarily on AfroLatinx literature and culture (my first book came out in&nbsp;June 2024). 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