Word: barad
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...Barad is exploring ways to create multimedia toys for other company brands, including Polly Pocket, Cabbage Patch and See 'N Say. "This is only the beginning," she says in a glass-walled office that sports towering early versions of Barbie and her plastic paramour Ken. Barad vows Mattel will be a leader in interactive playthings...
...Barad, the mother of two teenage boys, regards multimedia games as the gateway to computer literacy and views the mostly untapped girls' market with missionary zeal. "It's sad," she says, "that girls start out with an equal interest in computers, but then we lose them at six years old. My boys are online probably eight hours a day. But my goddaughters, and other girls with whom I am familiar, have never had software that is as intriguing to them as it has been for boys." Females account for about 20% of the $4.9 billion global market for games...
...Barad plans to let the sales charts answer the sociological questions. She reckons that 99% of all U.S. girls between the ages of three and 10 own at least one Barbie doll, and the average girl owns a total of eight. Moreover, some 3 million girls who own Barbies have access to home computers, so it's not hard to imagine them clamoring for the new CD-ROMs. Analyst Taylor predicts the company will sell 200,000 of the programs this holiday season and could meet its goal of 1 million units in the coming year. Just to make sure...
Rivals such as Girl Games and Her Interactive, two new developers of multimedia titles for girls, are cheering Barad on. "Mattel can do some great things to expand that market for all of us," says Mauricio Polack, director of sales and marketing for Her Interactive, which last year unveiled a CD-ROM called McKenzie & Co. that is based on high school life. "Mattel is riding on our coattails to a certain extent," Polack says, "and then we'll ride on Mattel...
...course, companies have tried girls' software before. Sega used a task force of women game developers to bring out titles in the early 1990s. The team often put strong female characters in what were basically boys' games. The effort has since been shelved. But Barad says she feels "personally responsible" for opening the computer world to girls. "Equal tools mean equal opportunity," she says. "You can explore and create on the computer in boundless ways. I want girls to have those skills at their fingertips." And that wouldn't be bad for the grownups at Mattel either...