Open the file called "typical computer game" on the cluttered desktop of your mind and you may encounter a well-deserved – if not entirely accurate – picture: a soulless, pointlessly violent exercise that rewards only the paranoid eye and the spastic trigger finger. Got that image firmly in mind? Now forget it and consider Princess Maker 2, a somewhat subversive – some might think offensive – game geared to bring out all the paternal, responsible, nurturing, and otherwise shameful attributes that lie dormant in the heart of every joystick junkie.
In Princess Maker 2, the player assumes the role of a royal caretaker given charge of a girl’s upbringing in a mythical medieval society, with the ultimate goal of grooming her into princess material. Choose your daughter’s name, blood type, and date of birth, and don’t forget to save some money each year for her birthday gift or you will – I guarantee it – feel rotten when funds don’t permit one. All aspects of the young lady’s upbringing must be overseen: education, morals, health, employment, adventures, vacations, birthdays, diet, father-daughter chats – the works.
Life’s physical aspects must also be attended to. You will watch the young miss grow from a gangly preadolescent to a mature young woman. As she ages, expect teenage moodiness and rebellions, spells of sickness, adventures in hostile lands, emotional crises, and hard financial times. Somehow it’s all worth it seeing her smiling on her 13th birthday, happy, healthy, and proud.
Princess Maker 2 plays tricks with your heart. After only a year, I had become fanatically protective of Rhalina, born September 13, blood type A. Determined that she would always be on an equal footing with the world, I eschewed low-end homemaker skills and concentrated on the hard science that would help her make sense of the universe, the poetry and dance that would soften her soul and strengthen her body, the religious training that would fortify her knowledge that her world is a happy place … and the combat skills to kick the living bejeezus out of anybody who tries to tell her otherwise.
To many, Princess Maker 2 will seem horribly sexist, sick, and wrong. The fact is, the game is only as good or bad as the player wishes it to be. Personally, I can’t think of many games that – never mind the bizarre cultural undertones – so consistently reward the sensitive guardian.
Princess Maker 2: US$24.95. Ignite: +1 (714) 833 3838, or on the Web.
This article originally appeared in the September issue of Wired magazine.
