Goldie Princess: Skin Doctor is a web-based “doctor game” on the website girlsgogames.com, and published by SPIL GAMES, a dutch video game developer. It was ranked among the top 100 games of 2017 and 2018, and is also tagged as a “makeover” game.
In this game, you play as a dermatologist helping “Goldie” (Rapunzel) with a “skincare emergency,” since she has a lot of acne, hair, and boils on her face. The mechanics consist of drag and drop surgical and beautification tools. From this, dynamics arise where players identify the type of skin problem and how to cure it, though in my opinion, this game in particular gives too much guidance so there is no challenge. Instead, the main aesthetics of this game are sensation, submission, and fantasy. Sensation and fantasy go hand in hand, as the game is visually stimulating and sound effects help the player believe they are a doctor, but because there isn’t challenge involved, it is a mindless game. One could argue that the aesthetic of discovery is involved too, since you are “discovering” a new possible life career, but I’ll get more into that later.
Both the game’s description and its visuals perpetuate familiar beauty standards and roles for women. While yes, it could be argued that this is an empowering game because you are a “doctor,” the “problem” is beauty-related—diminishing the potential problems girls have to bad skin and pregnancy. You could role-playing as a brain surgeon, but you’re actually a glorified pimple popper. Lastly, it also perpetuates non-realistic beauty expectations for girls (no acne and no pores??) and presents bad skin as a problem by visually representing bad skin as having bugs on it—when in actuality it is a natural physical property.
Aside from all of the above problems, something I want to mention are the suggested games that pop up as you progress to the next stage. The two games I got were Find Rapunzel’s Ball Outfit and Paris Instagram Selfie. This is not technically part of the game itself, but still presents another issue that perpetuate stereotypical gender norms for girls and again, diminish a girl’s personality and problems to “Oh no! I don’t know what to wear to the ball” and “What angle is best for this selfie.”
Though these games clearly are not games that positively affirm the female identity and instead supports traditional notions of femininity, the harsh reality is that all of the games on girlsgogames.com are very similar, and played an integral role in shaping how young girls grew up from 2010 to 2018. Thankfully, the website has come under harsh fire in the past few years for being sexist and for sexualizing women and has since been discontinued, so one can only hope that other games of a similar genre are being critically played as well.
Discussion Question: What effect does choosing Disney Princesses to be the main character have on the overall empowering message of the game? Does it detract or add to it? Why?
