The Hasbro / EA partnership is fully realised today with the launch of Littlest Pet Shop Online, an immersive online world filled with animals desperately struggling to keep from being crushed under the weight of their own massive skulls. The game is all about decorating, customisation, and of course, mini-games, offering fun for “girls” whether they opt to play for free or buy a subscription for $US6.95 a month.

I’d give you my impressions, but all I get when I try to log in is the hourglass seen above, with an adorable little cat that keeps waving at me until I return to the login prompt. I am hoping that’s not the full game. Perhaps it’s server queues. Perhaps it’s because I am a filthy, stinking boy.

“EA is at an exciting milestone, diving into the realm of virtual worlds for girls with the launch of LITTLEST PET SHOP ONLINE,” said Chip Lange, General Manager of EA’s Hasbro Division. “LITTLEST PET SHOP ONLINE is an incredible game and community destination, as well as an environment that parents know they can trust. We’re delighted to offer LITTLEST PET SHOP fans a new and exciting way to connect online with friends through their favourite pets.”

Littlest Pet Shop fans of both genders can also purchase LPSO Pets at participating retailers. LPSO Pets are plushies with sewn-in codes for 30-day premium memberships to the game and special in-game rewards. Maybe one of the rewards includes getting past this hourglass.

Every year there are two shows at the Tokyo Game Show: the games that are played and the clothes that are worn. While cosplayers have the market cornered on outrageous spectacle, it’s the booth companions that often provide the most revealing look into a company’s corporate culture.

“The traditional booth companion uniform — you know, the short skirts, the high heels, the vinyl — are designed to appeal to men,” says Xbox Japan’s Yuichiro Aoki. “Our uniforms are designed to appeal to women.” That in turn, Aoki believes, will make the booth companions feel more comfortable. “We didn’t want to force the girls to look sexy. We wanted their appeal to come out naturally. Maybe this is just my opinion, but I think that’s when women look their most beautiful.”

Booth uniforms tend to run on cycles for some companies, while others change it every year. Last year, Japanese newspapers reported that Microsoft would be revealing a new booth companion uniform. While the company has had varying degrees of success, Microsoft has been picked for best booth companion uniform by game magazine Famitsu year after year after year at TGS. Famitsu quoted one attendee as saying, “Microsoft’s outfits didn’t seem to reveal much at first, but look again, and…”

In uniform-crazy Japan, there was considerable buzz about what the new Microsoft 2008 uniform would look like. Xbox Japan marketing exec Jyoji Sakaguchi said, “Every year, our booth companion outfits get an extremely favourable reception, and they are very popular among women. This year, we’re going to finally introduce a new design for the outfits. During the booth companion fitting, things like ‘Wow, I want to wear this outside work!’ were overheard about the cool costume.”

The design process began in early fall, and a hand-made prototype was created before the show. After it was approved, Japanese craftspeople produced the finished product. This year, Microsoft once again rolled out last year’s model.

Uniforms dominate the Japanese landscape. It’s not only cops, firefighters and train station employees who wear standardized outfits, but elevator operators, office ladies and taxi drivers. While researching the book I am writing on Japanese schoolgirls, it’s been surprising to see how the design of uniforms often dictate to young women where they want to go to junior high or high school — often as much or more than academic reputation!

“Often when booth companions from other companies are on their break, they say that they think the Xbox booth companion outfits are so cute,” explains Aoki. A lot of the girls who apply to be booth companions say they did so because they like the uniform.” Microsoft isn;t trying to lure other companies’ booth companions. It’s not like that at all.

At 32-years-old, Aoki is Microsoft’s creative director for the Tokyo Game Show. Fashionably dressed in a black sweater, blue button-up and camo pants, he’s got a clip board in his hand, ear piece in his ear. The first days are always the most nerve racking, he says. Besides handling the Xbox 360 TV and print ads in Japan, Aoki overseas the TGS booth lay-out, any graphic design work that needs doing as well as conceptualizing the look of the booth companions. “I was heavily involved in designing the uniforms,” he says. “We wanted it to be modern and something that the girls could actually wear outside.”

And the girls do want to wear it outside. “But Aoki-san won’t give me a uniform to take home!” bubbles 23-year-old booth companion Megumi. “This uniform is so cute, and it’s comfortable — it’s actually wearable.” This isn’t the first time Megumi has worn the Xbox Japan TGS outfit — she was one of 10 or so booth companions involved in the design process, offering opinions on what kind of clothes she would want to wear. While other companies dictate TGS wear to companions from on high, Xbox Japan involved them from the start. A closer look shows how playful the uniform is with visual gags like “Information ?” written on the seat of the uniform’s shorts.

Design-wise, Xbox Japan tried to message the freedom and customisation that the Xbox 360 platform gives players. So while users can swap out hard drives or use different coloured controllers, the booth companions can do likewise: Belts come in green and silver, and there are hats for companions who want to wear them. “I think the hats are so adorable,” gushes Megumi. There are metal star pins that the girls can put where they like. “It’s easier to stand in cowboy boots than in high heels all day,” adds Megumi. The ability to swap out accessories gives the uniforms customised, while keeping a standardized look. Megumi’s favourite thing about the uniform is that, around her neck, she wears an Xbox LIVE-type gamer card with her name and photo on it. “I think it’s really cool,” she says. “It personalizes the experience, for me.”

Out of the approximately 120 girls that auditioned in late summer, only 40 or so made the grade. Those that did attended a lecture on manners to ensure they interact with customers in a polite and respectful fashion. Decorum and manners play a large part in Japanese culture — ditto for the Tokyo Game Show. As part of their training, the companions also took a five hour seminar about the Xbox brand and Xbox LIVE. To help facilitate the experience, the booth companions were broken down into groups lead by core staff. So someone like Megumi who has experience working with Xbox Japan would oversee and help train new girls. At the end of the show each day, all the girls lined up in front of the booth, posed for photos and then bowed in unison.

“We don’t have a predetermined idea of what kind of girls we want,” says Aoki. Uniforms run small, medium and large — but even then, it’s possible for the girls to customise the outfit. Straps on the back of the suit make it possible for quick and easily tailoring: tighten the straps for those girls who want a tighter fit and loosen them for girls who need more room. The shorts can be rolled up and buttoned in place for those who want their legs to appear longer and can be rolled down to minimize unflattering thighs. Because the uniform is open in the chest, revealing a bikini-type top, it’s also possible to accessorize with a stole-type scarf for those companions hesitant to walk around with their shirt open all day long. Xbox Japan and its design team have thought of everything that can make the companions more comfortable as they do their job.

“Because the girls are in shorts and wearing stockings,” says Aoki, “they also don’t have to worrying about the kinds of things girls in mini-skirts have to.” Meaning? “They don’t have to worry about people seeing their underpants and can just relax. Our goal is to make sure the girls feel comfortable with the uniforms and comfortable with the Xbox 360,” Aoki says, “because honestly, that will motivate them during the show.”

Or at least the brains of adolescent girls, who were the subject of the study, funded by Tetris marketer Blue Planet Software. Adolescent girls’ brains are still developing, as any adolescent boy can tell you, so their brains are more susceptible to the sort of change Haier was looking for, and change he indeed found. The girls were given MRI scans before and after three months of Tetris, and after the testing period it was found that certain areas (in blue above) showed greater efficiency, while others (in red) showed thicker cortexes, indicating more brain matter.

Future benefits of this study, says co-investigator Dr. Richard Haier, might be to “demonstrate that a player of Tetris does see lasting effects that generalize to other activity,” showing for example that engaging in activities like playing some games might help fight off the mental decline that occurs with aging.

The full study is being published in Thursday’s BMC Research Notes, but we get the general gist. Adolescent girls who play Tetris on a regular basis grow up to be completely awesome.

How Tetris Changes Your Brain [Wired]

The modelling was light and the cosplay often stuck somewhere between frightening and confusing. Here, you be the judge.

This week’s Famitsu has an interview with Hideo Kojima and Metal Gear Solid Touch producer Yasuyo Watanabe. The headline for the story is very careful to accentuate that Watanabe is female. How careful, you ask?

So careful that, literally, the headline reads: “Interview with Metal Gear Solid Touch creators Hideo Kojima and its first-timer FEMALE producer”.

The red font is not just our emphasis. Look at that photo. Those two kanji, in red, are “josei“, meaning “female”.

Let’s back up and go over this again: the Cliff’s Notes version of the title of the article is basically “New Game Made by a Man Named Hideo Kojima and a Woman Whose Name We Will Mention in the Story Itself, Though Not in this Title”.

Is this the, uhh, nicest way to report this? Probably not. Maybe they could approach it a bit differently, say “Interview with Hideo Kojima and Some n00b Producer”, and then in the article, it could just come out naturally that she’s a woman. I mean, there’s a photo of her in there, and everything.

Famitsu is typically read by schoolboys in convenient stores before school on Friday. Is this kind of nigh-subliminal sexism really the kind of thing we should be exposing them to? And thus open a thousand avenues to discussion of Japanese society.

[via Famitsu]

Simon Cottee once again subjects his better-half to the rigours of Team Fortress 2, this time after the Heavy update. Laughter, silliness and high-pitched girly screams (mostly from me) await.

GF TF2 Heavy Update [Lavalevel]

My choice of classic line: “Can you actually make her have small boobs?” No, Simon’s girlfriend, it’s Conan.

GF AoC [Youtube, thanks Simon]

I’m presuming that very few of you reading this are young females between the ages of six and 12 who love to karaoke to Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love, or dance to the best of Fergie and Good Charlotte. The songlist is intimidatingly marquee, though, and one of the major takeaways from having the game demoed for me was just how far games have forged in getting the music biz to recognise their power in helping label artists stay relevant to a new audience.

And while Boogie SuperStar might not be a game specifically for you or for me, I think that’s pretty important – equally cool was the motion recognition tech.

It’ll come bundled with a microphone for pretty standard-looking pitch and note duration-based karaoke, but for the dancing portion, you hold the Wii remote and Nunchuk and do whatever moves you’re prompted to do. Simple stuff, like twirling or arm-rolling, but the guy who was demonstrating for me (yeah, a guy) seemed to be able to move really naturally and have the game still clearly understand which moves he was doing.

The fun part was that the on-screen avatar (characters are fully customisable, by the way) did whatever moves the guy was doing even when they were wrong – in other words, rather than lead the player, the on-screen character follows him, always attuned to the player’s movements. That was pretty neat.

It looked like the kind of thing my eight year-old girl cousin would love to have at her next birthday party. There are cartoony narrative cutscenes following your chosen glamor girl’s rise to stardom, suitably imbued with ‘tween girl signposts of coolness and drama, so the game knows its audience well, even when that audience isn’t me.

Girl games have a tendency to make us cringe a bit, but I suppose I’d rather have my cousin rocking out with this game than something with Bratz in it. Shudder.

Just be careful Simon. This sort of thing is great the first few times, but it can lose its appeal if you overdo it. I think it’s great right now though.

GF Bioshock [Lava Level, thanks Simon]

But what if they don’t?

Take tipster Simon Cottee’s girlfriend, who was subjected to a rather long session of Valve’s Team Fortress 2. I imagine anyone who starts playing Team Fortress 2 without much knowledge of the game, or even games in general, would react in a similar way as Simon’s lady. But dudes just aren’t as cute or as funny as girls.

So press play and enjoy such classic lines as “How come I can’t go through doors?” and “What’s the point of being invisible if I can’t shoot you?” The best part? When she apologises for killing guys on the opposing team.

if you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out the rest of the “Girlfriend plays…” series:

More Girlfriend + Team Fortress 2 Madness
Girlfriend Plays Age of Conan, Wants Tiny Boobs
Girlfriend Plays Bioshock, Says Funny Things

GF TF2 [Youtube, thanks Simon]