Finding the Invisible Player: Thesis Defense May 2014
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Thesis Title: Finding the Invisible Player and Understanding Women’s Experiences in Online Multiplayer Video Game Environments This is the presentation for my Masters thesis defense, held May 2014. Online availability of an executive summary and the full thesis are forthcoming.
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Finding the Invisible Player: Thesis Defense May 2014
- 1. Finding the Invisible Player and Understanding Women’s Experiences in Online Multiplayer Video Game Environments Catherine Lukianov May 30, 2014 MA Media Studies Thesis Syracuse University
- 2. Purpose Gender plays a role in women’s gaming experiences Feminist Standpoint Epistemology Women’s lived experiences in potentially hostile gaming environments Battle games Team based, cooperative and competitive Online multiplayer modes Playing with or against strangers Call of Duty, Halo, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, League of Legends
- 3. Research Questions RQ1: How does a woman’s gender impact her gaming experiences? RQ2: How do women video game players navigate their real world gender in battle games? RQ3: How do women video game players negotiate their gameplay experience in a potentially hostile gaming environment?
- 4. Literature Review Gaming culture masculinity: “Real” games and “real” gamers (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006) Hypermasculine discourse (Taylor, 2012) Anomalies who challenge gender norms (Taylor, 2003; Taylor, 2006; Royse et al., 2007)
- 5. Literature Review Gender identity (Foss, Domenico & Foss, 2013) Performativity (Butler, 1990) Other masculine environments How do women perform gender within battle games?
- 6. Method Qualitative in-depth interviews Textual analysis of journals Optional journal prompts Follow-up interviews Participants: 16 women, ages 19 – 40 13 wrote journals, 12 follow-up interviews Analyzed using Dedoose
- 7. FINDINGS Denying Female Gender Performances The “Girl Gamer” Stereotype
- 8. Findings: Denying Gender Performances Male generic language “Well done, boys.” - Jean, journal “You mad, bro?” - Charlotte, journal “(At times like those there is a small little part of me that wants to shout I’M NOT A BOY but thankfully it is tied up and held down by my common sense)” - Jean, journal
- 9. Pronoun use – Friends participate in gender performances “Just like, even if my boyfriend were to out, like oh... she. Or she, if he uses ‘she’ or ‘her’ or any kind of those uh pronouns and people catch onto that, they’ll start making like sexual jokes or whatnot about me.” - Cass, interview Findings: Denying Gender Performances
- 10. Denial of skill Rejection of gender performance “And yeah, I think most guys just don’t, you know, believe that girls can be as just as good (laughs), or better than them, so. I was kind of, it was just kind of funny to see the reaction, like complete denial.” - Laquita, follow-up “I’m just ‘a hacking bitch.’ I’m just some stupid bitch making my boyfriend play with me while I talk and I should be in the kitchen making him a fucking sandwich.” – Gwen, interview Findings: Denying Gender Performances
- 11. Male assumption High pitched voice assumed to be a child “So um, obviously on Xbox, you know, it was inevitable sometimes. You know, you talk and they’ll be like, ‘Oh are you a little boy?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m a chick. Please.’” - Rain, interview Findings: Denying Gender Performances
- 12. Findings: The “Girl Gamer” Stereotype Concealing one’s gender becomes normalized Agency in gender performances “Girl gamer” stereotype Lack of skill Attention seeking “Like uh they would say a woman who has, or a girl who has her picture, or a feminine nickname, or uses the microphone and she’s asking for negative attention. She’s asking for the sexist comments, right. Obviously she is not, that is victim blaming.” - Zoey, follow-up
- 13. Findings: The “Girl Gamer” Stereotype Assuming a male identity Challenging the stereotype “I would trade all that in an instant just to um be like a normal person. Just to be on par with the regular people, regular dudes who just play. And like they receive no special treatment but they also receive no special hatred.” - Allison, interview When you’re a girl on the internet, “Eh everyone hates you. Like you’re not allowed to do anything and you’re either, you know, what is it, fat, ugly, or slutty, so. Like as long as you’re, but like if you’re anonymous you’re read as male and then it’s okay, and then you’re just everyone else.” - Emily, interview
- 14. Findings: The “Girl Gamer” Stereotype Distancing from the stereotype A troubling lack of agency “... it’s kind of sad that girls are in a position where, you know, pretty much every girl who ever speaks on microphone is representing like all female gamers just in general cause the number of us who choose to speak is so little, so few.” - Sis, interview
- 15. Conclusion Rendering women invisible Lack of female gender performances Assuming a male identity Monitoring and adapting gender performances Reinforcing gaming culture expectations & women’s exclusion
- 16. Finding the Invisible Player and Understanding Women’s Experiences in Online Multiplayer Video Game Environments Catherine Lukianov May 30, 2014 MA Media Studies Thesis Syracuse University
Notas do Editor
- ● Gaming culture has a history of being heteronormative, masculine dominated, and overall exclusionary toward women, yet many women still participate in video games and gaming culture. ● This thesis explores how women’s gender plays a significant role in their online multiplayer gaming experiences. ● Feminist standpoint epistemology provides a foundation for examining and understanding women’s lived experiences in these competitive multiplayer video game environments. ● For this thesis, the collective of games are referred to as Battle games. They are team based, with cooperative and competitive gameplay. The interactions I look at take place in multiplayer game modes, and with or against complete strangers.
- ● Gaming culture masculinity defines the assumptions about who the audience is, and who is important. It also defines the expectations and behaviors in gaming spaces. Women tend to be lumped under the “girl games” market, so that they’re excluded from traditional game audiences and even pigeonholed as having the same interests as children. ● The language used between players reinforces a heteronormative hypermasculine mindset in certain gaming settings. It is meant to ostracize and even objectify women, making it clear they are unwelcome. ● Because women are not considered part of the norm, they’re seen as anomalies in gaming spaces and as exceptions to women in general. However, those who choose to play these games are aware of their position in the culture and many actively try to challenge gender norms.
- ● To examine women in gaming environments, I borrow the lens from Foss, Domenico, and Foss Gender Stories. They write that one’s gender, essentially their gender performance, is constantly in flux and can change many times throughout the day depending on the current context. In addition, people can reevaluate situations and structure them in a way that they’re able to enact agency. ● Judith Butler’s concept of performativity says gender is a social construction and that people go through repetitive acts to essentially fit into the hegemonic gender binary. Meaning, people generally dress, behave, and perform a certain way to identify themselves as either male or female. ● Lastly, I draw from literature on women’s experiences in other masculine environments, such as the military and the corporate world. Often women learn to adapt and internalize the cultures’ expected norms, which leads them to frame discrimination and harassment merely as obstacles to overcome. ● This thesis looks at how women perform gender within the confines and expectations of battle games.
- ● There are many ways power dynamics manifest to reinforce a masculine dominated culture. Women are acutely aware that disclosing a female gender means potentially inciting reactions from other, usually male players. While reactions are not always explicitly negative, they are generally unsolicited. ● The kinds of harassment and abuse women experience in gaming can be found in numerous blogs and articles, so I’m not going to address them now. Instead, I’m going to talk about the two points I find most significant, that emerged repeatedly throughout the data, and played a large part in how women adapt gender performances. First, are the ways women are denied female gender performances, and then how they negotiate of the “girl gamer” stereotype.
- ● First, the language used between players reflects the assumption that all other players are male. While a comment like “Well done, boys,” is not necessarily meant to be insulting, it does reflect an ignorance towards the diversity of the community, especially when a woman in that situation feels she cannot be acknowledged as an individual human being. ● Here, Jean writes about her frustration with having to hide her identity but at the same time knowing it is safer for her to do so.
- ● Some women even ask friends to participate in their gender performances by requesting they refer to them using male pronouns . ● Even letting a female pronoun slip by can have negative consequences so some women rely on others to help construct a male performance.
- ● Then there’s flat out denial and rejection of female gender performances. Laquita mentions that after doing incredibly well in a game, she decided to reveal her gender knowing the kind of reaction she would get. Other players flat out denied that someone with that much skill could possibly be female. Her male friend had to confirm her gender, which relates back to research regarding males counterparts providing access and legitimization of women in technology and gaming. ● Again related to skill, Gwen mentions common negative experiences, which can include accusations of cheating, lying, sexual harassment, and one participant mentioned regular hate speech when she reveals herself as transgender.
- ● Lastly, the assumption that other players are male is so strong, many women who do participate in public voice chat mentioned that other players first think their voice belongs a child. ● Such reactions prompt women to avoid using any gender signifiers in either their username or by exposing themselves through voice chat.
- ● These women occupy a complex position as women in gaming culture. Exposure to gaming spaces as well as learning from others’ experiences teaches women the expectations of battle game environments. So, concealing a female gender becomes normalized and is sometimes prompted out of fear or dread of unwanted attention. Yet, women enact agency in ways that can both reinforce and challenge gaming culture by either choosing to conceal or disclose their gender. A significant factor in deciding one’s gender performance is the “girl gamer” stereotype, which impacts how women see themselves and other female players. ● The assumptions that women are inherently unskilled at games and only play games for attention are points that are particularly frustrating. ● To present oneself as identifiably female means intentionally trying to draw attention to oneself.
- ● One way women avoid being stereotyped is to assume a male identity. Allison mentions women get special attention just for being women. Which can be positive, such as a rare free gifts, or more often, it can be harassment or abuse. ● Intentionally and unintentionally, women can take on a male identity in order to avert others’ gender-based reactions. They also challenge the stereotype by reframing a situation and sometimes revealing one’s gender when doing well at a game, or by withholding gender when playing poorly, so as not to reinforce the assumptions.
- ● Lastly, women also actively distance themselves from the girl gamer stereotype. Some do so in a way that relegates other women into the stereotype and reinforces women’s exclusion from gaming. They internalize then participate in the expectations of battle game spaces but by doing so, they also deny themselves agency in gender performances. ● In this mindset, women’s gender performances take on a more masculine aspect wherein they embody dominant ideology, allowing them to blend in with everyone else. In such gender performances, a sense of elitism positions these women as the exception to female gamers, actively enforcing the expectations, delegitimizing other women, and further excluding women from the space. Essentially they believe in and reinforcing the invisibility of women.
- ● Players learn how to navigate gaming spaces based on prior social interactions, and so they construct appropriate performances based on how they desire to interact within the context at that moment. ● In support of previous research, women navigate battle games largely in anonymity (Taylor, 2012). This is because disclosing one’s gender can result in becoming a target for harassment, abuse, and discrimination. The ways in which women’s gender performances are denied and rejected often causes them to adapt their performances and hide their gender altogether, which means keeping oneself invisible. Without visible, easily identifiable, or explicit female identities, women continue to be rendered invisible in gaming spaces. It is concerning the extent to which women feel they must monitor their own gender performances in order to participate safely in battle games. ● It is also surprising how complicit some women are in reinforcing gaming culture expectations and the exclusion of other women.