Multiple pleasures: Women and online gaming

Convergence

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 21-46

  Taylor, T L ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 17444427927     PISSN: 13548565     EISSN: 17487382     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/135485650300900103     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Lisa Guernsey, 'Women Play Games Online in Larger Numbers Than Men,' The New York Times, 4 January 2001
2. Bob Tedeschi, 'Expansion Sought for Online Games,' The New York Times, 31 December 2001
3. Jim Morrison, 'Homeward Bound,' Context Magazine (June 2001) at http://www.contextmag.com/setFrameRedirect.asp?src=/archives/200106/ Feature4HomewardBound.asp (6 April 2002)
4. Sony press release, 29 July 2002 at http://eqlive.station.sony.com/ news_section/newsview.jsp?story=50196 (29 September 2002)
5. Emily Laber, 'Men are from Quake, Women are from Ultima,' The New York Times, 11 January 2001
6. One interesting comparison is with the numbers of women in the non-online gaming and console market. A recent article by Kathryn Wright cites a 1998 survey putting women at 43 per cent of computer gamers and 35 per cent of console ones. See 'Video Gaming: Myths and Facts,' Womengamers.com (2001) at http://www.womengamers.com/articles/myths.html (6 April 2002) for more details
7. Cornelia Brunner, Dorthy Bennett, Margaret Honey, 'Girl Games and Technological Desire' in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998)
8. Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia M. Greenfield, 'Computer Games for Girls: What Makes Them Play? ' in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998)
9. Jennifer Glos and Shari Goldin, 'An Interview with Heather Kelly' in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998)
10. Gareth R. Schott and Kirsty R. Horrell, 'Girl Gamers and Their Relationship with the Gaming Culture', Convergence, 6, no. 4 (2000), pp. 36-53
11. Laura Groppe, 'Teen Girl Gaming: The New Paradigm', Playing by the Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games Conference (University of Chicago, October 2001)
12. see http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/groppe.html (6 April 2002)
13. Karen Orr Vered, 'Blue Group Boys Play Incredible Machine, Girls Play Hopscotch: Social Discourse and Gendered Play at the Computer' in Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, ed. Julian Sefton-Green (London: UCL Press, 1998)
14. Yasmin B. Kafai, 'Video Game Designs by Girls and Boys: Variability and Consistency of Gender Differences' in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998)
15. The ethnography portion of the research (including website visits and informal discussions) began in November 1999 and formal interviews commenced in June 2001. I continue to be actively involved in the game and have written on other aspects of it
16. While these terms may seem odd to those familiar with their sociological meanings, I want to preserve using them as they are within this specific game and the broader gaming community
17. Laber, p. 1
18. See Nick Yee's 'The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of EverQuest' (Version 2.5, 2001) at http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/report.html (6 April 2002)
19. for some fascinating statistics on the EverQuest player population. A recent article by James Gorman also recounts the development of families and friends gaming online together ('The Family That Slays Demons Together,' The New York Times, 15 November 2001)
20. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 178
21. For some important critiques on the notion of fluid identities and the nearly utopic possibilities often purported to exist, see Lori Kendall, 'MUDder? I Hardly Know 'Er! Adventures of a Feminist MUDder,' in Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace, eds. L. Cherny and E.R. Weise (Seal Press, Toronto, 1996)
22. Beth Kolko, 'Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face,' in Race in Cyberspace, eds. B. Kolko, L. Nakamura, and G.B. Rodman (Routledge, New York, 2000)
23. Lisa Nakamura, 'Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet,' Works and Days 13 (1 and 2, 1995), pp. 181-193
24. When users do branch out onto other servers it is often to play on special ones, such as those that support strict role play or player versus player activity. Game guides (volunteer help) also only act in their formal helper capacity on a server other than their regular one
25. Even though you can now customise the face, there is still a limited range, ie five faces to choose from. So, customisation does not preclude the possibility of running into people who look alike
26. T.L. Taylor, 'Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds' in The Social Life of Avatars: Human Interaction in Virtual Worlds, ed. R. Schroeder (London: Springer-Verlag, 2002)
27. Sean Gilmore and Alicia Crissman, 'Video Games: Analyzing Gender Identity and Violence in this New Virtual Reality,' Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 21 (1997), pp. 181-199
28. Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 106
29. Sharon R. Sherman, 'Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games,' Western Folklore, 56 (Summer/Fall 1997), p. 251
30. Schott and Horrell, p. 43
31. Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins, 'Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue' in Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, ed. Steven G. Jones (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995)
32. US Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 'prohibits sex discrimination in federally assisted education programs' (Title IX: Twenty Five Years of Progress, US Department of Education, June 1997 at http://www.ed.gov/ pubs/TitlelX/ (2 October 2002). One of the outcomes of this legislation was that it required equal funding to girls athletics programmes
33. Helen Cunningham, 'Mortal Kombat and Computer Game Girls' in Electronic Media and Technoculture, ed. John Thornton Caldwell (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2000), p. 222
34. See 'Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back,' compiled by Henry Jenkins in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) for some fascinating quotes by women actively participating in 'boy game culture'
35. This user refers here to two different characters she plays, a cleric and a druid
36. For more on this subject see T.L. Taylor, 'Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them,' International Journal of Engineering Education, forthcoming
37. From personal correspondence with the author, 1 October 2002
38. Patricia Williams writes about the 'scripted denial [which] ultimately allowed visual images to remain in the realm of the unspoken, the unsaid filled by stereotypes and self-identifying illusion, the hierarchies of race and gender circulating unchallenged'. Williams, Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (New York: The Noonday Press, 1997), p. 18
39. Taylor, 2002
40. Lisa Edmonds, 'A Joy Stick of One's Own,' Herizons, 12, no. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 20-23
41. Jeanne B. Funk, 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun,' Playing by the Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games Conference (University of Chicago, October 2001) at http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/funk2.html (6 April 2002)
42. Jon Goodwin, 'Follow the Bouncing Breasts,' Joystick101.org (31 January 2001) at http://www.joystick101.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/1/24/22336/2 765 (6 April 2002)
43. Lila Theodoros, 'Lara Croft vs. Quake Grrls: Misogyny, Female Representation, and Female Empowerment in Computer Games' at http://www.maj.arts.qut.au/units/mjb336/history/2000/ltheodor/ (1 March 2001)
44. These screenshots are taken from the pre-Luclin version of the game. The Luclin expansion included a significant reworking of the game's graphics which completely altered how avatars and objects in the world appeared. Indeed, the graphical revision of the female avatars post-Luclin even more dramatically present hypersexualized forms. A common joke heard after the expansion came out was that the biggest change to the game art was in the amount female avatars' breasts grew
45. Edmonds, p. 2
46. Kiaora Kordama, 'Swords and Bikinis: The Portrayal of Women in EverQuest,' EQWomen.co.uk (2001) at http://fp.kiaora.plus.com/reviews/bikinis. htm (6 April 2002)
47. This point is actually not seen as unique to women and game designers are aware of the desire of many of their users to have more choices about how they look. As Brad McQuaid notes: 'Players want to be able to configure their character's appearance'. From Trey Walker, 'Brad McQuaid Interview,' GameSpot (14 January 2002) at http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/news/0,10870,2838404, 00.html (6 April 2002)
48. Tryne, EQWomen.co.uk (2001)
49. This is an interesting reversal from the way designers often imagine who their users might be. For more on this subject, see Jerome McDonough, 'Designer Selves: Construction of Technologically Mediated Identity within Graphical, Multiuser Virtual Environments,' Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50, no. 10 (1999)
50. Patricia J. Williams, p. 6
51. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)
52. Mike Featherstone et al (eds.), The Body: Social Processes and Cultural Theory (London: Sage, 1991)
53. Michael Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979)
54. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Anchor, 1959)
55. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994)
56. Marcel Mauss, Sociology and Psychology: Essays (London: Routledge, 1950)
57. Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory (London: Sage, 1993)
58. Bryan Turner, The Body & Society (London: Sage, 1996)
59. Simon J. Williams and Gillian Bendelow, The Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues (London: Routledge, 1998)
60. Anthony Synnott, The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 1
61. Allyson D. Polsky, 'Skins, Patches, and Plug-ins: Becoming Women in the New Gaming Culture,' Genders (Fall 2001), paragraph 10
62. Several researchers have begun to explore the ways status systems and hierarchies express themselves in virtual worlds. Sometimes traditional forms reassert themselves but there are also instances where new values emerge, undermining the myth of online life as inherently non-hierarchical. See, for example, Mikael Jakobsson, 'Rest in Peace, Bill the Bot: Death and Life in Virtual Worlds,' in The Social Life of Avatars: Human Interaction in Virtual Worlds, ed. R. Schroeder (London: Springer-Verlag, 2002)
63. and Elizabeth Reid, 'Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace,' in Communities in Cyberspace, eds. Marc Smith and Peter Kollack (London: Routledge, 1999)
64. For more on the subject of design and values, see Rob Kling, 'Information and Computer Scientists as Moral Philosophers and Social Analysts' in Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices (second edition), ed. Rob Kling (San Diego: Academic Press, 1996)
65. Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999)
66. Jerome P. McDonough, 'Designer Selves: Construction of Technologically Mediated Identity within Graphical, Multiuser Virtual Environments,' Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50, no. 10 (1999)
67. Kathryn Wright, 'GDC 2000: Race and Gender in Games,' Womengamers.com (2001) at http://www.womengamers.com/articles/racegender.html (6 April 2002)
68. Funk, p. 3
69. Brenda Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneur (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 36
70. Henry Jenkins, '"Complete Freedom of Movement": Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces' in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), p. 291. His suggestion, quite importantly, is also about refiguring how we convince of masculine identity and needs. He continues by saying: 'Boys may need to play in secret gardens or toy towns just as much as girls need to explore adventure islands' (p. 292)
71. Justine Cassell, 'Storytelling as a Nexus of Change in the Relationship between Gender and Technology: A Feminist Approach to Software Design' in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), p. 299