Date of Submission
12-2021
Type of Work
Exegesis and Creative Work
Principal Supervisor
Dr. Toby Wren
Keywords
Video games; Gaming culture; Sexism; Gatekeeping; Geek masculinity; Toxicity; Hegemony; Feminism; Gamer girl
Audience
General (G) - suitable for everyone
Abstract
Hegemonic geek masculinity dominates video games. It has contributed to the formation of a toxic culture that is now widely perceived to consistently and aggressively prevent women and non-binary gamers from participating as equals. Gaming has historically resisted progressive change, and the industry continues to produce content for the assumed heterosexual male target audience. In more recent years, steps have been taken towards recognising these entrenched issues and implementing change, such as improving gender representation in games, however attempts are inconsistent, and other aspects of the culture are slow to adapt. The gap between the number of male, female, and non-binary players has been gradually closing over recent years. Despite this, the culture continues to prove itself as a toxic environment harbouring gendered hostility towards participants perceived to be outliers to gaming’s gender norms.
Moxie is a qualitative artistic research project with elements of ethnography, consisting of an exegesis set to inform future creative output. The research explores the social experience of video game culture from the perspective of female and non-binary participants, and examines how the practices of gaming’s known geek masculine hegemony affect this. The goal is to give a voice to their perspectives, and to raise awareness about the realities of their experiences. 20 open-ended, semi-structured interviews were conducted with individual participants who engage with gaming in a variety of ways: in physical spaces or online, as consumers or industry professionals, and having differing game genre preferences. They reflected on their perceptions of gamer culture, discussed what role gaming plays in their lives, how they engage with and value gaming, and shared memorable social experiences. The interview data became the basis for the creative component: an in-development original narrative in the form of a video game currently titled Moxie.
This project found fundamental similarities among all 20 participants regardless of how each person engaged in gaming. Each participant grew up with gaming in their lives from a young age, and valued it as a part of their identity though not all identified with the label of ‘gamer’. Each perceived the culture to have been shifting in a positive direction progressively over the past decade, citing reasons such as improving gender representation and social awareness. In discussing social experiences, it was found that each player felt forced to take measures to reduce their visibility in gaming. This was found to be a common individual response to the overwhelmingly consistent practice of being targeted and harassed on the basis of their gender. Other findings include feelings of desensitisation owed to the consistency of participants’ experiences, mostly negative responses to gendered terms such as ‘gamer girl’, and that these experiences are extremely unlikely to be isolated incidents in gaming despite the relatively small sample size of interviewees.
This research concludes with sharing the common sentiments of Moxie’s participants: it is absurd that gaming is extremely gendered, that gaming is an accessible activity that has no reason to be discriminatory, and that they had no agenda beyond simply wanting to enjoy games as standard consumers.
Notes
ITCH.IO : MOXIE
Sensitive handling note
4. Readers should be aware that this output contains content related to any of the following: violence, family or domestic violence, self-harm, sexual assault, suicide, family child removal, refugee experiences, war survivor experiences or other traumatic experiences that may be distressing or harmful to some people.
Recommended Citation
Stojkos, C. (2021). Moxie : We Just Wanna Play Games [Masters dissertation, SAE University College]. Creo.