Gender and digital gaming
– how girls, boys and their parents account of their everyday
practices concerning use and regulation
Paper presented at the ESA conference Lisbon, September 5th 2009,
RN5 Sociology of Consumption
Ardis Storm-Mathisen
Outline of the presentation
I. Question/ background
II. The Contextualizing adolescents’ egaming
project (CAE) -data
III.Sexed bodies and the regulation of digital
gaming - broad patterns
IV.Diversity in gendered regulation of digital
gaming
V.Tentative conclusions
Ardis Storm-Mathisen
I. Question/background
Question:
How do sexed bodies and conceptions of what is
masculine and feminine play a part in the regulatory
practices and logics surrounding adolescents egaming
in everyday life?
Background:
1. Debates on digital divides-digital threats
2. Theoretical/analytical calls for consumer/ICT research
– to implement insights from gender research and
– to apply more context-oriented approaches
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Definition of terms
Digital games - playing and gambling on electronic
devices like TV, pc and the internet.
Sex – reference to the female and male bodies that
account of their everyday practices and logics
concerning the use and regulation of digital games.
Gender - how ideas of femininity and masculinity, play a
role and are made relevant in these accounts of
regulation.
Regulation – observed or accounted attempts to
influence the consumption of digital gaming, either by
others on the adolescents or by the adolescents to
themselves through self-regulations.
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SIMS
Feminine ?
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Call of Duty
Masculine ?
II. The CAE project
Contextualizing adolescents egaming (CAE) - a project that seeks to map and
contextualize adolescents' egaming activities and problems.
Egaming – a concept referring to both
-‘eplaying’ (egaming without money) and to
-‘egambling’ (gaming with money).
Project period
2007-2010
Designed and conducted
by SIFO (Norwegian National Institute for Consumer Research), Digimedia group
Funded
by the NFR (Norwegian Research Council)
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CAE - Aims
Aims
To supplement present gaming research
Develop context-based knowledge about households’ regulation of
adolescents’ egaming
Discuss implications for further research, prevention and treatment of
adolescents’ egaming problems, particularly focusing at the
household level
Main analytical concepts and theoretical perspectives
Contextualization and regulation:
Domestication theory, the moral economy of the home
(Silverstone et al 1992)
Practice theory, language-games (late-Wittgensteinian thinking,
Helle-Valle 2007, 2008)
Discipline, governmentality (Foucaultian thinking)
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CAE – data/methodology
i) A strategic survey among all 15 and 18 year olds pupils in 7
secondary and high schools in Norway (a total of 611)
ii) Conversational interviews with (high frequent) eplaying/egaming
15 and 18 year olds in 32 households/families:
– with egaming problems (6)
– without identified/reported egaming problems (eplaying; 20,
egambling; 6).
iii) Observations and video-recordings of individual and peergroup gaming
The adolescents were interviewed in 3 different settings communicative contexts:
i)Individually (often when gaming)
ii)with parents
iii)with (gaming) friends
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Accounts in different communicative contexts
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III. Sexed bodies and the regulation of
digital gaming - large patterns
– Difficult to find girls who were much engaged in gaming (especially among
the youngest teenagers). We found no girls with identified egaming
problems
- Boys played more than girls
- Boys had personal technical equipment, girls tended to use equipment
belonging to other members of the household.
- Adolescents and parents argue that the eplaying of boys need more
regulation than the eplaying of girls
- A common argument was that girls perform more self-regulation than boys
to digital gaming, and that boys therefore need more external parental
regulation than girls
- Parents and girls express more ambivalence and concern with respect to
the regulation of and problems connected to eplaying
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General regulation as accounted for by the playing
adolescents, their parents and local peers
- large patterns
Values involved in regulation
- enjoy but behave: prioritize school, out-door physical
activities, family sociality/ temporalities and social
activities with friends, very little co-playing.
Indicators of successful regulation:
- engagement in other (out-door) leisure activities, good
school performances and normal body shape
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IV. Diversity in gendered regulation of
digital gaming
Example cases that illustrate how sex/gender ‘rules’ of
digital gaming are variable and context dependent:
Case 1: how boy gamers perspectives on the gendergaming relationship changes from one moment in play
to the next due to a transfer from an all-boys to a boys
versus girls context
Case 2: how a male sexed gamer used femininity as an
expression of self-regulation to stop playing Doom
Case 3: how a female sexed gamer changed her
expression of femininity in relation to gaming from one
year to the next
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Case I: 15 year old males gaming
2008: three 15-year old boys were interviewed together while they
were engaged in a game of counterstrike
Incident a): All-boys activity. No voice-chat on
- The boys claim gender does not matter in the game, only competence
Incident b): Boys versus girls activity. Voice chat turned on
- Gender does matter. When the voice chat was turned on they realize
they are playing with an all-girl team that threaten to beat them. They
express and tune up their engagement to win the game.
The case illustrates that femininity (and masculinity) is perceived and
performed differently in various communicative contexts. It hence
also illustrates how the sex and gender of co-players impacts on
gaming activity not as a rule but with a context-specific diversity
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Case II: 18-year old male gamer
2008: an 18-year old boy interviewed alone when playing Doom, a game
where aliens attack at unpredictable moments in a scary setting
Incident a) to enjoy playing Doom is a masculine activity
- he says he enjoys to fight down aliens and also the occasional fright,
and it is a game he sometimes also plays together with his male friends
Incident b) to stop the playing of Doom by expressing femininity
– at one moment in the game he jumps from fright, exclaims “iik” and shows
fear in a feminine embodied way. He then aborts the game
The case illustrates that male bodies do not only perform masculinity but
also femininity within activities of digital gaming. The feminine
expression and way of performing the body is used to stop the gaming
activity.
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Case III: 21 year old female gamer
Was interviewed twice:
1. As part of an all-female-gamer focus group 2008
- She portrayed herself as an engaged gamerheavy into online role
play games like World of Warcraft. She spoke of her gaming as a
‘girl thing’- something she did with girl-friends. She was single.
2. Alone, in her home 2009
- She said she had quit playing online role games on her computer.
Now much of her online gaming activity was small crossword
puzzle games on food recipes and knitting patterns. She had
moved in with her boyfriend
This case illustrates how female bodies can understand and perform
femininity with respect to gaming in radical different ways. Being
single and doing gaming with girl friends is a different
circumstance for expressing feminity than living with a boyfriend
and playing recipe games. The change in contexts influenced on
how she expressed, understood and performed her femininity.
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V. Tentative conclusions:
How do sexed bodies and conceptions of what is masculine and
feminine play a part in the regulatory practices surrounding
adolescents egaming?
Sexed bodies and gender regulate digital gaming in context specific ways
• The broad patterns of statements and practices indicate some
commonalities: e.g. being a boy and performing masculinity tends to upscale gaming engagement and regulatory concern whereas being a girl
and performing femininity tends to down-scale actual engagement and
hence also regulatory concern
• There is however no common rule to the gender-gaming relationship. The
presented cases illustrate how sexed bodies and gender regulate digital
gameplay in context-specific and hence diverse ways. Although
masculinity is more strongly associated to strong gaming engagement
than femininity, femininity is not by necessity something that downregulates gaming.
• We should thus be careful to argue we know what feminity and
masculinity is and how sex and gender influence our practices. To further
enhance our understanding of this issue future research needs to
continue approaching gendered conceptions and actual digital gameplay
in open and exploratory ways
Ardis Storm-Mathisen
SIFO DIGIMEDIA
Strategic Research Project on Digital Media and ICT
http://www.sifo.no/digimedia/
Ardis Storm-Mathisen