DiGRA Tokyo 2007
“Situated Play”
The Hegemony of Play
Ludica
Janine Fron
Ludica
Jacquelyn Ford Morie
Celia Pearce
Tracy Fullerton
USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Georgia Institute of
USC
Technology
School of Cinematic Arts
Ludica
A women’s game collective devoted to creating a more
gender-inclusive environment for game research, art,
design and education.
The Argument
What is “The Hegemony of Play”?
• Coined by Pearce/Fullerton at a 2005 lecture by
Bernie DeKoven at USC
• Describes the exclusionary power structures of the
computer game industry that have narrowed the
conception of both play and player in the digital sphere
• Supported by “conventional wisdom” that game
industry trajectory is entirely market-driven
• We argue that this is a self-fulfilling prophesy
designed to justify practices of both production
and employment which are flagrantly biased and
discriminatory
Underlying Assumptions
Three levels of unexamined assumptions in this defense
of the game industry’s status quo:
• Production process and environment in which digital
games are created
• The evolution of technologies of play
• The cultural positioning of games and “gamers.”
Underlying Assumptions
Infused our notion of games with values and norms that
reinforce that industry’s technological, commercial and
cultural investments in a particular definition of games
and play, creating a cyclical system of supply and
demand in which alternate products of play are
marginalized and devalued.
Structure
• The power elite of the game industry is a predominately
white, and secondarily Asian, male-dominated corporate
and creative elite
• Represents a select group of large, global publishing
companies in conjunction with a small handful of
massive chain retail distributors.
• This hegemonic elite determines which technologies
will be deployed, and which will not; which games will
be made, and by which designers; which players are
important to design for, and which play styles will be
supported.
Rationale
• Exclusionary rhetoric of play based on the construction
of a “hardcore gamer” as its primary audience
• All others are considered minorities, although in
actuality they constitute a majority, e.g., women and
girls, older males, racial/ethnic minorities, etc.
• Aided and abetted by game review and advertising
infrastructure that valorizes certain types of games and
marginalizes others
• Prevalent in spite of the fact that the most successful
commercial games have been inclusive, esp. of gender,
e.g., Pac Man, The Sims, etc.
The Situation
• The Hegemony of Play is the proverbial “Elephant in
the Living Room.”
• Some have critiqued:
•Cassell and Jenkins, etc. (1998)
•Grainer-Ray (2003)
•Kafai, Heeter, Denner, Sun et al (forthcoming)
• Only a few have called attention to its underlying
structures or raison dêtre:
•Flanagan
•Laurel (2001)
•Taylor
Our Call
• Because game studies is working with the material of
the Hegemony of play, for the most part, we have
bought into and help to perpetuate it
• Play should not be controlled by a hegemonic elite
• We are calling on the game studies community adopt a
critique of the Hegemony of Play rather than perpetuate
its rhetorics
• As scholars and educators, this is our prerogative; as
game designers, our mandate.
How Game Studies has Played Along
• Because we study their games, we often inadvertently
valorize and fetishize their work without interrogating it
• The Hegemony of Play has driven the discourse of what is
and is not a game; embedded in discussions of taxonomy
are the underlying values of the video game industry
• Because of the self-perpetuated demographic, the majority
of player-centered research concerns the “gamer” (i.e.
male player). Gender is often not called out or not
considered of consequence
• We have helped perpetuate the exclusionary construction
of “gamer” in our writing, and educational practices
The Production Environment
IGDA 2005 Study on Workplace Diversity
• In the U.S., 88.5% of all game development workers are
male
• 83.3% are white
• 92% are heterosexual
• Most interesting ins the qualitative data of comments
published in the appendix:
Comments from IGDA Study on Diversity
«The industry is not diverse. The people interested in games and
computers in general are not diverse. Most programmers are men
- because men tend to like programming more often than women
do. Its just the way it is.» - M, 24, White, Canada
«Games are made by White Males, for White Males. I'm all for a
diverse industry, it just isn't there. Marketing in the entire industry is
very poor. Games either make it or don't, then copy the ones that
do.» - M, 28, USA
«I don't think workforce diversity has anything to do with making
great games. Hiring should be based solely on skills, work ethic
and personality. Race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnic
background have NO bearing on hiring policy.»
-M, 35, White, USA
«The most qualified person should be hired, beyond that I don't
care what sexual preference, color, creed or any other pop culture
label they are.» - M, 26, White, disabled, USA
“Qualified”?
• Encoded to exclude experience in related areas, such as
educational software, HCI, and other fields which have
better female representation
• Playtesting is usually where designers get their start;
because most frequently “gamers” are hired, few of these
are women
• The game workplace requires excessive hours and
promotes a “locker-room” ethos which makes the
environment
• The types of games being produced are of less interest to
women
• Representation of women in games is often a turn-off
Early “Girl Game Movement”
• “There’s a six billion dollar business with an empty
lot next door.” Liddle and Laurel
• Question had all the hallmarks of “a good research
problem—puzzling, consequential and complex.”
(Laurel 2001)
• Purple Moon came out of a research lab, not a
commercial game company
• Now used as the failure that proves the rule, in spite
of other successes such as Barbie.
The struggle
• Once women do make it into the game industry, they
often have to battle with sexist attitudes about
design and content
• Female designer Nour Polloni insisted that the
female leading character in a new game she was
developing wear baggy pants, but the the all-male
creative team wanted her to dress her in a string
bikini
• Women in the IGDA comments supplement
complain of the “boys-only” ethos, and other
practices that are alienating to women, e.g.: “Booth
babes” at industry expos; excessive overtime; lack of
work/life balance; a general locker-room attitude that
pervades the workplace
The Reality
• In spite of blatant exclusion and discrimination, the
ESA estimates that 38% of all gamers are women
• Women over forty are the fastest-growing gaming
demographic; the game industry often dismisses
these as only playing “casual” games, which is
untrue
• The best-selling games historically have been those
played by women (Pac-Man, Myst, The Sims)
• Given these figures, what would happen if women
and girls were marketed to instead of against?
Technologies of Play
Historical Modes of Play
• Prior to the advent of the computer game, game
rules were adjudicated by players themselves, e.g.,
playground rules, “house rules,” etc.
• Digital games introduced machine-adjudication and
the notion that the player must “beat” the game
• Players must now prove they are “good enough for
the game” (DeKoven 1978)
• Computer controllers create a barrier of entry
• FPS games, for instance, favor spatial rotation skills
that are cognitively harder for girls and women
The 19th Century Board Game Industry as a
Model for the Future?
• The printing press shifted the “folk” nature of games
• Board games in 19th Century America:
•First form of “home entertainment”
•Leveraged emerging leisure time of middle class
families
•Marketing strategies provide unique insight into
the cultural concerns of the day
The Market
• Much is made of $7 billion a year in game software
revenue
• Yet this pales in comparison with the board game
industry, e.g.
•The Sims: 60 million units worldwide
•Monopoly: 750 million units worldwide
• This begs the question:
Why don’t video games sell more?
Early Board Games
• First board game published in the U.S., Mansion of
Happiness, was designed by a woman (Parker
Bros., 1894).
• A “serious” game whose goal was to lead a good life
Early Board Games
• First board game to be
patented:
Lizzie
Magie’s The Landlord
Game (1924), designed
to teach the iniquity of
rental
• Later bought by Parker
Bros. to make way for
Monopoly
Commerce (Ottoman & Lith 1900)
Images from Liman Collection, New York
Historical Society; used with permission
Pillow Dex (Parker Bros.)
Round the World
with Nelly Bly
Images from Liman Collection, New York
Historical Society; used with permission
Elite Conversation Cards
(courtship genre)
Sewing Game
Some Discoveries about the Early Board Game
Industry
• Games were designed for families; less gender
stratification
• Both game advertising and game packaging showed
players: males and females across generations;
focus was on playing together, enhancing family
relations
• Women are seen in engaged in a variety of active
roles
• Other discoveries:
• The Sociable Telephone, featuring a female player
• Department Store, where you play shop owner
• Women’s Basketball; in a search on Moby Games
The ‘Pastime Girls’
• Early board games were manufactured by women,
drawn from the garment and shoe industries
• As a result, most games were tested with primarily
female players
George Parker
conducting a
playtest with the
‘Pastime Girls’
The Cultural Positioning of
Players and Play
The Third Gender
• “Hardcore gamer” has become ground zero in digital
games
• Characterized by an adolescent male sensibility that
transcends physical age, embraces highly stylized graphical
violence, male fantasies of power and domination, hypersexualized, objectified depictions of women, and rampant
racial stereotyping and discrimination
• Fullerton: “The Third Gender”
• New fictional variation of De Beauvoir’s subjective male;
male position normative and central
• Game industry:
“Our job is to take lunch money away from 14-year old boys.”
Representations of Masculinity
Nina Huntemann has pointed out that these
stereotypes are just as damaging to males:
“These games, which utilize the cutting edge of
computer technology, send very particular messages
about what it means to be a man. Significantly, the
overwhelming lesson about masculinity is that
violence is the preferred means for accomplishing
goals, resolving conflict and even for creating and
maintaining interpersonal relationship with women.”
—Nina Huntemann, Play Like a
Man
Gender in Video Game Advertising
Hope for the Future
Nintendo
• With the rebranding of the Gameboy and the
introduction of the Wii, Nintendo is returning to the
tradition of 19th Century Board Games:
•Family-oriented
•Gender-inclusive
•Multi-generational
So far, so good
• Nintendo featured the Wii at the annual conference of
the American Association of Retuired Persons
(AARP); Wii is now becoming a standard feature in
senior centers
• Since writing this paper, the Wii has become the topselling console
Digital Arts and Culture 2007
Perth, Australia
Tracy Fullerton: tfullerton@cinema.usc.edu
www.ludica.org.uk
Tracy Fullerton
tfullerton@cinema.usc.edu
Celia Pearce
celia.pearce@lcc.gatech.edu
Jacquelyn Ford Morie
morie@ict.usc.edu
Janine Fron
Janine@ludica.org.uk