scholarly journals PLEASURE+GENDER+PLAY

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Chess ◽  
Adrienne Massanari ◽  
Holly Kruse ◽  
Mia Consalvo ◽  
Kelly Boudreau
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Time Management ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Labor Practices ◽  
Casual Games ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

From the start, play and game studies scholars have investigated the experiences of women and girls who play games online, as well as gendered assumptions around digital as well as non-digital play (Brunner et al., 2000; Bryce & Rutter, 2002; Delamere & Shaw, 2008; Fron et al., 2007a, 2007b; Pearce, 2009). Scholars have challenged ideas such as that girls and women have weaker gameplay skills than boys and men (Jenson & De Castell, 2008), that women are not interested in competitive play (Taylor, 2006), that girls and women are different in their play experiences and interests (Royse et al., 2007) and that women are not frequent or loyal players (Consalvo & Begy, 2015; Williams et al., 2009). However, there is still more to learn about how women, girls, boys, men, nonbinary and other individuals play, as well as how gender can play an important role beyond as an identity marker in playful expressions as well as normative expectations for play. This panel offers new ways of examining how gender, games, and other forms of online play, can be analyzed and understood. These four papers argue for a more nuanced understanding of gender and play, further challenging gaming culture’s preoccupation that certain games and certain styles of play are more “valid” than others (Consalvo & Paul, 2019). To do that, we offer fresh analytical tools, different theoretical lenses and underexplored sites for study. $2 “No Need For Speed” makes a unique contribution to gaming and play literature, offering a new articulation of the temporal experiences within and external to game play - especially in COVID/pandemic times. In particular, the authors argue that the concept of “slow gaming,” might offer new possibilities for both our experiences of play and the way that time within the games industry itself is being reconceptualized. The authors offer three different games as examples of how “slow gaming” challenges our relationship to play, domesticity, notions of gender, and labor practices within the gaming industry more broadly. This paper argues that playing slow games, or playing games slowly, might provide a unique political rejoinder to contemporary life under late capitalism. $2 Two papers in this panel bring underutilized theoretical frameworks to the study of gender and games: examining how socioeconomic class and boundary keeping intersect with gender and gameplay in important ways. The presentation “Working for hearts: Social class and time management games” reads popular casual games such as Sally’s Spa through an intersectional critique. Adding to gendered examinations of casual games (Chess, 2012, 2017), this paper brings in a critique of social class. It does so through exploring the classed positions of jobs in these games, as well as how the player’s agency is limited both through classed expectations of certain occupations as well as further undermined by particular design decisions and gameplay mechanics as well as game narratives. It demonstrates how class is an important aspect of identity that can help us better understand gaming representations. The second paper to bring in underutilized theory is “Gendered expectations of playing nice, boundary keeping and problematic/toxic behaviors in casual video game communities.” This paper offers a different way of understanding the role of toxic behavior and players in game communities: through the sociological lens of boundary keeping. While not dismissing the real effects of harassment, it explores how activities such as trolling and other problematic gameplay is defined differently within different player groups, how it can strengthen some in-game communities or spur the creation of groups dedicated to combating such problems, and in the process helping to further enrich and make more inclusive gaming culture. $2 “Girls, Platforms, and Play” examines an offline form of gendered play and competition – pre-teen and teen girls riding hobbyhorses – and how the activity has been differently contested and/or constructed on two platforms: YouTube and Instagram. Legacy media video content of hobbyhorse competitions uploaded to YouTube inevitably have led – given YouTube’s largely antisocial comment culture (Burgess & Green, 2018) – to hobbyhorsers’ activities to be delegitimized for a number of reasons by commenters: mainly, because it’s just girls playing with toys, not participating in a sport; or because it is an athletic endeavor, but its participants should compete in a “real” sport, like track and field; or because it’s not real equestrianism. Instagram's affordances, which help encourage connections among subculture participants and the creation of communities (Leaver, Highfield, & Abidin, 2020), have allowed hobbyhorse enthusiasts to create a space of their own online.

scholarly journals The cruel optimism of “good crunch”: How game industry discourses perpetuate unsustainable labor practices

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110142
Author(s):  
Amanda C. Cote ◽  
Brandon C. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Industry Trade ◽  
Labor Practices ◽  
Conference Presentations ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Game Developers

The video game industry’s labor practices have become an increasingly common topic of discussion throughout game studies and the gaming community, especially when it comes to “crunch” or periods of intense, extended overtime. Despite this attention, crunch persists, and the industry’s tendency to distinguish externally mandated or excessive crunch from self-directed or scheduled crunch continues to be problematic. This article considers the distinction between “good” and “bad” crunch as a form of cruel optimism, in which the idea of a tolerable crunch actually prevents the game industry from imagining how to produce games without any crunch. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of industry trade press—specifically Game Developer magazine and Game Developers Conference presentations—this research demonstrates how viewing any form of crunch as acceptable quells potential innovations in video game production and locks developers into an unsustainable cycle. We encourage developers instead to rethink labor practices more expansively.

The End of Casual: Long Live Casual

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Chess ◽  
Christopher A. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Video Game Industry ◽  
Games Studies ◽  
Casual Games ◽  
Game Industry

This special issue is meant to provide an intervention. We are undertaking this project to broaden the corpus of Games Studies by both critiquing casual as a label, yet simultaneously legitimizing it as an important category of both study and play. Additionally, historicizing the terms casual and hardcore as categories uncovers the ways that the video game industry talks about its products and how academic work often replicates biases against casual games. To this end, we argue that the centrality of core games pushes many important texts to the margins. It is our goal, within this special issue, to revalue and reconsider the role of casual games within the larger ecology of game studies.

On the Need for a Nuanced Understanding of “Community” in Heritage Policy and Practice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Mulligan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Power Needs ◽  
Heritage Policy ◽  
Complete Process ◽  
Community Identities

The alleged benefits of community participation in cultural resource management has been an article of faith in the international heritage community since the early 1990s, yet the ambiguous and multi-layered concept of community is commonly deployed uncritically. This chapter argues that “community” should be seen as an open-ended, never complete process rather than end-product. It suggests that heritage practitioners inevitably contribute to the creation of a sense of community at scales ranging from the local to the national. The projection of community identities can enhance or undermine social cohesion at and across geographic scales and the chapter argues that heritage practitioners need to work with a nuanced understanding of their role in the creation of community identities. The link between heritage values and community formation remains powerful but the power needs to be unleashed with due diligence.

Narrative, Cognition, and the Flow of Mirror’s Edge

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ciccoricco
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Main Stage ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective

Faith, the protagonist of Mirror’s Edge, marks an empowered female character that is not hypersexualized, and the decision to employ a first-person perspective (thereby subverting any gaze offered by a third-person view) supports this design objective through gameplay. But despite Faith’s welcome debut on the main stage of commercial gaming, the game raises more significant questions through its engagement with the multifarious concept of “fluidity” or “flow,” which is integral to both the gameplay of Mirror’s Edge and the themes in it. Is Faith’s flow—in line with radical critical moves in literary history and cultural theory of the late 20th century to gender this trope—essentially or inevitably feminine, or for that matter, feminist? Does the game ultimately avoid, perpetuate, or contest the gendered discourses that it evokes? What can its simulations of a fictional mind in action tell us about our own? This article draws on cognitive, feminist, and narrative theoretical frameworks to question what the concept of fluidity means for a video game that mobilizes it through both narrative design and gameplay.

scholarly journals The economics of free

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 563-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Evans
Keyword(s):  
Game Design ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Gaming Industry ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Simpsons ◽  
The Social ◽  
Casual Games ◽  
Branding Strategies

The gaming industry has seen dramatic change and expansion with the emergence of ‘casual’ games that promote shorter periods of gameplay. Free to download, but structured around micropayments, these games raise the complex relationship between game design and commercial strategies. Although offering a free gameplay experience in line with open access philosophies, these games also create systems that offer control over the temporal dynamics of that experience to monetize player attention and inattention. This article will examine three ‘freemium’ games, Snoopy Street Fair, The Simpsons’ Tapped Out and Dragonvale, to explore how they combine established branding strategies with gameplay methods that monetize player impatience. In examining these games, this article will ultimately indicate the need for game studies to interrogate the intersection between commercial motivations and game design and a broader need for media and cultural studies to consider the social, cultural, economic and political implications of impatience.

Social Class and Wellbeing among Staff and Students in Higher Education Settings: Mapping the Problem and Exploring Underlying Mechanisms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isla Dougall ◽  
Mario Weick ◽  
Milica Vasiljevic
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
High Social Class ◽  
Lower Social Class ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Relationship

Within Higher Education (HE), lower social class staff and students often experience poorer wellbeing than their higher social class counterparts. Previous research conducted outside educational contexts has linked social class differences in wellbeing with differences in the extent to which low and high social class individuals feel respected (i.e., status), in control (i.e., autonomy), and connected with others (i.e., inclusion). However, to our knowledge, there has been no research that has investigated these factors within HE settings. Furthermore, inclusion, status and autonomy are correlated, yet little is known about how these factors contribute to wellbeing simultaneously, and independently, of one another. To fill these gaps, we report the results of two studies; firstly with HE students (Study 1; N = 305), and secondly with HE staff (Study 2; N = 261). Consistently across studies, reports of poor wellbeing were relatively common and more than twice as prevalent amongst lower social class staff and students compared to higher social class staff and students. Inclusion, status and autonomy each made a unique contribution and accounted for the relationship between social class and wellbeing (fully amongst students, and partially amongst staff members). These relationships held across various operationalisations of social class and when examining a range of facets of wellbeing. Social class along with inclusion, status and autonomy explained a substantial 40% of the variance in wellbeing. The present research contributes to the literature exploring how social class intersects with social factors to impact the wellbeing of staff and students within HE.

Reconsidering the Resilience of Pastoralism from the Perspective of Reliability: The Case of Conflicts between the Samburu and the Pokot of Kenya, 2004-2009

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-277
Author(s):  
Shinya Konaka
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Time Management ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
High Input ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Mobile Phone Network ◽  
Process Variance ◽  
Output Variance

This article explores an overlooked aspect of the 'resilience of pastoralism' in crises through an ethnographic case study of a series of conflicts between the Samburu and the Pokot in Kenya that erupted in 2004. Emery Roe's concepts of reliability professionals and real-time management of pastoralists are utilised as theoretical frameworks for this study. It was observed that the 'logic of high input variance matched by high process variance to ensure low and stable output variance' occurred through the formation of clustered settlements and an inter-ethnic mobile phone network. This case illustrates how pastoralists endured the conflict as reliability professionals.

Along the Lines of the Occupation

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Cristiano ◽  
Emilio Distretti
Keyword(s):  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Green Line ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Pokémon Go ◽  
East Jerusalem

Augmented reality enables video game experiences that are increasingly immersive. For its focus on walking and exploration, Niantic’s location-based video game Pokémon Go (PG) has been praised for allowing players to foster their understanding and relationship to surrounding spaces. However, in contexts where space and movement are objects of conflicting narratives and restrictive policies on mobility, playing relies on the creation of partial imaginaries and limits to the exploratory experience. Departing from avant-garde conceptualizations of walking, this article explores the imaginary that PG creates in occupied East Jerusalem. Based on observations collected in various gaming sessions along the Green Line, it analyzes how PG’s virtual representation of Jerusalem legitimizes a status quo of separation and segregation. In so doing, this article argues that, instead of enabling an experience of augmented reality for its users, playing PG in East Jerusalem produces a diminished one.

scholarly journals On the Publishing Methods of Our Time: Mobilizing Knowledge in Game Studies

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
First Person ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Middle State ◽  
The University

There is a considerable amount of academic and non-academic interest in the production and reception of video games. At the same time game scholars encounter questions such as, “are video game academics irrelevant?” In this article I connect questions of relevancy in game studies with the need to develop forms of publishing capable of asserting that relevancy more broadly. As the co-founder and editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar (FPS), a middle-state publication based in the Games Institute at the University of Waterloo, I detail how FPS has attempted to reach beyond the traditional scope of game studies to engage a wider audience and assert a new degree of relevancy for the game scholar.

scholarly journals Social capital in video game studies: A scoping review

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110547
Author(s):  
Henry Korkeila
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Role Playing Games ◽  
Video Game Studies ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

This study explored how social capital has been utilized in video-game studies by conducting a scoping review. In total, 74 peer-reviewed publications were analysed from three different databases. The following aspects pertaining to social capital were analysed: definition, methodology, game or genre as stimulus, its utilization inside or outside the stimulus, whether it was the sole concept or variable, how it was utilized, whether social capital was used to predict variables or whether variables were used to predict it, and what where the predicted or predicting variables. The results of the analysis show that Putnam’s research, the quantitative method and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games were most commonly combined. Social capital was predominantly utilized in binary form. It was utilized almost equally inside and outside the video games’ sphere of influence. The study then presents the main findings and discusses future research avenues.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document