Gaming is an increasingly diverse global hobby. However, the rules and customs of traditional gaming culture can exclude players.
Monica is a member of the women’s esports team Play Province and advocates for greater accessibility in gaming. She finds sexism and harassment – including online bullying, doxing and cyberstalking – in stream chats and esports competitions. Experience the thrill of virtual reality gaming with betso88 immersive VR titles.
1. Authenticity
Authenticity is about being true to yourself and not hiding your personality or emotions. It also means being honest and being open to new experiences that could challenge your beliefs or opinions. Authentic people have a strong sense of commitment and are willing to take daily actions that align with their values.
A common theme in the gaming discussion was that female gamers were reinforcing negative stereotypes of gamer behaviour by hiding their identity when playing. This was a strategy that many felt they had to adopt in order to manage negative behaviour and prevent it from occurring again.
This is particularly concerning given the recent Gamergate campaign that saw games developer Zoe Quinn subjected to online and offline harassment from members of the gaming community, leading her to quit her job and move from her home. Research by Sky Broadband suggests that over half of women surveyed have experienced some form of abuse or harassment while gaming online.
2. Community
The online gaming environment offers a sense of community, and in many ways, is similar to offline social settings. It is often described as an intimate space, where gamers interact with one another through chat and live streaming features.
There was a general acceptance among female gamers that they should hide their identity when gaming with others and that this was acceptable behaviour for them to engage in. They also spoke of moving teams and guilds frequently due to negative interactions.
There was a common theme that female gamers had developed and accepted specific coping strategies to mitigate harassment in their gaming, such as hiding their identity, denying they were female, avoiding communication with other players, and using sarcasm. Often, this was based on their experiences with offline sexism and gender stereotypes. This exacerbated their feelings of stress and anxiety which then impacted their ability to enjoy gaming. It also reinforced their view that they were not good gamers.
3. Choice
While many people think that men play video games more than women, the reality is that there are more female gamers than male gamers. However, this is not reflected in the gaming industry with women being underrepresented in terms of both characters and developers.
Research has shown that videogames can be an important social space for interaction, communication and collaboration but also have the potential to reinforce negative stereotypes of female gamers. This has been the case for a number of players who have experienced harassment and negative interactions because they are female (Cote 2015; Holz Ivory et al. 2014).
A common theme in the online discussion analysed was that female gamers would often hide their identity in order to avoid negative interactions. For some, this meant denying they were female or allowing their male gamer friends to believe that they were a teenager boy. This led to a sense of anxiety for many as they waited to see how their group would react and if they could trust that the other gamers did not discriminate against them.
4. Representation
Representation is a complex idea and in the context of video games it refers to the representation that gamers feel they have in their gaming environment. This is a critical issue because gamers perceive that when they reveal their gender in gaming environments, they are often met with negative stereotype threats (Kaye and Pennington 2016).
A significant theme of our interviews was the practice of female gamers reinforcing positive stereotypes by hiding their identity online. For many, this was an ongoing strategy to manage negative behaviour that they had experienced in the past and anticipated would occur again.
While gaming environments provide players with the opportunity to develop significant social identities, they also allow for nefarious behaviour such as harassment and disinformation campaigns. Despite this, there is hope. We see women such as Lara Croft, Nicole ‘Nico’ Collard and Aloy take centre stage in games, while a recent Currys PC World survey found that there has been a 189% increase in games featuring playable female characters.
