A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity

Chess, Stella; Shaw, Adrienne

doi:10.1080/08838151.2014.999917

Cited by 337 publications

(201 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In particular, feminist video game critics have faced massive backlash in the course of the recent "#GamerGate" debate. #GamerGate originated as a campaign demanding ethics in video game journalism, but it became dominated by a vocal group of gamers who responded to feminist critiques with extreme online harassment including rape and death threats (Anita Sarkeesian has been one of the main targets in this regard Alexander, 2014;Chess & Shaw, 2015;Wingfield, 2014). At the heart of this conflict is the alleged divide between a White, young, male community of hard-core gamers and the criticism of the gamer community by perceived feminist interlopers (Huntemann, 2013;Salter & Blodgett, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

Paaßen¹,

2016

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Women and men play video games in approximately equal numbers. Despite this similarity, video gaming is still strongly associated with men. A common justification for this stereotype is that, although women might play games, they should not be considered "true" or "hard-core" gamers because they play more casually and less skillfully compared to their male counterparts. In this contribution, we review the existing literature on gender and gaming to investigate the male gamer stereotype in terms of its accuracy, persistence, effects, and future perspective. We conclude that the stereotype varies in accuracy depending on the definition of "gamer." We further argue that the persistence of this stereotype can be explained by the fact that almost all professional and highly visible figures in gaming culture are male. On the other hand, female players who achieve a moderate level of competence are rendered invisible or are actively marginalized. We argue that the effects of the male gamer stereotype can be harmful to women, precluding them from the positive outcomes of video game play such as enhanced access to fields of science, technology, and engineering.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

Paaßen¹,

2016

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“…Later, in response to the much-publicized harassment of Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, several journalists posted articles announcing the 'death of gamers' on 28 August (Auerbach 2014). The number of articles appearing all at once was used as evidence that there was an even larger conspiracy than already suspected, involving academics and the government, as we outline in more depth elsewhere (Chess and Shaw 2015).…”

Section: What Is Gamergate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The chat room burgerandfries was started on 18 August on the topic 'The Zoe Quinnspiracy'. Building on salacious claims made against Zoe Quinn by her ex-boyfriend, members of the chat room were planning a coordinated attack on Quinn similar to the harassment of feminist popular culture critic Anita Sarkeesian (Chess and Shaw 2015). The members of this chat began making connections between Quinn and Sarkeesian to bolster claims that there was a larger feminist conspiracy plotting to destroy the video game industry.…”

Section: What Is Gamergate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections on the casual games market in a post-GamerGate world

Shaw¹,

Chess²

2015

Social, Casual and Mobile Games

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“…Heron, Belford, and Goker 2014;Chess and Shaw 2015;Flöck et al 2015;Kendall-Morwick 2015;Massanari 2015;Todd 2015;Richard 2015), it also provides us an excuse to reflect on how we interact and communicate our work with potential audiences who are not ourselves. These additional audiences might include game industry professionals, game fanatics, players of games in general, but could also be perceived more broadly, and widely.…”

Section: Conference Event Submissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Chairing a Games Research Conference

Zagal

2016

ToDIGRA

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Chairing an academic conference, especially one like DiGRA, is a great honor and a great responsibility: it grants you a fair amount of power, at least for a short amount of time. I thought I would take advantage of that power and this platform to share my personal thoughts and opinions on what it means to run an academic conference in this field. In doing so I hope to clarify some of the things that, to me at least, were opaque about the process of chairing a conference. While I knew that chairing was a lot of work, understanding what that work was, how things should be done, and why they should be done a certain way was not clear to me until I was in the middle of it all. I hope that what follows serves two purposes: (1) clarify some of what is involved in chairing a conference in hopes that others (including students and new members to the field) can better understand some of the practices of this academic community and (2) encourage reflection and discussions on our practices and how they could be improved.

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A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity

Cited by 337 publications

References 10 publications

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

Reflections on the casual games market in a post-GamerGate world

On Chairing a Games Research Conference

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